Biodiversity represents the variety of life on Earth and serves as the foundation for healthy ecosystems that provide critical services to agricultural value chains: pollination, water purification, soil fertility, and climate regulation. However, biodiversity loss is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, driven by land-use change, resource overexploitation, pollution, climate change, and invasive species. Agriculture both contributes significantly to biodiversity erosion and experiences its consequences directly.
Biodiversity risks for agriculture-related businesses
Agricultural businesses face multiple interconnected threats:
Supply chain disruptions: The loss of pollinators, soil erosion, and water scarcity directly reduce crop yields and destabilize production systems.
Regulatory risks: Emerging legislation including the EU Deforestation Regulation and UK Environment Act requires companies to demonstrate their supply chains are free from deforestation and ecosystem destruction.
Reputational damage: Consumers and investors increasingly demand transparency and sustainability. Companies linked to biodiversity loss face boycotts, divestment, and restricted market access.
Financial volatility: Physical risks (droughts, pests) and transition risks (carbon pricing, biodiversity offsets) erode profitability.
Conversely, proactive assessment and mitigation of biodiversity risks allows companies to secure supply chains, build resilience against ecological shocks, and access premium markets for sustainable products while attracting ESG investment through nature-positive strategies.
Measuring biodiversity impacts in agriculture
Assessing your biodiversity footprint begins by creating a digital representation of your company and its upstream value chain using four types of input data:
- Financial data (turnover, procurement data)
- Product data (transformed goods sold)
- Commodity data (standardized raw materials like wheat or soy)
- Pressure data (land use, pollution, GHG emissions)
These are gathered at various business levels including business units, products, sites, and suppliers.
Companies can then identify where value chains intersect with biodiversity hotspots by:
- Tracing raw materials to their origins (soy from the Cerrado, cocoa from West Africa)
- Overlaying supply chain maps with biodiversity hotspot databases (WWF Global 200, IUCN Red List areas)
- Flagging high-risk regions where operations or suppliers overlap with protected areas, deforestation fronts, or water-stressed zones
Mapping the 5 IPBES pressures in agriculture
After identifying hotspot exposure, the next step measures environmental pressures and ecosystem service dependencies. The IPBES framework identifies five key pressures reshaping ecosystems:
1. Land-use change: Natural habitat converted for agriculture, measured in hectares.
2. Over-exploitation of natural resources: Overfishing, unsustainable logging, and intensive farming that deplete species and exhaust resources.
3. Pollution: Chemical runoff, pesticides, fertilizers, and plastic waste affecting local species.
4. Climate change: Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, and extreme weather disrupting agricultural systems and threatening crop yields and livestock productivity.
5. Invasive species: Non-native pests and plants that disrupt local ecosystems, reduce crop yields, and increase costs.
Assessing ecosystem service dependencies
Agricultural businesses depend on biodiversity through ecosystem services, categorized into four types:
1. Provisioning services: Tangible resources including crops, water, and genetic materials that directly support production. Example: coffee farms rely on stable water supplies and pollinator-dependent Arabica beans.
2. Regulating services: Natural processes like pollination, climate regulation, and pest control that maintain productivity. Example: apple orchards depend on bees for pollination and healthy soils for nutrient cycling.
3. Cultural services: Non-material benefits including agro-tourism, heritage, and brand value. Example: vineyards' scenic landscapes attract tourists but risk degradation from unsustainable practices.
4. Supporting services: Foundational processes like nutrient cycling and seed dispersal sustaining all other services. Example: timber companies depend on natural forest regeneration, threatened by monoculture plantations.
With clear understanding of your biodiversity footprint, companies can prioritize high-risk commodities and suppliers, set science-based targets to reduce impacts in hotspots, engage suppliers in sustainable practices (agroforestry, precision agriculture), and invest in restoration.
From measurement to action: the role of biodiversity certificates
Agricultural models must evolve toward sustainable, biodiversity-friendly practices. However, farmers cannot drive this transition alone — all societal stakeholders, especially companies, play key roles in advancing the agroecological transition.
Agoterra (a leading player in financing the agroecological transition) and Noé (a biodiversity-focused NGO) developed an innovation enabling companies to take tangible biodiversity action: Biodiversity Certificates.
As part of the Organization for Biodiversity Certificates (OBC) and designed to complement carbon credits, these certificates make biodiversity preservation a concrete, measurable corporate pillar.
A robust, innovative, and collective approach
Biodiversity Certificates are grounded in scientific methodology, validated by independent expert panels, and aligned with international frameworks (IAPB, OBC). Each certificate represents a real, additional, and measurable contribution to biodiversity regeneration, complementing carbon footprint reduction efforts.
The principle quantifies impacts of farmers' transitions to regenerative agriculture, measured at four levels:
1. Habitat loss: Current agricultural practices drive significant natural habitat loss. Transitioning to regenerative agriculture halts this through hedges, field margins, or agroforestry.
2. Harvesting: Agricultural soils are overused currently. Leaving crop residues or installing cover crops creates biomass sustaining soil life.
3. Climate change: Agriculture produces approximately one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. Regenerative agriculture reduces emissions from pesticides and chemical fertilizers while increasing soil carbon sequestration through reduced tillage.
4. Pollution: Pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers significantly destroy ecosystems. These can be replaced by organic fertilizers and soil enrichment with legumes.
Biodiversity certificates provide rigorous measurement and reward systems for agroecological transition impacts on local biodiversity.
This initiative also features a collective approach: co-development with farmers, local community involvement, and engagement from pioneering companies. Agoterra and Noé are calling on all companies to join the biodiversity movement.
Pilot projects currently roll out across France to assess agricultural practice impacts on biodiversity and ensure fair farmer remuneration.
Integration with Darwin platform
Positive impacts (such as Agoterra restoration projects) integrate directly within the Darwin platform. The spatial analysis module maps biodiversity certificates and credits. Darwin views biodiversity credits as valuable financing tools for ecological transition, particularly in agriculture where regenerative or organic practice shifts prove costly for farmers.
However, credits remain one tool among many — they should not systematically offset negative impacts. Darwin provides distinct accounting systems capturing negative, positive, and avoided impacts separately. The platform addresses broader biodiversity credit space challenges, particularly ecological equivalence and additionality, helping users navigate these with transparency and scientific rigor.