Preliminary comparative analysis of biodiversity measurement approaches for public development banks

This report is extracted from a study to prepare a comparative analysis of six biodiversity metrics submitted to Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) by the consultancy firm The Biodiversity Consultancy. This report aims to share practical and reusable information for all Public Development Banks (PDBs) considering the use of these biodiversity metrics in the future, particularly in relation to the TNFD framework. The six biodiversity metrics selected and analysed as potentially relevant to informing PDBs' investment decisions and reporting are: CBF – Corporate Biodiversity Footprint; BFFI – Biodiversity Footprint for Financial Institutions; STAR – Species Threat Abatement and Restoration metric; GBS – Global Biodiversity Score; ENCORE – Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure; ABC-map – Adaptation, Biodiversity and Carbon mapping tool.

The lessons learned in this report, which proposes several protocols for using several metrics to compare their results, also contains information that may be useful to some development banks who just want to choose one metric and see how they can use it. In this perspective, a decision tree for choosing one of the studied metrics is suggested in Annex 2 of this report.

This work is part of a research project funded by the ECOPRONAT research programme, which supports research on how to better take into account biodiversity and mainstream it into key economic sectors.