Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) reached a landmark agreement at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) to adopt an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). Alongside targets to protect and restore nature, the framework commits, by 2030, to reducing the global footprint of consumption in an equitable manner. To achieve this, countries need the means to measure the impacts of their consumption outside of their own borders.

Groundwork laid for results

Work on SEI’s established footprinting model, IOTA, underpins the new Global Environmental Impacts of Consumption (GEIC) indicator and opened the door for its inclusion by the CBD in Montreal.

IOTA is the outcome of years of development which, ahead of COP15, bore fruit through SEI’s partnership with the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee and Defra. The UK government used outputs from IOTA as the basis of a new experimental indicator – the GEIC indicator – to measure the impacts of the UK’s consumption overseas in support of its
environment plans.

Timely uptake results from effective partnership

Progress under the new framework, which includes a range of targets, will need to be measured using a monitoring system that uses indicators. For Target 16, on encouraging and enabling sustainable consumption, no headline indicator had been selected.

In deliberations in the CBD system in the months ahead of the COP, negotiators identified a need for tools to measure the impacts of consumption on biodiversity. The delegates in the room from Defra put forward the new GEIC indicator as an option, based on their successful collaboration with the IOTA team.

What does it do?

Countries, government agencies and others can use the GEIC indicator to explore a range of environmental
impacts of consumption, as well as for global analysis of various production and consumption activities.
Biodiversity’s COP15 took the critical opportunity to set out a framework for addressing the biodiversity
crisis, and the GEIC indicator can play a role by helping governments and stakeholders to understand
how consumption drives impacts – for example on deforestation, species loss, and water use – and create
more effective policy responses.

Partnerships and next steps

Partnerships with JNCC and Defra, Trase and the GCRF Trade Hub were critical to the outcome, alongside
the work done at SEI over many years to develop the IOTA framework, demonstrating the value of long-term
commitment in delivering effective outcomes. While the GEIC indicator is already a valuable tool for decisionmakers, there is work to be done to improve and refine it.

Development is ongoing to increase the spatial resolution of results to allow more countries to use the indicator for assessing their impacts. The team is also looking to extend the coverage of the indicator beyond agricultural commodities to include mining, initially, as well as enhanced metrics for deforestation, biodiversity, water, metals and minerals. Beyond this, there is a need to further develop the methods to increase accuracy and to integrate new datasets and approaches to keep building confidence in the results.

View the GEIC indicator interactive platform at: commodityfootprints.earth

Strategy for action: Commodity sourcing strategies and standards that address deforestation and biodiversity

The GEIC indicator, taken up by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, will help countries understand the environmental impacts of their consumption, and to make more targeted investments and effective policy.