Biodiversity, Defining the Ultimate Tangible Asset

Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture (BFA), as defined by the FAO, is the part of biodiversity that supports agriculture and food production, directly or indirectly. It includes domesticated species used in production systems (crops, livestock, aquaculture), resources harvested from various ecosystems (forests, fisheries), and a key element known as “associated biodiversity,” which refers to the diverse organisms that inhabit, sustain, and enhance food and agricultural systems.

There is broad scientific agreement that all businesses depend on nature and its services, including food systems, which rely heavily on biodiversity. Paradoxically, these systems are also major drivers of biodiversity loss. Agriculture, while essential for feeding the world, contributes to deforestation, pollution, land-use change, and species extinction, threatening 86% of species at risk. This illustrates both the vulnerability of food production and its potential to foster positive change through sustainable practices.

Conventional agricultural practices prioritize large areas devoted to single crops, sacrificing biodiversity.

Despite these challenges, agrifood systems hold great potential for “nature-positive” transformations—actions that can reverse or reduce negative impacts on biodiversity. The FAO’s State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture (2019) reports that 80% of countries are already implementing biodiversity-focused practices.

The Importance of Taking Biodiversity into Account

The concept of “carbon tunnel vision” describes a narrow corporate focus on climate change, where companies place almost all their sustainability efforts on measuring, reporting, and reducing carbon emissions. While this approach addresses an important issue, it often neglects other equally critical environmental dimensions, such as biodiversity, water, soil health, and ecosystems.

This tunnel vision typically manifests in corporate strategies around carbon neutrality or net-zero goals, with reporting frameworks that privilege carbon metrics because they are standardized and widely recognized by investors. However, ignoring biodiversity carries serious risks. Companies face reputational challenges as consumers and stakeholders increasingly demand a broader environmental commitment. They also expose themselves to operational vulnerabilities, since many industries depend directly on ecosystem services like pollination, clean water, and fertile soils.

In addition, emerging regulatory frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) are beginning to require companies to account for risks linked to nature, not just carbon.

A more effective alternative is to adopt a holistic sustainability approach—one that integrates carbon reduction with the conservation and restoration of biodiversity. This perspective recognizes that true sustainability cannot be achieved by focusing on climate alone, but requires multiple indicators and strategies that protect both the atmosphere and the living systems that support it.

The Challenges of Assessing Biodiversity

Assessing the true impact of these efforts remains challenging due to the wide variety of scales and contexts, as well as the lack of standardized data and suitable assessment methods. Over the past decade, there has been growing focus on developing frameworks for biodiversity accountability, including initiatives like the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the Natural Capital Coalition, the Biological Diversity Protocol, and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.

These initiatives contribute to and expand upon one of the fundamental aspects of biodiversity accountability: the development of objective, science-based, and transparent indicators to assess agroecosystem conditions, with a particular focus on evaluating nature-positive system transformations.

This approach assumes that biodiversity, and certain groups of bioindicators, can serve as indicators of the health status of agricultural ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide, particularly in intensive production systems.

However, biodiversity monitoring programs for food and agriculture remain limited, and most available datasets lack the resolution needed to assess the impact of specific practices at the appropriate scale. Numerous indices estimate ecosystem functionality or species status at a global level, but they are not designed to evaluate the management practices adopted by farmers at the plot scale—whether incentivized by public policies or private-sector initiatives. This limitation often leads to high investment risks and inefficient use of public resources.

Calculation of Biodiversity Gains in Agrarian Landscapes

To tackle these risks and uncertainties, FGN has developed the Calculation of Biodiversity Gains in Agrarian Landscapes methodology, with the objective of providing a robust mechanism to measure the impact of agricultural practices on biodiversity.

The primary goal of this methodology is to establish a verifiable and comparable system for projecting and quantifying biodiversity gains or losses in agrarian ecosystems, resulting from specific land management practices aligned with corporate sustainability needs.

This methodology quantifies changes in biodiversity within a given area using a pre-selected set of biodiversity metrics (biodiversity groups). Gains or losses are measured as a percentage change (%) and expressed in Biodiversity Units (BU). One Biodiversity Unit per hectare per year (BU·ha⁻¹·year⁻¹) represents a 1% increase or decrease in the aggregated biodiversity metrics included in the selected set.

The proposed methodology utilizes the Biodiversity Matrix created by FGN to assess changes associated with specific land management practices within a defined area. These changes can be directly or indirectly related to ecosystem services, ecosystem structure, and other environmental disruptions.

The methodology supports two main applications, depending on the timeframe and objectives of the user:

1. Short-term projects (1–5 years): focused on assessing biodiversity gains resulting from specific interventions.

2. Long-term projects (20+ years): aimed at consolidating and potentially monetizing biodiversity gains linked to sustainable land management practices.

Biodiversity, Defining the Ultimate Tangible Asset

Nature, biodiversity, and life itself are the ultimate tangible assets—the very fact that things are alive, and that we are conscious of it, is a miracle in its own right. Yet the absence of standardized biodiversity accounting has long hindered comparability, communication, and reporting, ultimately restricting the flow of capital toward biodiversity conservation.

This is where a normalized approach changes everything. By transforming fragmented, non-aggregated datasets into a standardized, science-based framework, we make tangible what was once intangible. Through a well-defined, open-source, and proven mechanism, biodiversity can finally be measured, valued, and integrated into decision-making.

With this shift, biodiversity steps into the spotlight—not as an abstract concept, but as the ultimate tangible asset in agrarian landscapes, a living measure of prosperity and resilience for the future.