According to the Key Biodiversity Areas Partnership (KBA Partnership, 2018), one of the main issues driving biodiversity loss is the destruction, degradation and overexploitation of nature. It is therefore a priority for companies to identify which areas of our planet where they operate – including their value chain – are critical to protect. Global goals and targets on biodiversity are currently under negotiation and should be adopted in 2022 as the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The current negotiating draft of the GBF includes a goal of ‘an increase of at least 15% in the area, connectivity and integrity of natural ecosystems’, and a target to conserve ‘at least 30% globally of land areas and of sea areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and its contributions to people’ (CBD, 2021).

A note on the scoring system

Wikirate uses a standardized 10-point scoring system to enable comparison of company scores across different benchmarks. In the Nature Benchmark, companies can earn 1 point per indicator, which are then added together and calculated as a percentage of the total score for a measurement area (MA) to determine the final score for the MA. The overall Wikirate score is calculated by combining these scores with the appropriate weightings, and converting them to a 10-point scale. For instance, if a company achieves a final score of 50, the corresponding Rating will be 5.