Globally, businesses are becoming more exposed to the escalating water challenges associated with scarcity, quality, and access. The growing water crisis is also illuminating how biodiversity is being impacted by the private sector and impacting business operations, supply chains, and economic certainty. The need to prioritize biodiversity as a key component of corporate water stewardship has never been more crucial.
The corporate sector plays a significant role in the stewardship of global water resources. Companies rely on water for their operations, whether for manufacturing, agriculture, energy production, or providing goods and services. In doing so, companies impact local and global water systems, potentially putting significant pressure on water resources. Recognizing this, many companies have initiated water stewardship programs aimed at responsible water use, efficient water management, and safeguarding water-related ecosystems. However, these efforts often fail to account for the profound connections between water and biodiversity, leading to missed opportunities to enhance environmental, societal, and business outcomes.
Biodiversity and water are deeply connected. Biodiversity loss is a global concern, and the corporate sector has a growing responsibility to account for and disclose its biodiversity impacts. Emergent frameworks such as the Nature Positive Initiative, European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), Science-Based Targets for Nature (SBTN), and Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) are beginning to define this responsibility and increase the need for careful planning, execution, and accounting of water stewardship project impacts on biodiversity.
The Pacific Institute, CEO Water Mandate, LimnoTech, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and Second Nature Ecology + Design are partnering to develop standardized methods for accounting for terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity benefits of water and ecosystem stewardship activities. The objective is to publish a standardized methodology for biodiversity benefit accounting (BioBA) that is technically robust yet pragmatic and feasible to implement.
The BioBA project will comprise two key phases: Phase 1) Project initiation and a landscape assessment; and Phase 2) the development of the BioBA methodology. Two key outputs will arise from this work:
The landscape assessment critically reviews existing relevant resources to support biodiversity benefit quantification. The objective was to identify existing baseline information on biodiversity commitments, frameworks and approaches and support the development of the BioBA methodology. Several key resources on biodiversity measurement methods were reviewed and opportunities for alignment with corporate water stewardship initiatives were explored. These included:
- Global, regional and national biodiversity commitments and frameworks
- Frameworks and approaches for corporate biodiversity measurement, action and disclosure
- Project-scale guidance and best practice documents
- Indicators and metrics for measuring biodiversity impact
- Biodiversity measurement approaches, scale and associated claims
- The landscape assessment was the foundation for the BioBA methodology.
BioBA will provide water stewardship practitioners with standardized guidance to identify ecologically appropriate and scientifically backed indicators, metrics, and measurement methods to quantify biodiversity benefits of water stewardship activities. BioBA will be technically robust yet pragmatic and feasible to implement. This work will provide valuable linkages to other important water stewardship programs and initiatives such as replenishment targets and volumetric water benefit accounting (VWBA) quantification, water quality benefit accounting (WQBA), Benefit Accounting of Nature-Based Solutions for Watersheds, Water Resilience Coalition (WRC) Net Positive Water Impact (NPWI), Freshwater Science-Based Targets (SBTs), and established or emerging reporting frameworks.
The BioBA will provide businesses with a standardized process to integrate biodiversity into externally focused water stewardship programs and general guidance on incorporating biodiversity considerations into their water management and stewardship strategies. It will help assess the multiple benefits of biodiversity conservation and restoration, ensuring that corporate water stewardship efforts are transparent, measurable, and where possible, quantified, to drive a stronger business case to invest in activities supporting biodiversity conservation and restoration.
The primary audience of the BioBA project is intended to be the private sector. The primary anticipated use case of this methodology is for water stewardship practitioners to estimate or quantify the terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity multi-benefits associated with corporate water stewardship projects. These quantified benefits may or may not be reported in the context of a company’s formal biodiversity goal or target. However, the project outputs apply to a broad range of stakeholders, including the public sector, academia, and civil society groups. This multi-sector applicability will help build the business case for water stewardship investments and support the scaling of biodiversity benefit accounting globally.