Contact person
Matilda Löfgren
Projektledare
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RISE Food biodiversity database
RISE Biodiversity database for food calculates the impact of food on biodiversity from the drivers land use, water use, and climate change. The biodiversity database functions as a complement to the RISE climate database for food.
Now we can calculate biodiversity impacts!
The link between climate and food production is well documented. For other environmental impact categories and especially biodiversity, there is much less information. Together with Coop Sweden, RISE has calculated the effect on biodiversity for a large number of foods. The focus is on food consumed in Sweden, which includes both products from Swedish agriculture and imported food.
How can the biodiversity database be used?
- Assessing the biodiversity impact of purchases, assortments, or own products
- Selecting ingredients with low negative impact on biodiversity in product development
- Setting and monitoring measurable targets
- Identifying biodiversity hotspots in supply chains
- Identifying synergies and trade-offs with other sustainability aspects
- Providing consumer information
The RISE Food Climate database is leased from RISE either as part of the RISE Sustainability Database or separately. Contact us for more information!
There are several challenges
The Biodiversity Database is the outcome of two consecutive research projects funded by FORMAS. It is built on today’s recommended LCA methods and includes biodiversity impacts from land use, water use, and climate change. For a more complete footprint, we need to integrate methods to estimate the impacts of e.g. pesticides (ecotoxicity) and eutrophication, where significant challenges remain related to data availability. We will continue to develop the database, which will be updated annually.
Our experts
More information
fPDF is a measure of biodiversity. PDF stands for Potentially Disappeared Fraction and describes the potential species loss caused by human land use, compared to a reference situation. Since the PDF results per kilogram of food will be very small (often raised to the power of negative 15), we express the results as femto-PDF (fPDF).
Background information
A description of how the database was built - which methods were used, assumptions made and description of the indata - can be found in the methodology report.
Coaching
Do you want to get started with biodiversity calculations? We offer coaching on an hourly basis, you can e.g. get help with the practical aspects of the database, how you can use and interpret the results, or more in-depth knowledge of biodiversity, agriculture and food. Contact us and we can tell you more!
