Like many companies, the Guardian has already done a carbon audit, so we knew our greenhouse gas emissions footprint. But to work out our impact on biodiversity, we also measured our impacts on water use, water pollution, land use and air pollution. Together, these are the main drivers of biodiversity decline.
If any particularly enthusiastic readers want to read more about our methodology, we followed the one outlined in this analysis published in the journal Nature.
We found the main driver of biodiversity decline comes from the production of the newspaper. This accounted for 68% of our impacts. Things we looked at included water usage and pollution from pulping paper, as well as the impacts of inks and aluminium printing plates. The next driver is the website and app (10%), which relates to the impacts of people reading and watching the news on their computers or phones.
Offices, meanwhile, accounted for 8% of impacts. This includes anything to do with electricity, water, waste and furniture. IT hardware accounted for a further 8%, and business travel was 4%. Our final impact was catering, which was 1%.
The Guardian’s biodiversity audit represents a shift in how we think about what it means to be a sustainable business. As there is generally a strong correlation between our carbon footprint and biodiversity impact, the data shows that by reducing our emissions we will often also lower our impact on nature. For now, we are not setting specific targets for reducing our impacts on nature, but we are keeping an eye on how this space develops – it’s still extremely new and a lot could change.
We published the findings as part of our latest environment moment, where we showcased how the climate and nature crises are linked, as well as what happens if we fail to act on the nature crisis. Farming is a key place where these two drivers meet, which is why this question of food systems is slowly becoming more prominent at climate conferences.
At Cop28, leaders of more than 130 nations signed a declaration on transforming food systems, and committed to including food and land use in their climate plans by 2025. This is the first Cop resolution that directly tackles the intertwined relationship between what people eat and the changing climate.
“It’s the next big wedge,” says Prof Tim Benton, who leads the environment and science centre at Chatham House. Broadly, there is a plan for a clean energy transition and sustainable transport system. “But when it comes to food - which is 33% of greenhouse gas emissions - there to date has been no plan. So that’s why it’s here. It has to be done,” he says.
He added: “That’s more or less the whole caboodle at least covered and not hidden away … A really important thing is now there, on the agenda.”
Farming is a complex issue on the journey to net zero, as it is both a source and sink for emissions. Vast amounts of carbon can be sequestered by modifying farmland, with the creation of more forests, healthier peatlands and wetlands. Yet currently it’s clearly a big emitter.
Back in Glasgow in 2021, I wrote a piece about how no one was talking about farming. Many questions remain, like what a global roadmap for sustainable farming will look like, but it seems change is certainly afoot. Agriculture – and the destruction of nature – is starting to get the attention it requires.
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