Our Open-Data Webinar Summary: “The Planet Won’t Wait”
Our latest LandGriffon webinar was convened to discuss the release of our new set of global, open-access datasets for nature accounting. Companies are uncertain about what data they can trust, what methodologies to use, and what regulations require of them. The webinar addressed the ways in which this data can help companies answer these questions.
Openly publishing the data contributes to a culture of urgency, transparency, shared responsibility for change to help companies and their advisors spend less time on data prep and more time on action.
“We have to learn from nature, embrace the complexity of natural systems, and accept that there will be trade offs. The planet won’t wait.”
Maria Ricart, Business Development Lead, Vizzuality
We should be learning from the environment. Solutions shouldn’t exist in opposition to, but in harmony with nature. Nature Accounting aims to create accounting solutions that mirror the ecosystems they’re here to protect.
What’s Required and How to Get It: Mike Harfoot, Scientist, Vizzuality
“High quality nature-related data is clearly a public good with huge value to a variety of stakeholders, but so are the tools to get this data.”
Mike Harfoot, Scientist, Vizzuality
Key Points:
- Nature is experiencing huge impact from a number of drivers. Agriculture being one of the main ones.
- Huge impact sounds scary, but it also represents huge opportunities for impact reduction.
- The SBTN and TNFD define a holistic set of nature accounting standards that companies can use to start accounting for their nature impacts.
- The problem with country level data is that it can miss the realities and local circumstances of production.
- Data’s getting granular enough to go far beyond the country-level, granular enough to measure the nature impact of from a single rice field.
- Open access tools are hugely valuable to the community as they stimulate further collaborative innovation.
Improvement Through Collaboration: Francis Gassert Strategy & Impact, Vizzuality
“We’ll be updating the data, so let us know if you use it or have any feedback. We know the results aren’t perfect, but one of the reasons why we made these open is so that the data can be constantly improved.”
Francis Gassert, Strategy & Impact, Vizzuality
Key Points:
- The released data measure the loss of ecosystems by looking at deforestation as well as the expansion of crop lands into natural areas.
- Deforestation and carbon data are validated against FAO statistics.
- Biodiversity impact measurement can be a challenge as the best species data is not open access. Instead, these datasets look at the integrity of forests, and consider how the richness of species in areas has been degraded due to human actions.
- The data can be used both for dLUC accounting as well as for sLUC accounting through an innovative spatial sLUC approach that addresses limits in both approaches.
- The combination of the two helps fill gaps where companies might not have direct data.
Data into Impact: Elena Palao, Science & Product, Vizzuality
“LandGriffon’s [open source] data is transparent, trusted and constantly under review.”
Elena Palao, Science & Product, Vizzuality
Key Points:
- While the amount of data emerging on nature impacts and risks is growing, supply chain traceability gaps limit its usefulness in driving impact.
- LandGriffon allows companies to consider the complex linkages and tradeoffs involved when making nature interventions.
- LandGriffon allows companies to measure supply chain activities against the indicators found in the SBTN and TNFD.
- Crucially, the tool is flexible enough to allow for the incorporation of new impacts as new needs and new data arises.
- To make sure that data is useful for companies, LandGriffon’s platform has two tabs; one for data and one for analysis.
- In the data tab, new data can be uploaded. In the analysis tab, final supply chain impact estimates are visualized with a map view, and can be filtered by suppliers, materials, business units, locations, year, etc.
- The data is even more useful when contextualized with wider datasets.
- Impacts can also be sorted by value, aiding prioritization when companies consider where to take action.
Vizzuality’s Data Answers the Tough Questions: Q&A
How can tradeoffs between different nature impacts be evaluated?
Mike Harfoot: There are always tradeoffs between multiple environmental pressures or social impacts. It’s about seeing how all of those impacts stack up, but also considering what solutions are possible. Having spatial, thematically categorized data allows one to better pinpoint those impacts, however, it is also about having the tools to optimize the actions available to minimize those tradeoffs.
Frances Gassert: It’s about evaluating impacts alongside evaluating possible interventions. Changing from palm oil to another oil might reduce deforestation risks, but they may increase your total land footprint, water use, biodiversity impacts, or social impacts, for example.
Why is so much biodiversity data closed off? How can we improve data sharing here?
MH: Data on biodiversity is limited. The main reason is that there is limited funding and resources for products and high competition for resources. Competition drives protectionism as there is an opportunity to generate revenue from datasets. The industry needs to advocate for more raw data to drive decision making and other commercial enterprises in an open way.
When assessing deforestation in a landscape, how can one get an understanding of the deforestation companies are accountable for without data on exact sourcing locations?
LandGriffon uses a probabilistic sourcing model to cover such scenarios. LandGriffon considers different kinds of scenarios, starting with the exact location of a farm, to determining an aggregation point, up to not knowing anything at all. In such cases a mix of statistics, geolocated data, AI and FAO data is used to identify which regions are most likely producing a given company’s commodity, and then providing information on the deforestation in that area, generating insights on probabilistic deforestation risk.
Does LandGriffon provide data as a service for large agri-companies and food retailers only, or is there scope to provide collaboration between agri-producers and agri-purchasers?
LandGriffon is software, and Vizzuality is a consulting firm. All the data and methodologies are open access, but Vizzuality makes money by deploying the software within corporate systems so companies can use it within their own environment and connect it with their other systems.
LandGriffon also provides customisation and advice on this process. LandGriffon does not provide data as a service as data should be free and open. There is always the opportunity to take action with producers and upstream stakeholders in the supply chain.
How is the 50km radius arrived at for statistical land use cover change?
FG: If one knows the location of their mill, they are likely to source from within 50km of that mill. If they don’t know the mill location, then they can look at an average of the locations where a given crop is produced within a country. If a commodity is well-tracked, companies may be able to enrich their data using, for example, the Trase data in LandGriffon to define the municipality their commodity was sourced from, and narrow down that traceability. LandGriffon does all of this within the platform for users.
Links:
- Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about future webinars and data releases.
- Watch the webinar on demand.
- Find out more about LandGriffon on our website.
- Give us feedback on the webinar.
- Access the open-datasets.
Contact each of our speakers:
