Getting started on nature-related data  

We spend a lot of time talking about nature-related data. Data is critical to understanding, managing and reporting your relationship with nature. Yet it is a confusing space to most companies, particularly for those at the beginning of their journey.

When speaking to clients who are new to the nature data space, we often hear:

- What level of data granularity do we need?
- What parts of our value chain should we collect data for?
- How do I choose the right data provider?
- What data should I be asking my suppliers for?
- How do we interpret all this data and make it useful for decision making? ‍‍

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 If you are struggling to demystify nature data, you are not alone. However, there is unfortunately no one size fits all solution. The methods for collecting, managing and assessing nature-related data will vary depending on multiple factors such as the industry you work in, the locations of your supply chain, your approach to materiality and even your internal resources.

To help companies approach this space for the first time, we have set out five principles for sorting out your approach to data.

Recommendations

1. Align data with your ambition: There’s so much data available and at such varying degrees of granularity that it’s hard to know where to start. Companies can exhaust huge resource trying to understand complex data or on the flip side, overly rely on basic data for complex challenges. At the beginning of your journey, its vital to set out what you want to achieve with your data and have that as the North Star for data sources.

2. Choose which metrics to use: To figure out what data you need, the first step is to understand what metrics you want to report on. Use high level data sources (such as ENCORE or SBTN) to understand your possible impacts/ dependencies and then filter down to understand which points you need data on.

3. Identify the right data provider: There’s no shortage of data or data providers. The real challenge here is in identifying the right match for your requirements. It’s not easy, and we’ve spent a lot time getting to the know market to identify who does what. We've set out a high level view in the image below...

4. Recognise that you need different layers of data: Location level data is key to understanding, reporting and acting on nature. However, don’t forget to zoom out and look at the big picture as well. Organisations need asset level data but should also think about the group/ portfolio wide metrics that allow for cross cutting changes.

5. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: This journey is iterative but to make any progress you have to take the first step and learn as you go. You’ll also often find that existing processes and data that you can lean on from other ESG areas.

If you’d like help to successfully navigate and manage this area then please do reach out – it’s so important to get this right and we always take the chance to help people understand nature better.

Get in touch: information@fola.earth