Summary
The Environment Agency (EA) wants to create a baseline nature footprint in order to measure and manage nature and biodiversity impacts with the same rigour as climate. They required support to adapt standard methodologies to a public body, and set the scope of the baseline nature footprint.
How we helped
Little Blue Research partnered with Jacobs and worked collaboratively as a fully integrated team to develop the scope of a nature footprint for the EA. The input we provided included:
• inputting into and leading steering group meetings, to ensure buy-in among the EA’s key internal stakeholders and share knowledge from our experience of nature footprinting
• setting out, agreeing and undertaking a materiality assessment
• undertaking a high-level impact and dependency screening assessment to understand the most important impacts and dependencies of the EA’s value chain on nature
• acting as a technical reviewer for other aspects of the project e.g. data gap analysis, interviews, framework review and reporting.
Client description
Environment Agency
12,000+ employees
Case study details
Strategic planning: implementation & disclosure
Government
UK

Capital(s)
Challenges
• Working within a tight timeframe to complete the scoping
• Understanding how existing data can be used to create a baseline for comparison of footprint
Outcomes
• A scope for the nature footprinting exercise to be used for a second stage tender.
• A report summarising the methodology behind the development of the nature footprinting scope.
The team at Jacobs and Little Blue Research provided clear and comprehensive deliverables which have put the Environment Agency in an optimal position to move forward with the full nature footprinting exercise. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of experts to work with
Vicki Betts, Senior Sustainability Specialist – Nature, Environment Agency