Turning Nature's Value Into Business Intelligence
11 September 2025/ Resources / Tool / ESVD Portal
Natural systems reduce future liabilities—insurance payouts, infrastructure wear, healthcare costs—and stabilize asset values. Yet despite managing trillions in ecosystem value, most organizations lack the data infrastructure to see it. In an era of economic volatility, nature isn’t just an environmental concern—it’s the foundation for long-term fiscal, socioeconomic, and geopolitical stability. Quantifying that foundation remains a challenge many are working to address from different angles.
A Contribution to Ecosystem Economics
Symbaiosys, in collaboration with the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) and the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD), has developed a public portal that helps make nature’s economic contributions more visible and actionable. The platform leverages AI to extract unstructured data from peer-reviewed ecosystem services valuation studies, transforming scattered research into a structured dataset that can inform investment decisions, risk management, and policy-making.
The portal integrates two established methodologies:
- The Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD) provides over 10,500 peer-reviewed, location-specific monetary valuations of ecosystem services across biomes, using the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) classifications. Values are standardized to International dollars per hectare per year at 2020 price levels, creating a common language for economic comparison.
- ENCORE links ecosystem service dependencies to 271 ISIC economic activity codes, using the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) to map materiality across sectors.
Together, these frameworks enable organizations to move beyond general sustainability statements to evidence-based financial quantification.
Regional Application: The WANA Dataset
A recent application of this methodology is the West Asia North Africa (WANA) Ecosystem Services Valuation Database—translating nature’s contributions into economic terms across 22 Arab countries and Turkey.
Supported by HSBC Bank Middle East Limited in collaboration with Diversity on Board’s ‘Nature on Board’ initiative, this dataset represents approximately 1,000 hours of research and synthesis, distilling 38,000 data points from 80 peer-reviewed studies across roughly 30 ecosystems and 25 ecosystem services.
The WANA dataset addresses a gap in regional nature finance infrastructure, providing sustainability directors, CFOs, and risk managers with credible baselines for TNFD reporting, nature-based solution valuations, and restoration project assessments.
From Risk Mitigation to Revenue Generation
The portal enables organizations to identify nature-related opportunities through multiple value lenses:
- Risk Protection – Ecosystems like wetlands, forests, and reefs buffer against floods, sea level rise, and storms, reducing insurance costs and infrastructure damage.
- Resource Resilience – Healthy ecosystems stabilize water, raw materials, and food supply under climate stress, protecting supply chain continuity.
- Relationships & Reputation – Nature-based solutions build local climate resilience and strengthen social license to operate.
- Revenues & Opportunity – New markets emerge from nature-positive products, carbon and biodiversity credits, and ecosystem restoration services.
Organizations can use the portal to:
Prioritize key nature dependencies by weighting materiality scores against median ecosystem service values (e.g., Very High materiality × median value identifies critical investment areas like recreation services valued at $20,000/hectare/year).
Assess vulnerability by comparing corporate demand for ecosystem services against supply capacity (e.g., water use exceeding watershed provisioning value reveals dependency risks).
Quantify lost ecosystem service value from business impacts, whether or not the company benefits directly (e.g., clearing 100 ha wetland × $1,200/ha flood regulation = $120k annual lost services).
Establish nature restoration compensation baselines using the higher of restoration costs or monetary value of lost ecosystem services as a minimum floor.
Compare nature-based solutions against engineered alternatives through cost-benefit analysis, highlighting ROI and co-benefits (e.g., investing $500k in mangroves avoids $1M in flood costs plus $5M in tourism, fisheries, and carbon services).
Support TNFD-aligned scenario analysis and disclosures with credible baseline references for further assessment.
Toward Next-Generation Governance
Climate and nature crises are inseparable—and so are their solutions. The portal supports integrated climate-nature strategies by quantifying how ecosystem protection delivers on both agendas simultaneously. Nature-based solutions offer high-leverage interventions for climate adaptation and mitigation while generating measurable business value. This dual functionality positions nature investments not as CSR expenditures, but as strategic financial decisions with quantifiable returns.
Beyond economic quantification, this work contributes to a broader reimagining of how we co-govern with natural systems. The data infrastructure necessary to value ecosystems economically is the same infrastructure needed to recognize them as legal stakeholders with decision-making rights—a shift from viewing nature as a resource to be extracted, to recognizing it as an active participant in economic systems.
Invitation to Collaborate
The portal is designed to be improved through use and collaboration with others working on similar challenges. It’s freely accessible to gather feedback, identify gaps, and co-create its next evolution with practitioners, researchers, and decision-makers across sectors.
To support expansion of this data, enhance geospatial granularity and modeling capabilities, or explore collaboration opportunities, please get in touch through the contact form.