Mapping biodiversity hotspots around your agricultural value chain
Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, is the bedrock of healthy ecosystems delivering essential services for agricultural value chains such as pollination, water purification, soil fertility, and climate regulation. Yet, we face an unprecedented acceleration of biodiversity loss, driven primarily by land-use change, resource overexploitation, pollution, climate change and invasive species. The agricultural sector (and all industries that depend on it) therefore finds itself in a situation where it is both at the forefront of biodiversity erosion and the first to suffer its consequences.
For businesses, particularly those in sectors with high dependence on ecosystem services like Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) this erosion translates directly into operational, regulatory, and financial risks making the transition towards a biodiversity-friendly agriculture a priority.
Today, in a co-authored article, we explore with Agoterra how agriculture-related companies can quantify their pressures on nature and take action in their biodiversity hotspots.
Biodiversity risks for agriculture-related businesses
Agriculture depends on healthy ecosystems —from pollinators to fertile soils— but it is also a leading cause of their decline. Deforestation, water depletion, soil degradation, and pollution are directly linked to agricultural expansion and intensification. For businesses, the consequences are severe:
Supply chain disruptions: loss of pollinators, soil erosion, and water scarcity can reduce crop yields and destabilize production.
Regulatory risks: new laws, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation and UK Environment Act, require companies to prove that their supply chains are free from deforestation and ecosystem destruction.
Reputational damage: consumers and investors increasingly demand transparency and sustainability. Companies linked to biodiversity loss risk boycotts, divestment, and loss of market access.
Financial volatility: physical risks (e.g., droughts, pests) and transition risks (e.g., carbon pricing, biodiversity offsets) can erode profitability.
On the other hand companies that proactively assess and address biodiversity risks will then secure their supply chains against ecological shocks and build resilience in the face of climate change and resource scarcity. And they will also access premium markets for sustainable products and attract ESG investment by demonstrating nature-positive strategies. To achieve this, the first step is to obtain a clear view on your biodiversity footprint.
Measuring biodiversity impacts in agriculture
Assessing your biodiversity footprint (i.e., quantifying your impact on biodiversity) starts by creating a digital twin of your company and its upstream value chain. You can use four types of input data : financial (for instance turnover or procurement data), product (transformed goods sold), commodity (standardized raw materials used like wheat or soy), and pressure data (land use, pollution, GHG emissions, etc.), gathered at various business levels (i.e. business units, products, sites, or suppliers).
Using those data, any company can identify where its value chain intersects with biodiversity hotspots. This requires:
Tracing raw materials to their origins (e.g., soy from the Cerrado or cocoa from West Africa).
Overlaying supply chain maps with biodiversity hotspot databases (e.g., WWF Global 200, IUCN Red List areas).
Flagging high-risk regions: prioritizing areas where your operations or suppliers overlap with protected areas, deforestation fronts, or water-stressed zones.
Source : The Conversation
Mapping the 5 IPBES pressures in agriculture
Once hotspot exposure is identified, the next step is to measure the environmental pressures your activities exert and the ecosystem services you depend on. The purpose is to identify what “pressures” generated by your business' activities (see more here) are leading to biodiversity decline, and what are the main dependencies of your company. The IPBES framework identifies five key pressures reshaping ecosystems. Understanding these pressures allows companies to pinpoint risks and target interventions effectively:
Land-use change: for instance hectares of natural habitat converted for agriculture.
Over exploitation of natural resources: overfishing, unsustainable logging, and intensive farming deplete species and exhaust resources.
Pollution: chemical runoff affecting local species, pesticides, fertilizers, and plastic waste.
Climate change: rising temperatures, shifting rainfall, and extreme weather disrupt agricultural systems, threatening crop yields and livestock productivity.
Invasive species: non-native pests and plants that disrupt local ecosystems, reducing crop yields and increasing costs.
Assessing ecosystem service dependencies
Agricultural businesses don’t just impact biodiversity, they depend on it through ecosystem services. We can categorize such services into 4 types to help companies identify critical dependencies and strategic opportunities:
Provisioning services: tangible resources like crops, water, and genetic materials that directly support production. Example: a coffee farm relies on stable water supplies and pollinator-dependent Arabica beans.
Regulating services: natural processes like pollination, climate regulation, and pest control that maintain productivity. Example: apple orchards depend on bees for pollination and healthy soils for nutrient cycling.
Cultural services: non-material benefits like agro-tourism, heritage, and brand value. Example: a vineyard’s scenic landscape attracts tourists but risks degradation from unsustainable practices.
Supporting services: foundational processes like nutrient cycling and seed dispersal that sustain all other services. Example: a timber company depends on natural forest regeneration, threatened by monoculture plantations.
Source : The Rock Group
With a clear understanding of your biodiversity footprint, you can now prioritize high-risk commodities and suppliers, set science-based targets to reduce impacts in hotspots, engage suppliers in sustainable practices (e.g., agroforestry, precision agriculture) and invest in restoration.
To help you do so, Darwin Data provides a platform that allows you to automatically collect and manage biodiversity related data in order to help you to localise impacts and dependencies, operational risks and implement actionable transition plans. If you need support for the transition of your business model towards nature-positive, don’t hesitate to contact Darwin here !
From measurement to action, the role of biodiversity certificates
Our agricultural model must evolve toward more sustainable and biodiversity-friendly practices. But farmers cannot drive this transition alone. All stakeholders of the society, and especially companies, have a key role to play in advancing the agroecological transition.
With this vision in mind, Agoterra, a leading player in financing the agroecological transition, and Noé, a biodiversity-focused NGO, have developed a major innovation to enable companies to take tangible action for biodiversity: Biodiversity Certificates.
As part of the Organization for Biodiversity Certificates (OBC), and designed to complement carbon credits, Biodiversity Certificates aim to make biodiversity preservation a concrete and measurable pillar of corporate climate strategies.
A robust, innovative, and collective approach
The Biodiversity Certificates are based on a scientifically grounded methodology, validated by an independent panel of experts and aligned with international frameworks (IAPB, OBC, etc.). Each certificate represents a real, additional, and measurable contribution to biodiversity regeneration, complementing efforts to reduce carbon footprints.
We know that agriculture is responsible for part of the erosion of biodiversity, and the principle behind these biodiversity certificates is to quantify the impact of a farmer's transition towards regenerative agriculture.
The impact of such a transition is measured at 4 different levels:
Habitat loss. Current agricultural practices are responsible for a large part of the loss of natural habitats. The transition to regenerative agriculture would halt this process through the planting of hedges, field margins, or agroforestry for instance.
Harvesting. Agricultural soils are overused in the current agricultural paradigm. On the contrary, leaving crop residues or installing cover crops to create biomass helps to sustain soil life.
Climate change. Agriculture is responsible for a quarter of current global GES emissions, but by switching to regenerative agriculture we can not only reduce emissions from agriculture (pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc.) but also increase carbon sequestration in the soil by reducing tillage.
Pollution. Pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers can have a significant impact on the destruction of ecosystems, and can be replaced by organic fertilizers and soil enrichment with legumes.
Biodiversity certificates therefore provide a rigorous way of measuring (and rewarding) the impact of an agroecological transition on local biodiversity.
This pioneering initiative also stands out for its collective approach: co-development with farmers, involvement of local communities, and engagement from several pioneering companies. Agoterra and Noé are calling on all companies wishing to join the movement for biodiversity to connect with the initiative.
Pilot projects are currently being rolled out across France to assess the impact of agricultural practices on biodiversity and to ensure fair remuneration for farmers implementing them.
Source : Kiss The Ground
Interestingly enough, you can integrate positive impacts (such as Agoterra restoration projects) directly within the Darwin platform. Our spatial analysis module allows you to map your biodiversity certificates or credits. Indeed, at Darwin, we see biodiversity credits as a valuable financing tool for the ecological transition, particularly in the agriculture sector, where shifting to regenerative or organic practices can be costly for farmers.
That said, credits remain one tool among many: they shouldn’t be used to systematically offset negative impacts. In that spirit, Darwin provides distinct accounting systems to capture negative, positive, and avoided impacts separately. We’re also mindful of the broader challenges (and debates!) in the biodiversity credit space — especially those related to ecological equivalence and additionality — and we aim to help our users navigate them with transparency and scientific rigour.
