An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity
Abstract Existing approaches to evaluating companies on sustainability-related issues include limited accounting of impacts on nature and its contributions to human well-being. Here we present an approach for quantifying the direct impacts of companies’ physical assets on nature based on global maps...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Portfolio
2024-10-01
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| Series: | Communications Earth & Environment |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01797-7 |
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| author | Lisa Mandle Andrew Shea Emily Soth Jesse A. Goldstein Stacie Wolny Jeffrey R. Smith Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer Richard P. Sharp Mayur Patel |
| author_facet | Lisa Mandle Andrew Shea Emily Soth Jesse A. Goldstein Stacie Wolny Jeffrey R. Smith Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer Richard P. Sharp Mayur Patel |
| author_sort | Lisa Mandle |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Existing approaches to evaluating companies on sustainability-related issues include limited accounting of impacts on nature and its contributions to human well-being. Here we present an approach for quantifying the direct impacts of companies’ physical assets on nature based on global maps for eight ecosystem service and biodiversity metrics. We apply this approach to a set of over 2000 global, publicly traded companies with 580,000 mapped physical assets and find that companies in utility, real estate, materials, and financial sectors have the largest impacts on average, with substantial variation within all sectors. Using high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery to map individual mine footprints, we compare a set of active lithium mines and find that impacts vary substantially among mines and change over time. By using open-source models and drawing on the growing availability of high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery, this approach could provide more transparent measures of corporate impacts to nature for nature-related reporting. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-4ea3bc67ce224ac0a058249b4d362668 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2662-4435 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-10-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Communications Earth & Environment |
| spelling | doaj-art-4ea3bc67ce224ac0a058249b4d3626682025-08-20T02:11:49ZengNature PortfolioCommunications Earth & Environment2662-44352024-10-015111110.1038/s43247-024-01797-7An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversityLisa Mandle0Andrew Shea1Emily Soth2Jesse A. Goldstein3Stacie Wolny4Jeffrey R. Smith5Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer6Richard P. Sharp7Mayur Patel8Natural Capital Project, Stanford UniversityGlobal Sustainable Finance, Morgan StanleyNatural Capital Project, Stanford UniversityNatural Capital Project, Stanford UniversityNatural Capital Project, Stanford UniversityDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton UniversityGlobal Science, WWFGlobal Science, WWFNatural Capital Project, Stanford UniversityAbstract Existing approaches to evaluating companies on sustainability-related issues include limited accounting of impacts on nature and its contributions to human well-being. Here we present an approach for quantifying the direct impacts of companies’ physical assets on nature based on global maps for eight ecosystem service and biodiversity metrics. We apply this approach to a set of over 2000 global, publicly traded companies with 580,000 mapped physical assets and find that companies in utility, real estate, materials, and financial sectors have the largest impacts on average, with substantial variation within all sectors. Using high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery to map individual mine footprints, we compare a set of active lithium mines and find that impacts vary substantially among mines and change over time. By using open-source models and drawing on the growing availability of high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery, this approach could provide more transparent measures of corporate impacts to nature for nature-related reporting.https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01797-7 |
| spellingShingle | Lisa Mandle Andrew Shea Emily Soth Jesse A. Goldstein Stacie Wolny Jeffrey R. Smith Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer Richard P. Sharp Mayur Patel An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity Communications Earth & Environment |
| title | An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity |
| title_full | An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity |
| title_fullStr | An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity |
| title_full_unstemmed | An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity |
| title_short | An open-source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity |
| title_sort | open source approach for measuring corporate impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01797-7 |
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