A guidance to measuring biodiversity footprints with IBIF

Biodiversity loss is a central concern for not only for producers and consumers, but for all those expected to report on nature and nature loss, for instance through frameworks such as the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). These frameworks mandate reporting on various different metrics around nature and biodiversity loss, but do not prescribe how to do that. Many stakeholders are therefore exploring how to quantify their biodiversity impacts in a way that is transparent, science-based, and feasible with today’s data.

Linking business activity to local impact on species

One recently emerged novel approach is the use of intactness-based biodiversity impact factors (IBIF). These are country-level factors that connect declines in local terrestrial biodiversity intactness to specific resource and emission inventories, by region. Developed by the Dutch Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL), these factors help people who need to report on biodiversity on regional and local levels. One of the benefits is that you can do IBIF characterization based on the data you already gathered to do life cycle assessment (LCA). This makes it a very accessible way to start with biodiversity reporting if you already have some experience in LCA.

IBIF are expressed through the Mean Species Abundance (MSA) metric (originally from the GLOBIO model), which has been used to indicate the intactness of global biodiversity. A 0 on the MSA means there has been no loss in biodiversity, and a 1 on the MSA would mean all biodiversity has been lost. Linking the MSA to regional impacts means that you can now express the localized biodiversity impact of your product or activity, accounting for its specific resource use and emissions.

This article outlines how practitioners can use IBIF with life cycle inventory (LCI) or environmentally extended multi-regional input–output (EE-MRIO) databases. It will show you how to approach LCA in situations where IBIF adds value to the biodiversity impact assessment, and where careful interpretation is useful.

How IBIF can help you express your impact on biodiversity

IBIF takes four important terrestrial drivers and links them to biodiversity impacts on a country level:

• Climate change (per kg CO₂-eq) (global factors)
• Nitrogen deposition (per kg NH₃-N and NOₓ-N)
• Loss, fragmentation and disturbance of habitats from land use (per km²·year)
• Fragmentation and disturbance of habitats from roads (per MJ/ per ton-km or person-km of fuel used for transport)

Figure 1. Schematic representation of the workflow followed to retrieve the IBIF dataset from the GLOBIO model. Schipper et al. 2025.

The IBIF approach provides factors for 234 countries and for two underlying taxa groupings – birds and mammals, and plants – plus a combined factor. Because they are expressed as MSAloss, they show the degree of local terrestrial lost, measured based on species richness and also species abundance.  Impacts on aquatic biodiversity are not yet included. One thing to keep in mind is that the impacts for each of the assessed drivers are not specific per biome, but rather to a specific country, because they are applied to regional data. For example, However, it has a different factor per country because there are different preconditions in each country, and IBIF factors aggregate the respective impact into a country-wide factor. The IBIF also includes biodiversity impacts of mining (driven by habitat loss and disturbance due to land use), and habitat fragmentation and disturbance due to roads.

IBIF can be paired with of databases to link emissions, resource use, and land occupation to an estimated biodiversity footprint. For instance:

• Process-based LCI databases, such as ecoinvent or EF database,
• EE-MRIO databases, such as EXIOBASE, to assess sector or consumption footprints.

How to use IBIF in LCI and EE-MRIO models

Using IBIF in practice usually takes two steps.

1. Characterize inventory flows to the right midpoint

Some flows, such as greenhouse gases or different land use types, need to be converted to a common characterization unit used by IBIF. For example:

• Converting all greenhouse gas emissions to kg CO₂-eq. (using, for example, the latest IPCC factors)
• Mapping land-use types available in datasets to the categories IBIF uses

Most land-use flows can be mapped directly, but gaps may exist where a database contains more detailed land-use classes than IBIF provides.

2. Convert activity data to the unit required by the IBIF driver

For most drivers, the units used in LCI and EE-MRIO models already align. The exception is road-related habitat fragmentation and disturbance: IBIF is based on km of roads, but activity data is typically recorded as ton-km or person-km. To bridge this gap, practitioners need:

• The total length of roads in the relevant country
• The total transport-related fuel use in that country
• Specific fuel use for the activity being assessed (from the transport dataset of the activity or from consumption per sector)

Using these inputs, you can proportionally attribute road impacts to specific activities. Guidance is available from road length datasets (e.g., the GRIP database) and energy statistics from sources such as the OECD or ODYSSEE–MURE.

To make sure you get meaningful results, it is important to match the level of regional detail you include in the inventory data to the regionalization of IBIF as closely as possible.

Key limitations to keep in mind

IBIF is a helpful step toward biodiversity footprinting, but its results must be interpreted with care. Several limitations are important for practitioners.

1. From global models to local attribution

IBIF is derived from the global GLOBIO 4 model. To translate global biodiversity state changes into local, activity-level impacts, the IBIF team needed to make assumptions, which introduces uncertainty. Some pressures (such as hunting) cannot yet be allocated to specific activities, and others may contain simplifications.

2. Limited impact coverage

IBIF currently includes only a subset of pressures relevant for biodiversity. Notably, it does not cover ecotoxicity, ozone formation, or water consumption relevant for terrestrial biodiversity. It also doesn’t include impacts on aquatic biodiversity, or emerging pressures such as microplastics or invasive species. Although the factors do not show the entire picture of biodiversity impacts yet, they are still useful when these limitations are kept in mind.

3. Coarse land-use categories

Land-use types are limited to cropland, pasture, plantation forest, urban land, and mines. More granular land-use distinctions, such as agroforestry or intensive versus extensive management, are not yet available. That means you need a different tool than IBIF if you want to distinguish between different practices or measure improvements.

4. Time-integrated impacts

IBIF reflects accumulated loss over time, but not recovery or gains. This makes it less suited for reporting frameworks that require any of the following: site-specific conditions at a specific point in time, changes over time, or evidence of positive impacts.

Combining IBIF with other impact assessment methods

There are two main ways to use IBIF alongside existing lifecycle impact assessment methods: integrated and complementary use.

Integrated use pairs IBIF with midpoint methods, such as ReCiPe, EF 3.1, or GLAM, to fill in characterization where IBIF does not provide midpoint factors (for example, for climate change).

Complementary use applies IBIF alongside LCA-based impact assessment methods such as ReCiPe 2016 (PDF), Impact World+ (PDF), EF (BIOMAPS), or GLAM to broaden impact coverage. IBIF adds particularly useful information for habitat disturbance and fragmentation from roads and mining, which are often missing from other methods.

Qualitative tools, such as ENCORE or the WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter, can complement IBIF to explore ecosystem dependencies and spatial risks, or to apply a proximity analysis to biodiversity hotspots.

Because methods differ in scope, assumptions, and metrics, direct comparison of total biodiversity footprint results is not recommended or should be performed with care.

Guidance for careful interpretation

To use IBIF responsibly, we encourage you to:

• Ensure inventory flows are correctly characterized and expressed in the right units
• Match regional detail as closely as possible
• Understand which drivers and taxa underlie each factor
• Acknowledge the boundaries and assumptions of the method
• Complement results with additional quantitative or qualitative analyses where needed

Used with care, IBIF can help practitioners and companies put together a more complete picture of terrestrial biodiversity footprints, which opens the door for more informed decision-making.