Biodiversity Footprinting Guidance

Understanding key approaches in biodiversity footprinting: a guide for businesses and organisations

This guidance is designed to help organisations – especially companies – to understand how to measure their impact on nature. It is aimed for professionals in finance, procurement, operations, strategy, and sustainability, whatever your experience with biodiversity. The guide explains three complementary approaches: Input-Output (IO), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) and helps you understand which one you can use when. There is no single best approach. The right one depends on your context, objectives, and data.

NB. It is not a compliance checklist or a replacement for expert analysis.

biodiversity loss birdseye view

Read the guidance

New to biodiversity footprinting, or want the full picture? This guide covers the three main approaches, with worked examples, and how to choose between them.

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Use the Decision Tree

Not sure which approach fits? Answer a few questions to find out. The Guidance is designed to be used together with the Decision Tree.

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Tell us what you think

The Guidance and Decision Tree are still being developed, and your input directly shapes the next version. It only takes a couple of minutes. Especially useful: what's unclear, missing or incorrect, and any real examples or case studies.

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