By Jacob Bedford, UNEP-WCMC
As businesses continue to get to grips with nature-related issues, availability and access to nature related data is a perennially cited barrier. In response, a multitude of datasets, data platforms and data initiatives have emerged to respond to this need. Progress in this space is exciting, but it’s also important that these discussions are grounded in an understanding of decision use cases, and the characteristics of data that are required to meet these diverse user needs.
For example, many datasets provide global coverage data that are useful for early screening and filtering steps of an assessment. These datasets inform where important biodiversity is located, or where ecosystems are most degraded, which can support inferring potential impacts and dependencies, risks and opportunities.
However, at later stages of assessments, accurate data is needed at much more localised scales to understand impacts and dependencies in more detail. This includes the types of ecosystems at a location, their extent and condition, the services they provide and how these change over time. For these use cases, it is important to understand the limitations of secondary datasets and where local direct measurement may be required to fill gaps. This includes how participatory approaches and diverse knowledge can come together to build a picture of risks and opportunities.
In some cases, it may not even be data on nature itself that is a main barrier. Data on the location of business assets, volumes of associated pressures and other socioeconomic variables may be what’s really needed. As discussions on nature data and the private sector will inevitably be a priority topic in the wings at COP17, it is important that these discussions are not siloed from discussions on business use cases and the specificities of assessment processes. Whilst data availability is only one part of a much bigger picture, this will help ensure that advances in data can truly play a role in enabling private sector action at scale.
In our new A-Track technical brief ‘Delivering on Target 15 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: The core needs of business for public nature data’ we discuss these topics, and highlight how structured approaches to defining user needs can support streamlining data directly to key business decisions.
