Global Biodiversity Score: 2019 technical update

What are the options to reduce the onsite and value chain-related biodiversity impacts of a business? How can financial institutions assess the risks related to the biodiversity impacts of their activity and that of the businesses they finance? How can such information be incorporated into their risk management policy? Can businesses set quantitative targets to reduce their impact on biodiversity as they do for climate?

The Global Biodiversity Score (GBS) is a corporate biodiversity footprint assessment tool which seeks to answer these questions. It assesses the biodiversity impacts of economic activities across their value chain, in a robust and synthetic way. It is developed with the support of about 35 businesses and financial institutions gathered in the Business for Positive Biodiversity Club (B4B+ Club) and through collaborations with academics, NGOs and other corporate biodiversity footprint initiatives.

This 2019 update provides an overview of how the GBS can support the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, updates previous mappings of where the GBS sits compared to other tools and presents the biodiversity footprint ecosystem, transparently describes the latest technical developments, shares the results of four more case studies of companies who road tested the tool, and completes the existing FAQ with more common questions about the GBS.