# Impact factors for quantifying country-level terrestrial biodiversity intactness footprints (IBIF)

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new dataset to measure how human activities in different countries affect terrestrial biodiversity.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is the IBIF dataset, which provides country-level impact factors for biodiversity loss linked to emissions and land use.

## Key findings

- The IBIF dataset covers 234 countries and five environmental pressures.
- It includes impact factors for vascular plants and warm-blooded vertebrates.
- The dataset supports policy-making to reduce biodiversity loss.

## Abstract

There is an increasing demand for consistent methods and tools to quantify biodiversity footprints: the magnitude of biodiversity loss associated with all direct and indirect impacts associated with a given human activity or economic actor. Here, we present the intactness-based biodiversity impact factors (IBIF) dataset: a consistent set of country-level impact factors that can be used to attribute losses in local terrestrial biodiversity intactness to emissions and resource use associated with production or consumption in a given country. We used the GLOBIO biodiversity model and its mean species abundance (MSA) metric to obtain these impact factors for 234 countries and five environmental pressures: CO2 emissions, NH3 emissions, NOx emissions, land use (urban land, cropland, pasture, forest plantations and mines) and roads. IBIF includes impact factors for vascular plants, warm-blooded vertebrates (birds & mammals) and both species groups combined. The dataset can be used to quantify the biodiversity footprints of current products, industrial sectors or consumers, in support of policy- and decision-making aimed at halting or reversing biodiversity loss.