Balancing business and biodiversity : a step in the right direction ?

“So much of the value pro­vi­ded to us by nature is taken for gran­ted,” explains Lisa Mandle, lead scien­tist for the Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. “Our mis­sion is to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on where and how nature mat­ters to people – and the economy.” 

The Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject is an inter­dis­ci­pli­na­ry orga­ni­sa­tion that has been wor­king on the ques­tion of eco­sys­tem ser­vices – or ‘nature’s contri­bu­tions to people’ – for 15 years. Using InVEST, a soft­ware they have deve­lo­ped, the team say that they use the best avai­lable science to help deci­sion-making. “And the busi­ness side is a piece of that,” she explains.

InVEST is an open-source soft­ware suite ; a tool for explo­ring dif­ferent sce­na­rios of land and ocean use and mana­ge­ment. “We wan­ted to make a tool that was easy to use in a varie­ty of contexts,” Lisa Mandle states. InVEST pro­vides a suite of models to com­pare eco­sys­tem ser­vices in dif­ferent ins­tances. It enables users to map and quan­ti­fy ser­vices such as car­bon seques­tra­tion, flood pro­tec­tion and water qua­li­ty, based on com­mon­ly avai­lable data like topo­gra­phic maps.

Glo­bal impacts on ecosystems

“To date, we have found over 400 peer-revie­wed (and other) publi­ca­tions using InVEST. Of them, 82% are autho­red by people who are not part of the Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject, which is a good sign that our soft­ware is being wide­ly used.” Accor­ding to the Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject, InVEST can be applied anyw­here in the world, and can be espe­cial­ly valuable in contexts with low access to data. And, as such, the team recent­ly ran models on a glo­bal scale for the first time. Their results, publi­shed in the jour­nal Science¹, indi­cate regions of the world where invest­ment in natu­ral resources would have the big­gest impact on local com­mu­ni­ties, inclu­ding the Ganges Basin, Eas­tern Chi­na and regions of sub-Saha­ran Africa. 

“Our approach and tools are a way of sho­wing what’s at stake by brin­ging the value of nature into deci­sion-making and increa­sing trans­pa­ren­cy of the conse­quences of choices made by govern­ments and busi­nesses on people.” 

Wor­king with big companies

“In addi­tion to govern­ments, NGOs, and research ins­ti­tu­tions, we have wor­ked with a num­ber of dif­ferent com­pa­nies in the pri­vate sec­tor,” she explains. One of those is the mul­ti-natio­nal, Uni­le­ver, which has made some very ambi­tious com­mit­ments to redu­cing the impacts of their ope­ra­tions on the envi­ron­ment. They are loo­king at the impacts of sour­cing pro­ducts from dif­ferent places².

There are many ways busi­nesses can make use of the Natu­ral Capi­tal Project’s science and tools. “Some com­pa­nies like Uni­le­ver have people who have been run­ning our models by them­selves,” she out­lines. In other cases, infor­ma­tion is taken up by the busi­ness via consul­tants and resear­chers. “Even though we didn’t work direct­ly with them, insu­rance com­pa­ny Swiss Re recent­ly publi­shed a report³ based on our model­ling, too.”

In 2015, the Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject publi­shed a stu­dy des­cri­bing a col­la­bo­ra­tion with Dow che­mi­cal⁴. The ana­ly­sis was a case stu­dy using one of their faci­li­ties in the Gulf of Texas, which is sus­cep­tible to floo­ding from coas­tal storms. They wan­ted to know whe­ther they should invest in a sea wall to pro­tect it. In this ins­tance, they were faced with the options of (1) buil­ding an arti­fi­cial sea wall or (2) res­to­ring mar­sh­lands as a natu­ral pro­tec­tion barrier. 

Based on the ana­lyses, it was found that an arti­fi­cial sea wall would pro­vide a value of $217 mil­lion to the com­pa­ny, signi­fi­cant­ly higher than natu­ral pro­tec­tions. Howe­ver, upon using InVEST to model dif­ferent sce­na­rios, the balance shif­ted. They pro­po­sed ano­ther solu­tion : a mode­rate sea wall com­bi­ned with some res­to­ra­tion efforts. In that confi­gu­ra­tion they saw added cos­tal pro­tec­tion from natu­ral sys­tems, bene­fits to locals in terms of recrea­tio­nal acti­vi­ties and car­bon seques­tra­tion – all of which are consi­de­red as eco­sys­tem ser­vices – pro­vi­ding a ‘hybrid’ out­come that was worth $229 mil­lion to the company. 

Moreo­ver, there were added advan­tages for bio­di­ver­si­ty, sup­por­ting fishe­ries and wild­life. Thus, pro­vi­ding an argu­ment for a par­tial res­to­ra­tion of the land, offe­ring a ‘grey-green’ approach as a com­pro­mise that was both eco­no­mi­cal­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly favourable. 

Contri­bu­ting to wider projects

In some cases, the Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject is invol­ved in more com­plex, mul­ti-indus­try col­la­bo­ra­tions. One of their pro­jects in Mon­go­lia, led by Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject lead scien­tist Becky Cha­plin-Kra­mer, involves the pro­duc­tion of cash­mere for luxu­ry fashion house, Kering⁵.

During a per­iod of less than 10 years, the demand for cash­mere had qua­dru­pled, resul­ting in a dras­tic increase in goat far­ming in the Gobi Desert. Over-gra­zing drove a huge drop in vege­ta­tion, with nega­tive impacts on the envi­ron­ment inclu­ding dust from the desert being easier to whip into clouds that rea­ched as far away as California.

The team were invol­ved in fin­ding a solu­tion. To do so, they hel­ped a local mine by offe­ring them a solu­tion for bio­di­ver­si­ty off­set­ting in the region to res­tore the vege­ta­tion. For that, the Natu­ral Capi­tal Pro­ject have been using their eco­sys­tem model­ling ser­vices in the form of InVEST, com­bi­ned with NASA satel­lite ima­ge­ry to moni­tor the res­to­ra­tion project. 

As such, the team are seeing ways to inter­act with busi­nesses to make plans, help deci­sion-making and moni­tor the out­comes. Never­the­less, wor­king with indus­tries in this way requires sub­stan­tial research efforts and time. “We get more requests than we can handle,” says Lisa Mandle. “There is a lot of demand for this kind of infor­ma­tion and the chal­lenge has been pro­vi­ding solu­tions qui­ck­ly and com­pre­hen­si­ve­ly enough for the people who want to use it. It’s great to see these ideas real­ly taking hold around the world.”