Ecosystem Services Valuation (ESV) is increasingly recognized as a critical component of decision-making in sustainable agriculture and biodiversity conservation. 

The Challenge:

Conventional decision-support tools often fail to capture biodiversity’s full economic and social contributions, focusing instead on narrow metrics like carbon emissions and land use changes. Thus, tools must evolve to capture a wider breadth of nature's values. Recognizing this need, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), through its Agrifood Economics and Policy Division (ESA), sought to integrate valuation data into its Biodiversity Integrated Assessment and Computation Tool (B-INTACT). and collaborated with us to create a more comprehensive basis for supporting policy and investment decisions. 

B-INTACT is designed to quantify biodiversity impacts using globally recognized methodologies, provide decision-makers with policy indicators for informed choices, extend environmental assessments to address biodiversity concerns beyond carbon pricing and support countries in accessing funds from international financial institutions and mechanisms to fund projects, programmes and policies. 

Our Approach:

Through the application of ESV methods, we collected and analyzed scientific evidence of ES values to:

• Expand data coverage for key biomes relevant to FAO’s priorities, ensuring that the tool could generate more precise and representative data;

• Develop functionalities to produce summary statistics of values to enhance B-INTACT’s outputs with an ES value component, making biodiversity’s social and economic benefits included and more visible. 

• Improve the tool’s functionality also increased its relevance for impact assessments in Agriculture, Forestry & Other Land Use (AFOLU) sectors, reinforcing the role of natural capital in decision-support frameworks.

Outcomes & Impact:

This project demonstrated how ESV bridges the current gap in impact assessments, offering decision-makers with a more comprehensive understanding of biodiversity’s role in socioeconomic systems and development. The integration of ES values allowed B-INTACT to assess biodiversity’s economic and social benefits and extend its capacities beyond conventional land use change & carbon-based appraisals, strengthening its ability to support biodiversity-positive policy and investment decisions. 

As biodiversity loss accelerates, global organizations like FAO are increasingly prioritizing natural capital in decision-support frameworks. By enhancing B-INTACT with ES valuation, we have helped equip policymakers, investors, and stakeholders with the knowledge needed to make informed, biodiversity-positive choices—ensuring that ecosystem services remain a central consideration in shaping the future of agriculture and land use worldwide.