Biodiversity Footprinting Tools

Biodiversity Footprinting Tools

The Tool Landscape: Categories and Functions

Biodiversity footprinting tools can be broadly organised into three functional categories. Screening tools rapidly identify which business activities or locations carry the highest nature risk, typically using sector-level data and spatial datasets without requiring company-specific inputs. Assessment tools conduct more detailed dependency and impact analysis for specific companies, sites, or commodities. Footprinting tools quantify the total biodiversity impact of a company or financial portfolio in a common unit, enabling aggregation and comparison.

In practice, a company conducting LEAP would typically use a screening tool in the Locate phase, an assessment tool in the Evaluate phase, and a footprinting tool either in the Assess phase (to quantify risk magnitude) or in Prepare (to demonstrate progress against targets). Different tools often serve different audiences: screening tools suit procurement managers; assessment tools suit sustainability teams; footprinting tools suit investors and financial regulators.

ENCORE: Sector Dependency and Impact Screening

ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure), developed by UNEP-WCMC and the Natural Capital Finance Alliance, is the foundational screening tool recommended by the TNFD for the Evaluate phase. It maps 167 business sub-sectors to 21 ecosystem services and to the five direct drivers of biodiversity loss, providing qualitative high/medium/low materiality ratings.

ENCORE is freely available online and does not require company-specific data inputs for its core screening function. A financial analyst can use it to screen a loan portfolio for nature exposure simply by knowing the sector classifications of borrowers. Its primary limitation is its qualitative nature: ENCORE tells you where to look but not how large the footprint is in quantitative terms. For portfolio-level aggregation or target-setting purposes, ENCORE output needs to be combined with quantitative modelling.

IBAT: Location-Based Protected Area and KBA Screening

IBAT (Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool), maintained by IUCN, BirdLife International, and UNEP-WCMC, is the TNFD's recommended primary tool for the Locate phase. It combines three authoritative global datasets: the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas (WDKBA), and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

IBAT enables users to screen any geographic coordinate, polygon, or corridor against these datasets and generate reports on the protected areas, KBAs, and threatened species found within or adjacent to a given site. It is widely used for infrastructure project due diligence, conservation planning, and increasingly for TNFD Locate phase assessments. IBAT is subscription-based for commercial users, with NGO pricing available.

GBAT: Global Biodiversity Assessment Tool

The Global Biodiversity Assessment Tool (GBAT), developed as part of the Corporate Biodiversity Footprint methodology, extends location-based screening by combining site locations with supply chain commodity flows to estimate aggregate biodiversity pressure. GBAT uses MSA-based impact factors derived from GLOBIO modelling, allowing companies to calculate the area of habitat effectively "lost" per unit of production (expressed as MSA.km² or MSA.ha).

GBAT is particularly suited to manufacturing and consumer goods companies that need to assess the combined footprint of multiple raw material inputs sourced from diverse geographies. By assigning MSA-based impact factors to each commodity-country combination, GBAT aggregates across the full supply chain into a single footprint number that can be tracked year-on-year and benchmarked against peers.

GBS: Global Biodiversity Score

The Global Biodiversity Score (GBS), developed by CDC Biodiversite (Caisse des Depots group), is a corporate and financial portfolio footprinting methodology designed specifically for financial institutions. It translates business activity data (revenues by sector and geography) into an MSA-based biodiversity footprint, enabling banks and investors to assess the nature impact embedded in their portfolios.

GBS uses input-output economic modelling combined with GLOBIO's MSA impact coefficients to trace biodiversity pressure from final demand through supply chains to the ecosystem-level impacts. It can produce portfolio-level biodiversity footprints in MSA.km² per million euros invested, enabling financial institutions to compare, rank, and track the nature impact of their investments. The GBS methodology is published openly and has been used by several major European banks in pilot assessments.

Corporate Biodiversity Footprint (CBF)

The Corporate Biodiversity Footprint (CBF) methodology, developed by Plansup and partners, provides a company-level biodiversity footprint using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. It calculates the total biodiversity impact of a company's activities across its full value chain, expressed in species.yr (the global extinction risk equivalent of the company's annual activity).

CBF is methodologically distinct from MSA-based tools in its use of species extinction risk as the unit rather than species abundance change. This makes it more directly aligned with the conservation goal of preventing extinctions, but also more data-intensive and less transparent in intermediate steps. CBF is most commonly used by large European companies with well-resourced sustainability teams and is increasingly relevant for TNFD Assess and Prepare phase quantification.

Limitations and Honest Caveats

Biodiversity footprinting tools all involve significant approximations and uncertainties. The underlying models (particularly GLOBIO and its MSA coefficients) are calibrated at global scale from aggregated literature data and do not capture site-specific conditions well. Results should be interpreted as directional indicators rather than precise measurements.

A further challenge is comparability: different tools use different methodologies, data sources, and units, making it difficult to compare footprints calculated by different companies using different tools. The TNFD and associated initiatives such as SBTN are working toward greater methodological harmonisation, but significant divergence remains. Companies choosing a footprinting tool should prioritise relevance to their sector and materiality profile, consistency over time for trend tracking, and alignment with what investors and regulators are likely to request in the near term.