NEWS

• NatureMetrics is teaming up with GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—to enable any NatureMetrics client to make their nature data transparent and available via the world’s most comprehensive, openly available biodiversity data-sharing infrastructure
• Rapidly making more nature data open and accessible via GBIF is essential for increasing the evidence available to baseline the Nature Positive commitment, demonstrating corporate commitments to transparency, and improving research and policy on global pressures like climate change

Today, NatureMetrics makes a bold commitment in the global effort to baseline and measure progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework emerging from the COP15 talks. NatureMetrics will launch a service in 2023 enabling any customer to share their nature data with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. To demonstrate their commitment to transparency on nature, customers that opt into the service will add their data into GBIF’s robust, infrastructure and well-established network. The team aims to urgently aid our understanding of nature’s wider response to global pressures like climate change and pollution, which no individual company can see in their data alone.

The partners made the announcement today at a fundraising event for eBioAtlas, a partnership between NatureMetrics and IUCN, already supported by organisations like Anglo American, which aims to offer 30,000 new global data points for nature as an open-source benchmark for positive biodiversity outcomes. Initial funds of £0.5m have been raised, including from Robert Downey Jr’s Footprint Coalition. The partnership aims to raise over $20m in 2023 to create the global database and accelerate global understanding of the baseline for the new global goal for nature, set in Montreal this week.

The data from the IUCN partnership can now be supplemented by any NatureMetrics client wanting to be part of the movement towards nature transparency to urgently help us to assess our baseline and progress in the next vital decade.

NatureMetrics made thousands of species identifications from over 11,000 samples in the last year, which are all securely stored in their own database.

Katie Critchlow, CEO of NatureMetrics said; ‘Monitoring and disclosing Nature Impact is not the same as with climate change, you can’t put a boundary around your site and take full control of impact on nature within it as you can with many carbon emissions. Issues beyond company control such as climate change, upstream agricultural run-off and other pollution sources affect the Nature Performance within our clients’ assets. We’re excited to play our part in accelerating the rapid aggregation of data from across the world that that the GBIF network has blazed a trail on. The more data that is available the more we can truly offer an accurate assessment of impact within and outside our clients’ control.”

“We’re excited to extend the usefulness of nature data captured in NatureMetrics’ new platform” said Joe Miller, GBIF Executive Secretary. “We hope that the new service can expand the eDNA-based evidence shared through GBIF and the growing number of private companies already sharing species occurrence records through our network.”

NatureMetrics this week launched its Nature Performance Monitoring service which will be delivered to clients through their new digital platform. This service will enable customers to report on their own progress towards the Nature Positive target which it is hoped will emerge from COP15. Measurable progress reporting on nature is becoming more important with new standards and regulations coming down the line to drive corporate reporting on biodiversity, such as the new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Framework and the Taskforce on Nature-based Financial Disclosures (TNFD). As a global provider of Nature Intelligence, NatureMetrics aims to deliver high quality, and comprehensive data and metrics to our clients along-side robust, decision-ready insights. The decision to enable data transparency is part of the company’s deep commitment to positive impact on our Natural World.

Mark Gough, CEO of Capitals Coalition said; “Businesses at COP15 are calling on governments to make assessment and disclosure on nature mandatory though the #MakeItMandatory campaign. If successful, companies around the world will be required to understand their relationships with the natural world, and they will need vast amounts of data to do this. Nature tech innovations like Nature Metrics’ eDNA platform provide businesses with critical inputs and allow them to apply these insights to inform decision-making and disclosure, providing value for nature and people alongside their businesses.”

The service, which will go live in 2023, will be optional for any client on the NatureMetrics platform who wants to contribute to global understanding of the health of our natural life support systems. Clients must also have permission from the relevant authorities in their country of operation to make species level data transparent.

NatureMetrics will provide the service as an ‘opt in’ option for clients subscribing to its new Nature Performance Monitoring Service – allowing data held securely in their database of results and analysis to be shared with the UN’s platform for clients wanting to follow this best practice standard.

NatureMetrics will work with GBIF and its partner IUCN to ensure ethical data sharing, ensuring that no locations are revealed for populations at risk of exploitation.