Natural ecosystems underpin our global economy. This is most obviously felt in food, land and agriculture (FLAG). In these sectors, healthy ecosystems support supply chains by providing food and fibre, enabling pollination, and regulating water and climate.

At the same time, agriculture is the leading cause of global biodiversity loss, contributing to increased business risk including fears of food insecurity and supply chain collapse. Despite these challenges, FLAG sectors have great potential. They can play a key role in restoring ecosystems and ensuring long-term supply chain sustainability.

Knowledge must lead to action

FLAG sector companies are taking steps to understand nature-related impact and risk in their supply chains. This commonly starts by identifying locations with high risk of nature loss and developing strategies to address these risks. However, progress often stalls at this stage. Many organisations struggle to translate strategy into action.

To reduce nature-related risk and build business resilience, companies must invest in activities on the ground, on-farm and in sourcing landscapes. When implemented effectively, these practical actions can protect and restore nature, reduce supply chain risk, diversify income, and deliver joint benefits to companies, producers, and wider communities linked to the value chain.

On-the-ground action can also support companies with their corporate reporting requirements, demonstrate leadership and maximise the delivery of co-benefits towards wider sustainability outcomes, including carbon targets.

How can companies implement on-the-ground actions?

It’s vital to engage directly with suppliers and farmers to:

• Understand their existing activities
• Co-design programmes for implementing nature-friendly practices
• Work towards shared goals

Unlike carbon, there is no single universal metric for nature. Measuring what ‘good’ looks like varies across contexts and locations.

Collaboration with other companies in shared sourcing regions can support co-funding, shared knowledge and implementing programmes at scale. This could involve setting up new programmes with other interested companies, or identifying existing programmes in a sourcing region and engaging as a partner. Landscape Enterprise Networks, a programme initiated by 3Keel, is a good example of where this collaboration at scale is already happening.

Unlike greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions reductions and removals, where traceability to farms is important to support claims against GHG accounting rules, boundaries for taking action on nature are less tightly defined. Activities taking place in a wider sourcing landscape have direct benefits for supply chains.

For example, nature-based solutions that improve water infiltration across a watershed will have an impact on flood-risk reduction on a sourcing farm. So, even where traceability to farms may be limited, there is real value for a company in taking action in broader sourcing landscapes.

Evaluating impact and understanding project outcomes

Measuring nature is more difficult than measuring carbon. Unlike carbon, there is no single universal metric for nature, and measuring what ‘good’ looks like varies across contexts and locations. Access to high-quality, granular data on ecosystems, land use, and species distribution and abundance remains limited.

Despite these challenges, there are steps companies can take to gather a better understanding of the baseline state of nature within their supply chains, and assess the impact of interventions over time.

We recommend a context-specific approach to impact and outcome measurement, focusing on priority impacts and risks. Metrics should be selected to reflect landscape and community needs, and should provide actionable information to evaluate progress over time. Select metrics to align with broader company goals too, such as sustainable sourcing or regenerative agriculture targets.

Find a balance between accuracy and feasibility, and work with your producers

Metrics should balance accuracy of insights with feasibility of assessment. Beginning to collect some data, even if imperfect, is a useful start. Focus on what can be measured now, while building systems, skills and resources to improve data collection in the future. You might need to use secondary datasets and tools to begin with to understand priority metrics such as ecosystem extent and condition.

WWF’s risk filter suite, ENCORE and IBAT are all good examples. You can then progress to using remotely-sensed data or practice-based modelling to improve the granularity of data, over time working towards field sampling to understand site-specific ecosystem conditions or species outcomes.

Metrics should serve a shared purpose and be developed in collaboration with producers and other local stakeholders. This includes engaging producers in metric selection and programme design. Data collection must be meaningful to local stakeholders, and producers should receive training, resources and fair compensation for data collection efforts.

Ultimately, fair data collection processes support effective monitoring of goals across the entire value chain.

We recommend a context-specific approach to nature impact and outcome measurement.

How can 3Keel help?

We offer end-to-end supply chain support to design and deliver farm- or landscape-scale projects, from engaging with farmers and suppliers through to selecting practices to achieve desired landscape-scale goals, and developing monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems to assess outcomes.

We support the development of successful on-farm and landscape-scale projects through our experience with farmer-centric stakeholder engagement, and our expertise in ecology and biodiversity. What’s more, we apply this expertise to design context-specific, farmer-oriented projects aligned with the needs of stakeholders across the whole supply chain and drive action on the ground.

Following project implementation, our experience in designing MRV programmes supports measurement of nature and biodiversity outcomes. We bring a detailed understanding of leading reporting and regulatory frameworks, and design MRV to feed into reporting, contribute to targets and support wider sustainability goals.

Get in touch

If you’d like to learn more about our work, explore how our Agriculture & Landscapes team can help your organisation. Alternatively, please get in touch with the team using the contact form below or by calling the office on +44 1865 236500.