In May 2025, Biodiversa+ convened a two-day workshop in Barcelona, bringing together experts from science, policy, and the private sector to address a pressing challenge: how to make biodiversity data meaningful and usable for businesses.
Rethinking how we value nature
Reversing biodiversity loss requires more than goodwill. It demands transforming the financial systems that shape business decisions. Today, these systems often favour short-term gains, overlooking the long-term value of healthy ecosystems. As one participant put it, a logged forest might be valued at a million euros, while a living, old-growth forest might be worth nothing in current accounting terms.
Tim Polaszek, from the Capitals Coalition, highlighted this gap: “Nature is largely absent from accounting, financial, and insurance frameworks. We need to remove disincentives like harmful subsidies and introduce incentives that genuinely reward businesses for protecting nature.”
For biodiversity efforts to succeed, they must be fully integrated into business operations. “Right now, biodiversity is often isolated within the sustainability department,” Polaszek noted. “We need to bring it into core functions such as procurement, investment, and risk management.”
This transformation starts with biodiversity data that connects values with action.
Challenges for businesses
Participants challenged the idea that businesses are unwilling to engage. “Many companies want to act but don’t know where to start, where to find data, or how to use it,” said Elisabeth Bakker of KPMG. “There’s confusion due to the sheer number of methods and the absence of clear, shared guidelines.”
Several challenges were identified and discussed:
- Limited awareness of existing data sources due to fragmentation and capacity gaps
- Fragmented, inconsistent data scattered across platforms
- Insufficient in-house expertise, especially among SMEs
- Low resolution of public data for site-level or supply chain decisions
- Restrictive licensing and unclear usage terms
- Uncertainty about emerging regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), and fewer incentives compared to climate action
Trust, transparency, and incentives
Data sharing emerged as both a barrier and a missed opportunity. Corporate contributions account for less than 5% of biodiversity data in platforms like GBIF and OBIS, with most coming from regulated environmental assessments.
“Sustainability claims have become a competitive arena, discouraging data sharing,” one participant observed. Legal concerns also play a role, with companies worrying that their data could be misinterpreted or misused. One speaker recalled a lawsuit sparked by misuse of red list data, an experience that still influences corporate caution today.
To prevent misuse, companies can obscure coordinates, though this may reduce the data’s usefulness for others. Louise Willemen, Professor at the University of Twente, stressed the importance of transparency and metadata. “Companies concerned about sensitive species data can coarse-grain location data and add user terms, but the key is transparency,” she said. “When you receive data, you want to know what’s behind it. So why not include that clarity when you share data too? Tell the world how, when, and where data were collected.”
“Not all data is controversial,” added Bakker. She pointed to inefficiencies when companies conduct parallel biodiversity assessments. “Sharing impact assessments could be a win-win, reducing duplication, improving data quality, and saving resources.” The challenge, she noted, may lie more in infrastructure than intent: “If we created secure, well-managed platforms, many companies might be happy to contribute.”
Solutions discussed included trust-building, standardised licensing, tiered access, anonymisation, and better metadata. Aligning data-sharing with ESG frameworks could also help reframe it as a strategic asset.
From data to decision-making
Participants agreed that biodiversity data must be translated into actionable insights, not just reports. “We need to help companies understand when they have ‘enough’ information to make a decision,” said Donna Teske from Naturalis. “Data doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be good enough to act on.”
This raised the key question of metrics. “When companies want to act at the site level, many available tools become too generic, they do not provide the granular, actionable insights needed” said Teske. Clear and reliable metrics are essential to show how a company’s actions lead to specific biodiversity outcomes. They also help resolve baseline uncertainty by clearly defining where progress starts.
Willemen pointed to the concept of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), a harmonised and scientifically robust approach to biodiversity monitoring. It can be used across scales and serves as a critical bridge between raw observations and actionable indicators for policy and, increasingly, for business decision-making.
The availability of EBV-aligned data is crucial for companies to understand and manage their impacts and dependencies strategically, even with imperfect data. “There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, no single best practice,” said Willemen. “You need a mix: robust data standards, clear metadata, and the flexibility to adapt depending on context and purpose.”
A strategic role for Biodiversa+
The workshop revealed a growing readiness to act and collaborate. Participants widely agreed that Biodiversa+ has a crucial role to play in bridging sectors. Its efforts in transnational harmonisation, data interoperability, capacity building, and policy alignment, could ensure data works for the private sector.
Guidance work is already underway, aiming to provide clarity, usability, and real-world relevance. “We must think from the companies’ perspective—how they want to read and receive answers,” said Teske, noting that businesses often feel overwhelmed by competing initiatives and datasets. There’s a need to explain not only where to find biodiversity data, but also how to interpret it, what it means in a business context, and how it links to specific mitigation actions.
The insights from this workshop will directly shape two guides from Biodiversa+, due out this autumn. Stay tuned!
