Capturing and measuring multiple and systemic environmental impacts of companies and investments: a new tool that accounts for climate, water and biodiversity and their interactions

Sustainable investment is attracting large and increasing levels of capital.

Scores used to evaluate the environmental sustainability of companies and investments, however, often account for neither linkages between impacts on climate, land and water nor scientific reference points for acceptable levels of disruption to the Earth system.

This project aims to quantify the systemic environmental risks from human activities such as carbon emissions, deforestation, water extraction and soil moisture modification, using a combination of Earth system modelling, control theory models, analysis of company data and corporate and financial stakeholder workshops.

Our ambition is that this metric will be used by companies to assess their environmental impact and prioritise efforts to reduce it and by institutional investors to score the environmental performance of different companies.