Lund University study finds few major companies report using biodiversity indicators

Lund University said on 8 October that a study of 89 major companies in sectors with substantial effects on biodiversity found only eight reported using biodiversity indicators to inform decisions. The researchers also found that different indicators can rank the importance of the same geographic areas differently, raising the risk that a company using one measure could overlook a place valued by another.

The study appeared in the Journal of Cleaner Production on 18 August, before the university publicised its findings in October. Its review describes what companies reported in sustainability reports as of 2025. That distinction matters: a company that did not disclose using an indicator in its report cannot, on that evidence alone, be said never to use one.

How many companies reported using biodiversity indicators?

The researchers examined sustainability reports from 89 Global Fortune 500 companies in sectors the study treated as having a high impact on biodiversity. Lund University lists food, beverages, tobacco, apparel, chemicals, construction, energy and mining among those sectors. Eight companies, or about 9% of the sample, reported using biodiversity indicators to inform their decisions. Only two of those eight reported using more than one indicator.

The figure therefore describes disclosed decision-making in a selected group of large companies, not indicator use by every business worldwide. It also does not establish whether any of the eight companies changed a particular decision because of an indicator. The reports can show what firms said they used; they cannot by themselves demonstrate the ecological results of those choices.

Why one biodiversity measure can miss important places

Study co-author William Sidemo Holm put the practical concern this way in Lund University’s account: ‘Different indicators measure different aspects of nature. Our results show that no single biodiversity indicator provides a complete picture.’ He warned that reliance on one could lead a company to protect one biodiversity value while damaging another. That is a warning about the limits of the measures, not a finding that a named company caused such damage.

The paper also examined projected habitat pressure. It identified 33 of 846 terrestrial ecoregions where more than half of the aggregated value of each assessed indicator was concentrated in areas projected to have high habitat loss. The share reached at least 80% in 10 ecoregions. Most of the identified ecoregions are in the tropics, where the study points to agricultural expansion and deforestation as principal drivers of the projected loss.

Those figures concern projections to 2050. They do not measure habitat loss that has already happened, or assign damage to any company in the report review. Their relevance to the indicator finding is that decisions about places facing future pressure depend in part on which aspects of biodiversity the chosen measures capture.

What the researchers recommend companies measure

The authors recommend using multiple indicators and, where possible, more than one measure for each aspect of biodiversity. They say that approach can reduce the chance of missing a value or carrying forward the bias of one dataset or method. They advise treating composite indicators as an initial screening tool and keeping individual indicators in view for important decisions.

Other recommendations described by Lund University include assessing biodiversity at the ecoregion level, improving coverage of plants, fungi and invertebrates, measuring genetic diversity and ecological connectivity, and adding assessments of future human pressure. The work is part of Mistra BIOPATH, a research programme on incorporating biodiversity into corporate strategies and financial decisions. The consulted accounts do not document responses from the companies whose reports were assessed.

How UK nature disclosures differ from the study’s count

A separate indicator from the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee records 83 UK-registered companies making disclosures aligned with Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures recommendations across 2024 and 2025. Of those, 36 first adopted the framework in 2024 and 47 in 2025. JNCC says its first version has too few data points to assess change over time and that reporting through the frameworks it uses is optional.

The UK figures measure disclosure against a reporting framework, whereas the Lund study counted reported use of biodiversity indicators to inform decisions within its 89-company sample. Their populations, years and definitions differ, so the counts cannot be converted into a comparable rate or treated as evidence that the same companies made different decisions. JNCC also says its sources cannot be combined into one headline number and do not capture every company meeting its intended size criteria.

The taskforce’s own 2025 status report gives another measure of activity: 620 organisations in more than 50 countries or areas had publicly committed to begin aligned nature reporting, and more than 500 first- or second-generation reports had been published. Those totals cover broader reporting activity. They do not answer whether companies used multiple biodiversity indicators, or whether the indicators improved decisions or outcomes.