Pioneering a Global Standard

Pioneering Nature Intelligence: New Forests and NatureHelm have delivered the world’s largest NPI pilot across 5 countries and 400,000 hectares. NatureHelm’s platform successfully transforms complex biodiversity data into measurable financial and ecological metrics - setting a new benchmark for corporate reporting and natural capital investment.

 

 

New Forests, a global investment manager with AU$12 billion in AUM, partnered with NatureHelm to standardise nature measurement and provide transparency across its nature-based investment portfolio. This collaboration aims to scale nature intelligence to support the delivery of nature positive outcomes and emerging natural capital financial opportunities.

New Forests leveraged NatureHelm’s biodiversity intelligence platform, underpinned by deep biodiversity expertise, big data and machine learning to successfully deliver the world’s most expansive Nature Positive Initiative (NPI*) pilot project.

This project involved calculating seven state of nature metrics in accordance with NPI guidelines across more than 400,000 hectares in Australia, the United States, and Africa. It also analysed nature metrics across more than 34.8 million hectares surrounding these assets. This included a diverse range of forest assets managed by New Forests, as well as agricultural landscapes within Western Australia’s South Coast Natural Resource Management’s Frankland region.

As global investors increasingly demand sophisticated, comparable data to meet their ESG and impact reporting requirements, and companies are increasingly reporting against the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) recommendations, NatureHelm offers a solution to a long-standing industry challenge: quantifying the state of nature and associated impacts at scale without prohibitive costs, while also providing a strong foundation for natural capital Accounting.

By ingesting ground-truthed data, NatureHelm’s platform allows for the connection of specific management activities, such as invasive species control and habitat restoration, to measurable state of nature improvements. This data-driven approach enables comparability and prioritisation across diverse geographies and has the potential to support the monetisation of Nature.

"Until now, measuring nature-positive outcomes across our global portfolio has relied on project or species-specific outcomes and has not facilitated a portfolio wide and balanced view. The NPI State of Nature Metrics are changing that, bringing a consistent methodology to compare the state of nature on our assets across time, location and asset type and how our management decisions impact that state. Our participation with NatureHelm and partners in the pilot is just the beginning. While it provided valuable early insights, we can already see opportunities to further improve the data and methodology, and to use the information to drive better decision-making. We look forward to continued collaboration with NatureHelm and other key stakeholders to strengthen the measurement and achievement of positive outcomes at scale,” said Jo Saleeba, Global Head of Sustainability & Impact, New Forests.

"We are proud to support a visionary leader like New Forests in demonstrating that ‘nature positive’ is not just a slogan, but a measurable financial and ecological reality,” said Dr Debbie Saunders, Co-founder and CEO of NatureHelm. "By providing a standardised lens through which business operations can be linked directly to biodiversity extent, condition and species across millions of hectares, we are enabling the financial sector to move from ambition to actionable, risk-adjusted investment in the planet’s future.”

New Forests and NatureHelm are now looking to expand this work across New Forests’ global asset portfolio covering 4.4m hectares, setting the benchmark for state of nature assessment.