Taking responsibility for impacts on nature is now a concern for all organisations, with regulation to support net zero, nature and biodiversity evolving worldwide. We support clients who need to perform biodiversity and ecology assessments or develop their corporate nature reporting capabilities.

Arup helps clients to assess and address their impacts on biodiversity, identifying opportunities to switch to nature-based solutions and achieve regulatory compliance.

Where we can help

The nature-based and biodiversity agenda is relevant and applicable everywhere:

Cities

We must bring nature back into our cities and neighbourhoods, by greening our streets and buildings, enhancing and connecting green spaces, naturalising urban rivers and prioritising nature-based solutions while striving for circularity. In doing so, urban development can be shaped to have a positive impact on nature by increasing biodiversity, reducing air pollution and improving water quality and reconnecting city dwellers with to the value of nature.

Asset management

We work with clients to manage their properties and asset portfolios to understand existing environmental, social and economic values and unlock new revenue streams. This includes building resilience into portfolios and supporting them in managing their asset and corporate strategies in becoming climate and nature positive.

Coasts and oceans

There is much that can and should be done to protect and restore coastal and marine habitats. Our work identifies areas in the coastal and marine environments where projects can support nature related objectives including biodiversity enhancements, carbon storage and coastal flood management as well as wider goals as climate resilience, local economy enhancement and livelihood benefits.

Catchments

We help to develop new business models and secure investment for projects that restore natural systems and enhance biodiversity at scale while simultaneously providing multiple, large-scale environmental benefits, including flood risk reduction, increased carbon sequestration, conserving water supplies and providing healthy water systems.

How we can help you

Assessing and addressing impacts on biodiversity

We help organisations to understand how their activities, proposed policies or design choices will affect biodiversity.

Assessing and addressing impacts on biodiversity

As tactics and priorities, biodiversity net gain and biodiversity assessments are central to how nature recovers whilst also developing land.

Biodiversity illustration

They are how we ensure that the habitats for wildlife are in a better state than before human and economic development took place. To achieve ‘net gain’ requires transparency about every element of a project’s impact on nature, negative and positive. This approach is actively developing in many countries but now being embedded in policy, most recently introduced within England at the beginning of 2024. 

We help organisations to understand how their activities, proposed policies or design choices will affect biodiversity. Our experts are experienced in undertaking a full range of environmental assessments, appraisals, and statements for air quality, water, land and soil quality species and wildlife sites and biodiversity. We regularly undertake specialist assessments for natural capital, biodiversity and environmental net gain and water quality. The wider goal is help organisations to understand what actions need to be undertaken to avoid, reduce and mitigate any negative impacts on nature, as well as working to increase ecosystem resilience and deliver nature recovery. 

There is a huge opportunity to increase biodiversity at each stage of a project or development if planned from the start. Our team of ecologists are active globally, and provide support, advice and assessments both for species and wildlife sites, BNG and a specific  biodiversity assessment within a country or following international standards such as the International Financial Corporation (IFC) Performance Standard 6.

Read 'How biodiversity net gain is reshaping planning' 

Corporate nature disclosure

Arup helps clients to understand their current relationship with nature, evaluate nature related dependencies and impacts, assessing risk and opportunities, and carrying out reporting. 

Corporate nature disclosure

Arup helps clients to understand their current relationship with nature, evaluate nature related dependencies and impacts, assessing risk and opportunities, and carrying out reporting. 

Montreal, Canada

We work with clients to understand the extent to which they are exposed to present and future nature and climate related risks and help organisations to incorporate nature-related risk and opportunity assessments into their strategy and management processes. This includes corporate measuring and monitoring, due diligence reporting, environmental certification delivery and the development and formal frameworks such as Science-based Targets for Nature (SBTN),Taskforce for Nature Related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

Enhancing nature and reducing the negative impacts of an organisation’s activities and their supply/value chain on nature requires a programmatic and collaborative approach. We provide specialist input into Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) frameworks, nature recovery plans, design guidelines, circular business models and sustainable supply chain management strategies that help to make businesses more resilient and promote the protection, enhancement, and recovery of the natural environment. 

Read 'What the Kunming Montreal global biodiversity framework means for business'