The variety of life on Earth is truly remarkable. This biodiversity – broadly, everything that lives on our planet, including plants, bacteria, and animals (including humans) – is estimated at around 8.7 million distinct species currently in existence, and it’s a critical part of the natural infrastructure and ecosystems that make life on Earth possible.
The benefits of biodiversity are countless: wildlife supports the ecosystems our planet relies on to create fresh water, healthy soil, clean air, and nutrient-rich soil, all crucial to supporting life on earth and even a functioning economy; more than half of the world’s total gross domestic product, or $44 trillion, involves activities that are moderately or highly dependent on nature.
But biodiversity is under threat. According to the U.N.’s Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, due to pressures associated with climate change, deforestation, overfishing, development, and other human activities, one million species may soon be pushed to extinction, with serious consequences for all life on Earth, and disastrous repercussions for global financial systems; in 2020, the World Economic Forum found that biodiversity loss is one of the top threats to the global economy.
An effective antidote to biodiversity loss and the prevention of its associated consequences are nature-based solutions; the preservation of healthy, intact ecosystems and the regeneration of damaged ones. And these solutions also often offer cost-effective measures that help stabilize the climate via the sequestration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.
As such, while the parallel crises of biodiversity loss and climate change have historically been tackled separately, the key remedy for these two most-pressing challenges of our time is the same: conserve or regenerate enough nature and in the right places to preserve biodiversity and functioning ecosystems.
Together, Cultivo and the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) are providing the data, tools, and guidance to identify global regeneration projects in areas with the potential to maximize biodiversity gains and the ecosystem services that flow from them.
By integrating IBAT’s datasets, Cultivo’s platform can analyze a prospective project area’s biodiversity levels and Species Threat Abatement and Restoration metrics (STAR), and identify the presence of endangered species, which can be useful when tailoring restoration methodologies.
This approach isn’t just beneficial in terms of environmental benefits – it also reduces financial risk; projects with high biodiversity are typically more resilient and provide greater returns and higher natural capital flows in the long term.
“By collaborating with IBAT we’re able to give prospective project investors a more comprehensive understanding of how their support will benefit biodiversity, both broadly and in terms of the recovery of individual species,” says Emiline Koopman, a biologist at Cultivo.
Cultivo’s platform is purpose built to identify land that has the highest natural capital potential, streamline the diligence to develop it into a high quality nature-based project, and then monitor its progress. The integration with IBAT’s datasets is an important part of Cultivo’s Advanced Natural Capital Assessment product, which provides detailed insight into the landscape as it currently exists and forecasts its natural capital potential if the land were to be regenerated. Among other measurements, the assessment can predict increases in biodiversity, carbon capture, and water storage.
For example, the Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) identifier shows whether areas within or nearby a project are home to critical populations of threatened species or vital for populations with restricted ranges, or form large aggregations at certain times of the year for breeding, feeding or migrating. This gives potential investors additional insight into the significance of potential project areas and accompanying ecosystems in terms of the potential contributions that species threat abatement and restoration activities offer towards reducing extinction risk.
At a more-granular level, IBAT’s STAR metrics inform investors of the exact species in a project area and their extinction risk, as derived from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. Simple, standardized and scalable - Through reducing species threats or restoration activities, STAR quantifies the potential contributions these actions make towards species conservation goals. This can inform decisions made by businesses, governments, civil society, and other actors towards global goals for halting extinctions.
For investors, knowing what the impact of a project could be on biodiversity provides an additional and compelling reason for staking a project. And when it comes to sharing their sustainability story with their own customers, being able to point to the work they’re supporting around the recovery of a specific species – particularly charismatic megafauna – can be particularly effective. (If a STAR assessment indicates the presence of animals identified as globally threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the likelihood of that species being photographed could be reason enough to invest in camera traps and other forms of wildlife monitoring.)
Additionally, in terms of regenerative activities, understanding the threats arrayed against vulnerable species within the project area can help guide on-site work; if we know a threatened species within a project area is particularly susceptible to high-density cattle grazing, we can plan for this threat and accommodate regeneration methods appropriately. Or if we know habitat fragmentation is of particular concern, we can work with project partners to reroute roads to ensure unbroken, continuous ecosystems that benefit species recovery.
“Through this collaboration, Cultivo and IBAT are providing investors with biodiversity data and insights to help identify nature-based projects that have high natural capital potential, maximize biodiversity gains, and reduce financial risk.” says James Clifton, Cultivo’s co-founder.
Furthermore, the combined power of IBAT’s data and Cultivo’s platform can identify the most-at-risk species within a project area, giving investors and their clients insight into exactly what types of animals and plants will benefit from their support, and proving additionality beyond carbon sequestration benefits alone.
“Biodiversity is increasingly at the forefront of investors’ minds. By collaborating with Cultivo, the IBAT datasets are accessible for investors providing meaningful insights into the natural capital of an area, and helping them to make informed decisions on how to contribute towards nature-positive projects” says Ed Ellis, Head of IBAT
Learn more about Cultivo’s collaboration with IBAT and how our tools can help you choose the best projects for your natural capital portfolio at cultivo.land and ibat-alliance.org