Stockholm (NordSIP) – Since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the end of COP15 in late 2022, biodiversity and nature-related investments have steadily risen in prominence for sustainable investors. Asset managers and asset owners repeatedly mentioned this topic as one of the most prominent considerations in their investments.
However, as a relatively recent focus among the responsible investment community, biodiversity remains a fairly incipient field with much still to be done to develop the right processes and tools necessary to ensure such factors are appropriately internalised. It is this gap in the field that NorthPeak Advisory1 (NPA) seeks to address with its latest report The Solution: NPA’s Reporting Framework & eDNA.
An Innovative Biodiversity Reporting Framework
NPA developed the new framework with the help of expert firms in the biodiversity and emissions measurement fields, such as Emission Twin, eDNAtec, SPYGEN and Applied Genomics, as a part of NPA’s services related to the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
“Although a handful of leading companies have mastered biodiversity measurement, their success is not enough to drive global transition and protection efforts,” said Petra Dismorr, Head of Sales and co-Founder of NPA. “For real change, every business—right down to the thousands of suppliers who play a pivotal role in this ecosystem—needs access to accurate, affordable, and scalable solutions.”
According to NPA, its new framework standardises and quantifies key biodiversity variables into a systematic measure of biodiversity patterns across different spatial scales and organisms and allows businesses to interpret biodiversity and emissions metrics in a way that aligns with financial and strategic goals.
The framework is based on the concept of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), which delineate multiple biodiversity indicators that measure species diversity across various natural markers. “The current version of the Framework is focused on the different aspect of species diversity and specifies up to four taxonomic markers, accompanied by a unique set of biodiversity indicators,” the report explains.
The different markers and metrics used in NPA’sFramework are summarised the table below:
Using eDNA
The framework also highlights the progress that has been made in terms of DNA analysis. “What once required complex field studies and expensive technology is now simplified. For example, a single vial of water, analysed using innovative DNA science, can achieve 95% measurement accuracy, compared to previous methods that barely reached 6% accuracy. This groundbreaking solution is faster, more affordable, and removes barriers that previously kept smaller businesses from engaging meaningfully with biodiversity data,” the report expains.
One of the pillars of the NPA Framework is its use of eDNA, nuclear or mitochondrial DNA that is released from an organism into the environment, such as soil and water. NPA describes eDNA as “a transformational tool for assessing and monitoring biodiversity, given it allows for ‘rapid, cost-effective, and standardized collection of data about species distribution and relative abundance’.”
eDNA, allows a company to collect vast amounts of genetic information from a single location and use that information to identify the species present thanks to techniques that are able to isolate unique DNA from a sample and compare it to available databases such as the International Barcode of Life and Genbank.
“Our mission is simple: biodiversity measurement and valuation must be available for everyone, not just a select few,” Dismorr continued. “With this framework, NPA is ensuring that every business, from multinational corporations to small suppliers, can access the best sustainability assessment tools and utilise the best available data, turning it into actionable insights to drive commercial value and real-world impact,” Dismorr concludes.
1 London-based sustainability consulting firm NorthPeak Advisory specialises in transforming sustainability data and science into commercial value. Their services include corporate advisory, asset management, biodiversity measurement, knowledge building, and guidance on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).↩
