The Biodiversity database 2.0 – continued development and implementation for steering towards a more sustainable production and consumption of food

The link between climate and food production is well documented.

For other environmental impact categories and especially biodiversity, there is much less applied research at the product level.

However, the methods for calculating biodiversity footprints for different foods have been developed in recent years.The purpose of this project is to continue the development of the Biodiversity database for food, that was built up in a previous Formas project. We will continue to develop the database with more foods and improving the method for the biodiversity calculations.

We will also quality test results, compare with other studies, pair data with the Climate database, make a translation into English, and find new ways to communicate the results.

Finally, we will carry out case studies together with business partners, where we test the Biodiversity database against a segment of articles in a retail company (Coop) and for a restaurant/catering company´s menus (the Compass Group).We expect the database to be highly useful, promoting decision making and target setting by e.g. retail, wholesale, restaurants, public kitchens, food production industry.

Uses include: choosing food products and ingredients with low negative impacts on biodiversity, to find biodiversity hotspots in the production chain, identify synergies and trade-offs with other sustainability aspects, consumer information, etc.