CircHive was represented by Natural Resources Institute Finland, EY denkstatt, Raiffeisen Bank International, Lake Constance Foundation and University of Edinburgh at the 5th ESP Europe Conference - Ecosystem Services: One Planet, One Health, in Wageningen in November 2024. The conference highlighted the interdependence of human health, animal and plant health, ecosystem health, and the health of the global environment.
With several pre-conference trainings and over 50 sessions, the ESP conference was a great place to find out about new information on how to combine Earth observation data with Artificial intelligence (AI) to get new tools for biodiversity assessment. Given that land-use change has a direct impact on biodiversity loss, Earth observation data, collected by satellites and drones, gives a whole new perspective to monitor biodiversity. The data, in the form of images, is converted to the necessary information through artificial intelligence and statistical modelling. Two examples of open data services are SEPAL and CORINE, and further data is available from various commercial services.
Practical Examples of how to Combine Earth Observation Data With AI
- A drought early warning system, the study area of Botswana using a combination of yield statistics and remote sensing -based data on vegetation conditions and rainfall (Felicia Akinyemi, Karlstad University, Sweden)
- Modelling Humpback Whale Distribution in Northern Iceland (Nils Barthel, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)
- Automated mapping of beefriendly tree (Robbe Neyns, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium)
At the conference, CircHive co-organised a session with SUSTAIN, SELINA, GoNaturePositive!, and A-Track: Transforming business conduct: Integrating the value provided by nature and people in private sector decision making.
The session included outcomes from the stakeholder surveys, insights from the demonstration projects and case studies, and finally a panel discussion between the presenters of the session.
Stakeholder surveys
Prior to the session, CircHive and A-Track both carried out a stakeholder survey. The answers were in the same direction. Firstly, most of the companies and organizations had included biodiversity in their sustainability targets or had a strategy related to nature, as shown below:
- CircHive: Do you include biodiversity in your sustainability targets? – Yes: 58 %
- A-Track: Does your company have a strategy/approach related to nature? – Yes: 61%
Two of the survey questions were meant to assess the current uptake of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Natural Capital accounting (NCA). Based on the answers to the survey, there is a low uptake of LCA and NCA to assess the company’s/organization’s impacts on nature. However, A-Track also asked how many were planning to use or were interested in the methods, finding that the majority were planning to use LCA and more than 40% were interested about NCA.
CircHive asked how familiar the companies and organizations were with different reporting standards. The most well-known was ISO 14001 followed by Global Reporting Initiative. However, at the time of the survey (2024), Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive was not yet so familiar. All in all, currently there is more focus towards sustainability reporting requirements than measuring impacts towards biodiversity, which is still in preliminary phase.
Demonstration Projects and Case Studies
- Investment in Nature-Based Solutions, SELINA Demonstration Project (Ivan Paspaldzhiev, EY denkstatt)
- Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI): The business case for Biodiversity – CircHive Case Study (Manuela Hurmuz, RBI)
- Ecostack Innovations: Supporting the transition to a Nature-Positive Economy
- SELINA Demonstration Project (Mario Balzan, Ecostack Innovations)
The demonstration project is inspired by company efforts to replenish the water use in their business back to communities and nature through nature restoration projects. The current focus for many is only water benefits, but there might be many other co-benefits such as biodiversity, carbon, flood protection, recreation, etc. However, there is no common standard how to take these co-benefits into account. Along with the demonstration project, SELINA project aims to develop consistent accounting rules for restoration projects.
In their business case for biodiversity, RBI aims to understand how the degradation of nature and its ecosystems is causing economic risks and furthermore financial risks, but also the other way round, i.e. what kind of impacts on nature the financed activities are causing. However, there are also nature related opportunities especially what it comes to decreasing the risks. RBI has been testing ENCORE tool to identify high-risk industries and key biodiversity indicators.
Ecostack Innovations demonstration project in SELINA-project is about nature-based tourism. Current work focuses on automated assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem conditions using a combination of biodiversity and citizen science data, and earth observation. The aim is first to localise environmental impact and visitation, while engaging with businesses to evaluate performance, and secondly to leverage funding for nature-restoration while supporting nature-based amenity values.