Biodiversity Indexing Service

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Globally we continue to exploit our finite environmental space and environmental impact is an increasingly important issue in most human activities.Regulatory requirements and the need to be seen as sustainable have changed the behaviour in the commercial and public sector. Significant resources are being applied to mitigating environmental impact and there is a need to quantify these benefits in some demonstrable way.This proposal aims to assess the potential application of a Biodiversity Indexing method that could be applied to specific locations such as large retail developments and open cast mining. The Biodiversity Index will give an easily understood number indicating the current biodiversity level relative to the sites original untouched biodiversity. This will allow organisations to clearly quantify their biodiversity impact and more importantly, demonstrated the benefits of their environmental mitigation and remediation activities. Carbon footprinting and carbon offsetting have become a key factor in the development of a low carbon economy, but the lack of fungibility in biodiversity assessment has prevented the development of similar activities. There is a high volume and high value market opportunity for a biodiversity indexing service, especially in the large commercial sectors where increasing resources are spent on environmental impact mitigation.The intellectual property behind this project is derived from an Msc thesis submitted by David Jarrett at the University of Edinburgh. There is no requirement to protect the IP involved, the intention is to eventually roll this service out as a cross sector standard widely available to service providers. The commercial opportunities are in being first in market and in the volume market having the potential to support a large number of service providers. This project will enable David Jarrett to document the methodology and produce marketing materials and presentations, that can be used to personally pitch the concept to the key users he has identified in his market research. A third party market consultant has not been used as the uniqueness and cross sector complexity of applications is best presented by someone with an in depth understanding of the method and its application. A Follow-on-Fund application may be made, although it should be noted that Ecometrica Ltd. an Edinburgh environmental consultancy and carbon footprinting company has expressed an interest in commercialising the concept if the results of the Pathfinder study show clear market interest.