Global maps of impacts
To quantify the impacts of corporate physical assets, we first created new global maps for each of 4 ecosystem services and 4 biodiversity indicators under a scenario in which all land surface is returned to its potential natural vegetation. The 4 metrics of impacts to ecosystem services include: 1) reduced risk of flooding and erosion for coastal populations (coastal risk reduction), 2) reduced erosion and sediment trapping for improved water quality for downstream populations (sediment retention); 3) retention of nitrogen pollution for improved water quality for downstream populations (nitrogen retention); and 4) the number of people within 1 hour travel time able to access nature for potential recreation, cultural, and health benefits (nature access). The 4 biodiversity impact metrics include: 1) species richness of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles (species richness), 2) habitat for threatened and endangered species (Red List species), 3) habitat for endemic species (endemic species), and 4) Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs). See Methods for more details on the calculation of each metric. All metrics should be interpreted as indices with magnitudes that are meaningful to compare within a metric but not between metrics. Given the dominance of built infrastructure in the asset dataset (e.g., bank branches, retail stores, cell towers, power plants; Table S1), we assumed that the development of a physical asset resulted in the complete loss of ecosystem service or biodiversity values as compared to the retention of natural vegetation.
Our global analysis shows that ecosystem service levels vary greatly within regions and among services, with 0.5% of total land area (~700,000 km2, similar to the area of Myanmar) falling in the 90th percentile of values for 3 or more services (Figure 1a; Table S2). Coastal risk reduction services were, by definition, restricted to coastal areas and greatest in areas with large coastal populations. Areas of high sediment retention value are very geographically dispersed but highest near streams and rivers near populated areas. Nitrogen retention values are concentrated in India, China, Europe, the Midwest United States and East Africa, areas with high nitrogen loads from agriculture, high potential for natural vegetation to purify water, and especially high human populations with a need for clean water. Nature access is highest in and around urban areas, with notable hotspots in Europe, Asia, and the eastern United States, where high densities of people would benefit from access to natural areas.
Biodiversity values, on the other hand, have greater levels of overlap among the different metrics and a higher level of spatial concentration than ecosystem services, with 3.2% of total land area falling in the 90th percentile for 3 or more biodiversity values (Figure 1b; Table S2). Biodiversity values are greatest in the tropics, and especially concentrated in the Amazon, Southeast Asia, the Guinean Forests of West Africa and the Eastern Afromontane region of East Africa, matching well-established hotspots of biodiversity27.
These patterns point to the importance of high-resolution data to capture spatial variation in impacts to nature. The use of country or regional averages – an approach taken by some existing methods for accounting for environmental impacts19,20,28 – risks substantially mis-classifying the degree of impact to ecosystem services or biodiversity from an asset or company. This is especially the case for ecosystem services, where values have high spatial heterogeneity, varying greatly over small distances.
In addition, the distinctive patterns across ecosystem services indicators as compared to biodiversity indicators (Fig. 1) shows that biodiversity values are not a good proxy for ecosystem services, and thus not sufficient for assessing nature-related impacts. Explicitly incorporating ecosystem services into assessments of corporate environmental impacts will be important to fully assess corporate impacts and the ability to address the nature-related impacts of companies on people.