Scaling from product to corporate level biodiversity assessment
As biodiversity becomes a board-level issue, companies are increasingly seeking robust ways to measure their nature impacts across the value chain —not just at the product level. Yet most existing environmental assessment tools, such as Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), were not designed to capture the full complexity of biodiversity impacts.
This post explores the role and limitations of LCA for biodiversity, and how platforms like Darwin can help bridge the gap from product-level assessment to a scalable, organisation-wide biodiversity footprint.
What is Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)?
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a well-established method to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with every stage of a product's life, from raw material extraction, processing and manufacturing to distribution, use and disposal. It's widely used for carbon, water, and other environmental categories.
A typical LCA includes:
LCI (Life Cycle Inventory): what inputs and outputs (= flows) are involved (i.e. raw materials / commodities, energy, emissions)?
LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment): what environmental impacts (i.e. acidification, ecotoxity, land use etc.) do those flows generate?
CFs (Characterisation Factors): factors used to translate LCI flows into environmental impact scores.
Well-known LCIA methods in the environmental space are for instance:
ReCiPe, developed by PRé
ImpactWorld+, promoted by the CIRAIG with a focus on regionalised impact assessment.
PEF (Product Environmental Footprint), promoted by the European Commission
Why is LCA not enough for assessing biodiversity?
Despite its rigour, LCA has important structural blind spots when it comes to biodiversity:
Biodiversity is not a standard impact category.
Most LCIA methods don’t include biodiversity by default. When they do, it's often aggregated into a broader “ecosystem quality” endpoint or a weighted score with unclear representation of biodiversity-specific pressures.
No standards for some pressures (invasive species, land use change) or biomes.
LCA typically overlooks some of the 5 key IPES pressures such as alien invasive species, overexploitation of resources, or ecosystem fragmentation, which are major drivers of biodiversity loss.
Sector & raw materials specific gaps.
For high-risk sectors like agriculture, fashion, or cosmetics, LCA databases rarely account for differences between practices (e.g. regenerative vs. intensive agriculture) or certifications (e.g. RSPO palm oil). This leads to misleading impact profiles.
Lack of geographic granularity.
Biodiversity is inherently local. The same commodity (e.g. soy or palm oil) can have vastly different impacts depending on where and how it's produced. Most LCA tools use global or national (at best) averages, missing these spatial nuances. There are some exceptions though (e.g. spatialised Impactworld+).
Not scalable to corporate level.
LCA can be excellent for individual products, but becomes heavy and inconsistent when scaled on excel to portfolio-wide or corporate assessments—especially when data is fragmented across suppliers and geographies.
How Darwin helps you scale from LCA to biodiversity footprint
Darwin was built to complement and go beyond traditional LCA, helping companies and consultants transform product-level data into a robust corporate biodiversity footprint. Here’s how:
Step 1. From commodity inventory to product biodiversity footprint
Darwin goes 1 step earlier than most traditional LCA tools by assessing the intermediate stage of the commodity inventory—before the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is compiled: while most tools start directly with the LCI, Darwin reconstructs and analyses the underlying commodity inventory, providing a more transparent and traceable link between product systems and biodiversity pressures. From this commodity inventory, Darwin can:
Map each raw material to relevant biodiversity pressures (e.g. land use, water use, emissions, fragmentation)
Apply spatialised Characterisation Factors, reflecting country- and ecoregion-level context
Adjust for agricultural practices (e.g. organic, regenerative)
Add dependencies and risk layers, such as exposure to pollinator decline, water stress, deforestation, and more
Step 2. From product footprint to corporate-level biodiversity footprint
Darwin lets you aggregate multiple product analyses into a single, consistent corporate biodiversity footprint.
You can combine bottom-up (LCA-derived) data with top-down company-level activity data (e.g. Scope 1 & 3 GHG emissions), ensuring completeness and scalability.
Step 3. From footprint data to spatialised materiality and contextualisation
Darwin enables the spatial localisation of biodiversity footprint assessments linking environmental pressures to specific sites or regions. For example, Scope 1 pressures tied to a production site can be modelled using LCA data when direct site-level data is unavailable, then geolocated and characterised.
This approach unlocks:
scalable materiality assessments, allowing you to focus effort and data collection where it matters most.
contextualisation of pressures, such as water consumption in areas of water stress, or land use change in deforestation hotspots.
local adjustment of Characterisation Factors, reflecting the ecological sensitivity of the specific region or ecoregion.
This spatial layer bridges the gap between quantitative footprinting and strategic decision-making helping companies prioritise action and engagement based on geographic risk and opportunity.
Case spotlight: consultancies enriched LCA methods
Consulting firms like Sayari are already applying enriched LCA techniques to biodiversity. These approaches link product impacts to agricultural or mineral resources, integrating both location and granular production practices (e.g. regenerative farming, agroforestry). Darwin’s platform enables this level of granularity to be operationalised and aggregated at scale. This “custom” intelligence can now be accessible via the Darwin platform, supporting consultants in building reliable nature strategies.
Going beyond LCA
LCA is a valuable starting point, but not a sufficient end point for biodiversity assessment. Biodiversity requires spatialised, pressure-based, and risk-aware metrics that reflect the complexity of ecosystems—and the business’s relationship to them.
Darwin enables you to scale from product to portfolio, from LCIA to a full biodiversity footprint, helping businesses design credible, science-aligned nature strategies—at scale. If that resonates with you, do not hesitate to contact us !
