Biodiversity footprinting and where we currently stand

The ecosystem services provided by biodiversity are deeply interwoven with our societies. Natural capital from diverse ecosystems feeds the value chains of economic activities, while these activities have the power to likewise profoundly affect the ecosystems they exist in – both in the good and the bad. This two-way relationship can be measured by evaluating the positive and negative effects of these activities on their surrounding environment. Monitoring impacts on nature is crucial for mitigating biodiversity loss caused by land use change, pollution, resource exploitation, and climate change. 

Where do we currently stand? 

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely adopted approach to evaluate the related impacts of a product or service on the environment. LCA and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods quantify the environmental impacts of a product or service through every phase of its life. 

Specific aspects of biodiversity can be incorporated into the quantifying process of life cycle analyses by including metrics that measure loss of biodiversity, ranging from specific spatial measures of species loss to broader metrics quantifying direct and indirect impacts. A wide variety of measures is employed in different models like ReCiPe and LC-Impact (Damiani et al., 2022). 

An emerging approach of biodiversity footprinting is natural capital accounting (NCA). NCA methods quantify improvements and degradation in an ecosystem over time by calculating the total positive and negative impacts on a specific set of ecosystem assets. This can be used to aggregate the footprint of a given area or activity over time. The computed change is essentially a zero sum of the positive and negative impacts, and this accounting can be seen as credible and accurate double-entry bookkeeping (UNEP-WCMC et al., 2022; Houdet et al., 2020).  

NCA has significant potential for augmenting standard methods. In a recent interview, EFI researcher Mohammad Naji highlighted the complementary intersection of LCA and NCA and how this can improve sustainability reporting.

“While natural capital accounting looks at the macro level of the environmental impacts in ecosystems, life cycle assessment can help us to look at the environmental impacts on the micro level. So, combining LCA and NCA will help us to have a more complete picture of the environmental impacts.” 

What is the next step?

Wide acknowledgement of the importance of measuring impacts on biodiversity has given rise to a growing list of examples of governance and businesses conducting assessments to inform policy and operational decisions. For instance, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency announced the launch of the biodiversity footprint assessment of the entire national transport system (University of Jyväskylä, 2025). 

Nevertheless, development and especially standardisation of the wide range of methods are still very much lacking. Despite significant strides, there is both a lack of guidelines for the use of methodologies in policies, as well as significant work left in fine-tuning these methods to capture the complexity in measuring biodiversity (Crenn et al., 2020; Damiani et al., 2023; Sala et al., 2021). Aligning indicators and different methods is an extremely challenging process – albeit an essential one. 

The CircHive project works on this by developing rigorous and standardised methods that combine biodiversity footprinting and natural capital accounting. The outputs include events, training materials, policy briefs, reports, and videos developed in collaboration with the sectoral hubs of the BEEHive (Biodiversity Excellence of Enterprises). The BEEHive facilitates public and private sector collaboration in a community that works towards a shared cross-sectoral understanding of these methods. This is a step towards creating the unity in data-driven environmental action needed for building a smarter relationship with the nature around us. 

BEEHive is open to any organisations interested in learning to measure and manage their impact on nature. Join BEEHive to receive invitations to CircHive workshops and webinars, to review and comment on early-access CircHive outputs, and to share and discuss your experiences with other members. Mohammad Naji, researcher of LCA and NCA methods in CircHive, expressed his enthusiasm for the upcoming phases of the project: 

“I’m excited that we are expanding the community of businesses and cities and that we will see the effect of our work in this bigger community”.

The European Commission’s proposal to simplify the requirements of sustainability reporting to enhance competitiveness has sparked debate over the past months. The focus is on the consequences this might have on the overall level of reporting done by businesses.  

How the proposed Omnibus packages materialise, remains to be seen. Nevertheless, no matter how much red tape ends up being cut, ongoing dialogue confirms that the growing acknowledgement of the importance of developing footprinting methods is as active as ever. 

CircHive is co-funded by the EU Horizon Europe programme, by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee, and the Swiss Confederation, State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI.

Interview with Mohammad Naji

Researcher Mohammad Naji at the European Forest Institute (EFI) explains the difference between life cycle assessment and natural capital accounting, and how biodiversity can be incorporated into both methods.

Watch here

Aino Huiskonen (European Forest Institute)