Tailoring Global Data to Guide Corporate Investments in Biodiversity, Environmental Assessments and Sustainability

Author： Oakleaf James R. Kennedy Christina M. Boucher Timothy Kiesecker Joseph

Publisher： MDPI

E-ISSN： 2071-1050|5|10|4444-4460

ISSN： 2071-1050

Source： Sustainability, Vol.5, Iss.10, 2013-10, pp. : 4444-4460

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Abstract

Companies make significant investments in environmental impacts assessments, biodiversity action plans, life-cycle assessments, and environmental management systems, but guidance on where and when these tools can be best used, and how they may scale-up to inform corporation-wide planning, is sorely lacking. A major barrier to informed environmental decision-making within companies, especially in data poor regions of the world, is the difficulty accessing, analyzing, and interpreting biodiversity information. To address this shortcoming, we analyzed nine publicly available environmental datasets, and created five globally-relevant metrics associated with biodiversity: habitat intactness, habitat protection, species richness (globally and biome normalized), and threatened species. We demonstrate how packaging these metrics within an open-source, web-based mapping tool can facilitate corporations in biodiversity prioritization of their sites (or their supply chains), ultimately guiding potential investments in the environment.