How unlocking nature data can fast-track the sustainable transition: an interview with Scientist Mike Harfoot.

“By making nature data available to everyone, you raise the baseline of all the data. The fact that anybody can take it, build on it, improve it, enhance it, or combine it with other data sets accelerates developments across the sector.”

The natural world is interconnected. We must consider things like water use, biodiversity, pollution, deforestation and emissions to truly understand our impact on the environment and maximise the potential of tools and solutions. However, data on nature impacts like biodiversity remains patchy or hidden behind the paywall of commercialised data. To accelerate positive change, we need open datasets on nature to measure the effects of our activities, positive and negative, on nature.

Technological advances and regulations are changing how people, businesses and governments approach the impact of their activities on nature and our collective sustainability goals. Initiatives such as the SBTN, TNFD LEAP and aspects of the EU’s CSRD Regulation are moving away from considering only the emissions that result from activity, and towards a more holistic understanding of nature impact.

To see how that holistic vision might best be realised, we sat down with Mike Harfoot, our Senior Ecosystem Scientist working towards open nature data at Vizzuality, to discuss the benefits of delivering accessible, open data on nature impacts.

In this interview, we cover ten key topics:

1. Importance of unlocking nature data for holistic sustainability approaches
2. Hindrances to adopting nature-based sustainability methods
3. Overcoming barriers to open and accessible nature data
4. Future goals for nature data accessibility
5. Benefits and learnings of open data in other areas of sustainability
6. Benefits and examples of open data sets for biodiversity conservation
7. Role of openness and collaboration in accelerating biodiversity conservation
8. Contribution of technological advancements to meeting climate commitments
9. How to operationalise nature data for NGOs and businesses
10. Engaging different stakeholders for collaboration

1. We’re witnessing signs of a move towards a more holistic nature-based approach, whether with LEAP, the SBTN, TNFD, or aspects of the CSRD and other biodiversity laws. Could you comment on that global context, and explain why unlocking nature data is important?

MH: All of these initiatives are incredibly important. They engage corporations and society more broadly to understand the impacts of their investments, supply chains, and production systems on the whole natural world, rather than one aspect. Organisations are now reporting on how they impact nature voluntarily or as required by regulations. This process highlights the many drivers of change for nature and biodiversity in this space. In data terms, this shift towards nature impacts drives demand for usable information on the state of nature. Understanding the dynamic between human activity and biodiversity and nature at different scales, from individual sites to whole companies, and organisations, regionally, and globally, is increasingly important.

Unlocking nature data is an apt way to describe the processes described in the question. Unlocking data will make more data accessible to more people. There’s also an unlocking going on in data quality itself as tools, methodologies and technologies evolve. There’s an unlocking in making data more operational, accessible, and usable. There’s a lot of data already out there, hidden in documents, that hasn’t been gathered yet. That data must be unlocked and brought in to inform our global understanding. Lastly, in a systemic sense, unlocking this data will inspire and demonstrate to the community that a collaborative approach can bring concrete benefits.

The truth is that only a collaborative approach can speak to the urgency of action required to meet our global climate goals.

2. What’s been holding back the adoption of a nature-based approach to sustainability?

MH: The answer is complex, in part, it is because the concepts of nature and biodiversity are complex. They have a variety of dimensions and interact with society in more ways than any single factor, such as carbon emissions, could do. However, these concepts allow for a more holistic understanding of the impacts of activity on nature and help to illustrate our dependency on the natural world better. But I think that awareness of our deep dependency on nature has been lacking.

Until now, there have been limitations around how we can measure changes to nature and biodiversity, or how we can measure the positive outcomes of beneficial actions on biodiversity and nature. Specifically, when we look at the large amount of information that governments and businesses require to make an impact at scale, a lot of the existing ‘data products’ are static in time, not dynamic, and unable to monitor change over time, which makes progress tracking trickier. They also tend to be biased towards the US and Europe or focus more on mammals, rather than smaller creatures. Filling in the data gaps is one way a collaborative approach can make a significant difference.

3. What are the main barriers to making this data more open and accessible, and how can these obstacles be overcome?

MH: When we talk about open data, we don’t mean open access to raw observational data, but open access to data turned into usable products with end-users in mind.

As it stands, there’s a commercial basis for generating information on nature and biodiversity. This has led many actors to provide that data commercially, leading to a complex, somewhat dislocated web of information on what’s happening in this space that isn’t open to all. This commercial approach can be seen in the methods to collect data and the provision of that data. NGOs and academics have tended to want to keep hold of data, a tendency primarily driven by this field’s relatively limited resources, which poses an institutional challenge. There has also been, until recently, a technological barrier and a separation between conservation-focused entities and cutting-edge technology companies.

4. Where do we need to be in the next few years?

MH: To overcome those barriers quickly, the best approach is to demonstrate by doing. What does this entail? By establishing an open, hyper-collaborative initiative solely focused on providing the best available, usable open data products, we can demonstrate that it’s feasible to create even better data products than currently exist on the market and that those products can be fundamentally helpful for society or businesses. By pushing towards an open data model, we can move faster in generating that data and accelerate the resulting actions. We’ve seen that this works already in other sectors. The extension of this logic is that, in a world of limited resources, putting this data out there will create an evidence base for how funding can deliver impact.

Society needs information about nature because, to survive, it must build that information into practically all decision-making. That’s the big picture. In real terms, to make that happen, you need foundational nature data sets that are accessible to everybody.

5. How has open data proven successful in other areas of sustainability? For example, from your perspective, what are the key benefits of open data platforms like Global Forest Watch, and how can similar approaches be applied to biodiversity conservation?

MH: Global Forest Watch was successful because it allowed everyone to see how forest cover changed worldwide in high definition and near-real time. Everyone could, more or less, observe what was happening and hold organisations to account for deforestation. Of course, it’s not perfect, but its openness and transparency made it a de facto baseline for deforestation for companies and governments.

Global Forest Watch, however, is only for forests. Global Fishing Watch monitors shipping activity in near-real time. Climate TRACE takes a similar approach, leveraging remote sensing and geospatial data to track emissions. By making nature data available to everyone, you raise the baseline of all the data. The fact that anybody can take it, build on it, improve it, enhance it, or combine it with other data sets, accelerates developments across the sector. Another benefit of open data is that other people can test the results that stem from using it.

6. What are the benefits of open or public data sets on nature and biodiversity? How has open data been instrumental in biodiversity conservation efforts, and what are some successful examples you’ve observed?

MH: There are very few genuinely open datasets on nature and biodiversity. Some are open for non-commercial use but aren’t accessible to laymen. That creates a barrier to corporations using them. They have to pay someone to go through the licensing process and possibly hire a data scientist to understand what the data means and turn it into something they can integrate into their processes.

The Conservation Evidence dataset from the University of Cambridge is open for commercial use and explicitly aims to build an evidence base for the effectiveness of conservation efforts. That dataset is very useful for scientific purposes. We want to apply that approach to nature and biodiversity data and make that data available, accessible, and relevant to everyone who might need it.

The main benefit of open or public datasets is that anybody can use data as a de facto baseline, whether incorporated into government or corporate decision-making, used by NGOs, etc. The other side of that coin is the ability of open data to promote collaboration, which can speed up our ability to make nature-positive decisions.

7. How do you believe openness and collaboration enable speed of action in biodiversity conservation initiatives?

MH: There are two sides to collaboration. One side is collaboration to generate the best available data products for people to use. The other side is that entirely open data products enable collaborations across multiple stakeholders in the broader economic ecosystem, from solutions providers to monitoring providers, consultancies, or NGOs holding people to account.

We’re increasingly aware that societies and economies depend on nature, but there isn’t a foundational dataset from which we can all benefit like there is in other sectors. The earth observation community has adopted this model of producing data, which has generated real benefits for society. They’ve put it out there, and the economy and society have quickly mobilised around it.

8. How do technological advancements figure into the discussion? Can they help us achieve change at the required pace and scale to meet global climate commitments?

MH: It’s paramount that we embrace technology. A range of technologies are developing in this space, and we need all of them. We need technology to find and gather data, aggregate data together, synthesise different datasets, and make data available to people in appropriate forms. We also need technology to guide decision-making. That means using technology to help us understand the trade-offs in our sustainability or procurement decisions.

9. What’s the best way for NGOs or businesses to operationalise nature and biodiversity data? What sorts of practical applications and projects could unlocking nature data bring about?

MH: By unlocking nature data, we allow a broad range of organisations to use it more effectively in their decision-making. Scale is also important. Until recently, monitoring large areas for biodiversity metrics wasn’t feasible. Now it is. These developments allow for linkages between human activities and changes we discover in nature and biodiversity. By creating a foundational baseline of data and making that data available, we can inspire further dialogue and developments around managing our ecosystems better, avoiding negative nature impacts, supporting positive ones, and building a more sustainable economy. There are always multiple actors involved in these impacts, so having an open, shared data source makes sense.

At Vizzuality, we see that many large multinational companies have long-tail, global agriculture supply chains. They simply can’t monitor every site they are associated with against every metric alone. Actionable data on how nature and biodiversity are changing in their supply chains is instrumental in helping them understand the impact of their activities, comply with regulations, and become powerful drivers of positive change. This is one of the core motivations for our sustainable supply chain tool, LandGriffon, and for making it open source, open knowledge, and for incorporating a suite of open data while also contributing our own preprocessed data back into the community.

10. Collaboration seems essential in leveraging open data for biodiversity conservation. Could you elaborate on the importance of collaborative efforts involving various stakeholders?

MH: The scale of the transition that society needs to make is colossal. We need to change our entire economic system and how we manage large areas of land collectively and in an equitable way that doesn’t disadvantage large sections of our economy. Implementing this transition and achieving this positive future for nature and society requires collaboration. Foundational, open and trusted biodiversity and nature data that can be worked on collectively, and shared, is a key pillar of making this transition work.

Vizzuality is uniquely positioned to work with corporations, NGOs, and the science community. We’re trying to build a community that’s willing to support open data and collaborative working, to produce results that will, ultimately, benefit everyone, and lay the data foundations, so to speak, of a sustainable future.

We’re organising a workshop to realise this vision of open, collaborative working built around open nature and biodiversity data on the 22 May at the University of Cambridge. If you are passionate about making a more open, collaborative and urgent biodiversity data system a reality, contact us at hello@vizzuality.com to get involved.

Find out more on the Nature Data Unlocked collaborative initiative.