Background
While humanity is completely dependent on nature, our demand for nature’s capital far exceeds its supply. In addition, we are damaging the very processes on which the continued supply of services rest. To operationalize the pressures that humanity’s demand for nature’s capital and its renewability places, we need to develop system-level economic analyses of the interplay between biodiversity (hereafter BD), production, and consumption. This can be achieved by, e.g., measuring biodiversity loss caused by various drivers coupled with environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) models. The results can be utilized in the development of BD footprint calculators, to be used by consumers and organizations for gauging the effect of various products or services on nature.
BD footprint calculating tools are currently being developed on several fronts. Major gaps in some of the existing bases for the estimates are the inability of the metrics to capture loss at different levels of biodiversity. They often also lack spatial explicitness whereby local drivers and local BD loss are neglected. The novelty in this project lies at the heart of this specific void: we will identify both nationally relevant and internationally comparable measurements of BD loss at different BD levels (genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity) and dimensions (taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity) that are applicable for the EEIO approach and integrate them in a national spatially explicit land-use model and further in an EEIO model tailored for the Finnish economy.
Aims of BDprint
To robustly identify the anthropogenic impacts on BD, several indicators need to be integrated in EEIO models, and each output will reflect impacts on the specific measured facet of BD measured by that indicator. Several measures of BD loss have been proposed and used, and most of them relate to species diversity. It is clear that no one indicator is comprehensive in capturing all facets of BD and anthropogenic impact on them. In addition, since BD footprint development is still an emerging field, many datasets and indicators (some of which could quantify intraspecific, functional, and ecosystem diversity) have not been evaluated for their suitability to connect with economic models.
In BDprint, we connect across thematically relevant existing networks and projects in Syke (Biodiversity Offsetting and Ecosystem Accounting, FEO and MOBICA) to distill the most potent data and indicators for BD loss in a BD footprint framework. We also review existing literature to assess and compare potential BD indicators and datasets suitable for detecting loss in different facets of BD. We identify the measures with the most potential for use in EEIO models. BD indicators will be linked to a spatially explicit land use data model for Finland. This complete dataset is then linked into the EEIO model of the Finnish economy ENVIMAT by allocating land-use to different industries of the Finnish economy, to reveal the patterns of consumption and production behind BD loss in Finland.
Throughout, we work tightly together within the transdisciplinary team to outline our main scientific and communications-related challenges. The project supports the green transition in general and Syke’s strategy in relation to this. It functions towards improving our understanding of the drivers and impacts of BD loss and to make this awareness a part of our everyday lives and operations which is required for a successful green transition.
Further information:
Senior Research Scientist Maria Hällfors: firstname.surname@syke.fi