Biodiversity Degradation
Introduction
Many human activities, and especially agriculture go at the expense of biodiversity. Loss of Biodiversity is one of the major sustainability issues, endangering climate, food supply. The O.S. challenges the partitioner to determine biodiversity, characterized by the relative count of vascular plants to the locally natural count. Because this count depends on the size of the investigated piece of land, the O.S. requires to sample 10 randomly chosen pieces of 10 m2 in each hectare of occupied land.
Category related Sustainable Development Goals
Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
Goal 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all.
Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.
Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
Subcategories
Data sources and characterization factor
Background data on the biodiversity of the different ecosystems in use are available and incorporated in the O.S. from the EcoCost system. These data are based on the costs of restauration per hectare back to the locally natural ecosystem. The characterization factor is the number of vascular plant species per hectare.
Impact category and indicator
The impact category is biodiversity and the indicator is following:
Targets
The locally natural number of vascular plant species, for which currently no data are available.
Background calculations
ESCU’s =Q x (1-CY/AY) x RC, where
AY = Average Yield
CY = actual Crop Yield (or product yield)
RC = restoration costs per hectare
Q = quantity of occupied hectares
The 2018 gross cost of nature and landscape management (excluding purchase of land) for 498956 ha. in the Netherlands was € 1160 million (CBS et al., 2021), which is € 2325/ha., including a great variety of landscapes, but excluding water-ecosystems. Average European one-off costs per year on land conversion (excluding purchase of land) were estimated € 1028/ha.y (Verburg et al., 2012). This makes a total costs of land restoration and maintenance estimated at € 3353/ha.y.
For background calculations, (Vogtländer et al., 2004, page 50; Vogtländer, 2001, page 228) provide data on the species richness for different types of land (in the Netherlands), which for the O.S. were turned into percentages of the natural species richness. Assuming that these percentages are a good indication for global biodiversity, these data were multiplied by the costs of restoration and maintenance per land type.
The EcoCost system provides a methodology based on the formula: EcoCosts = X x RC x Q/Q threshold.
RC = the restauration costs per unit of land.
X = the amount of units of land.
Q = the diversity (amount) of vascular plant species measured in a unit of land.
Q threshold = the diversity of vascular plants of the locally natural ecosystem.
Foreground calculations
ESCU calculations are equal to background calculations, but:
Companies are challenged to determine their foreground biodiversity. This needs to be executed by a qualified expert. In addition, because the counted diversity increases with the size of the sampled land, the measurement must be standardized.
Preliminarily, the average is taken from 4 randomly taken samples of 10m2 in each hectare.
Introduction
(Section in development) Preliminarily, for activities in coral ecosystems, a distance of 10 km around corals was taken, without justification.
Impact category and Indicator:
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Targets
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Background calculations
Background data available in (Bayraktarov et al., 2019) and (Balmford et al., 2004).
Foreground calculations
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