Biodiversity and trade: mitigating the impacts of non-food biomass global supply chains

ongoing

Despite its importance, biodiversity is at a high risk of a 6th mass extinction. Widespread trade networks spanning our globe allow consumption in one part of the world to cause biodiversity impacts elsewhere. Unfortunately, we have limited and incomplete tools for assessing the impacts of trade on biodiversity, which hampers mitigating these losses for policymakers, retailers and other stakeholders. In BAMBOO, we want to rectify this situation with a focus on non-food biomass. We will develop models to quantify biodiversity impacts using four indicators: species richness, mean species abundance, functional diversity and ecosystem services. We will use LC-IMPACT and GLOBIO for impact categories that already exist but update them to the newest state. More importantly, we will complement them with novel impact categories to cover impacts across the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms. We will create a new, hybrid multiregional input-output (MRIO) model based on the well-known EXIOBASE and the biomass-specific FABIO models. This MRIO model will be linked to our impact assessment methods and the integrated assessment model IMAGE for scenario generation to assess global trade and identify potential leverage points for halting and reversing biodiversity loss now and under future scenarios. Apart from global assessments and recommendations, we will test our models on two local case studies: fishmeal production in Peru and cotton production in Tanzania. To maximize our outreach, we plan to develop an online tool that will allow stakeholders to use all models easily. In general, our models will be freely available on Zenodo. Overall, BAMBOO will provide comprehensive and detailed knowledge of the effects of biomass trade from land and sea on biodiversity and ecosystem services and an improved way of identifying leverage points. This will ultimately contribute to better environmental decision-making, supporting to reach science-based targets and the SDGs.