Nature metrics give organizations a way to measure, manage, and demonstrate what is happening to nature as a result of their activities, investments, and conservation efforts.

They matter to companies trying to understand and reduce their impacts and dependencies on nature, investors assessing nature-related risk and opportunity, governments and regulators making decisions about development and conservation, and conservation organizations and funders trying to demonstrate whether investments are actually improving outcomes. As nature becomes part of corporate strategy, investment, regulation, impact assessment, and disclosure, organizations increasingly need credible evidence of what is changing, where, and over what period of time.

Nature-positive commitments are becoming increasingly common. But a commitment is only useful if you can measure whether the state of nature is actually changing.

That sounds straightforward. It isn't.

There are currently hundreds of different approaches to measuring nature, making it difficult for organizations to know what to measure, which data to use, how much detail is needed, and how to demonstrate change over time. The Nature Positive Initiative has been working with hundreds of organizations and experts to build greater alignment around a minimum set of State of Nature Indicators and Metrics.

The metrics are intended to help organizations measure the state of nature and complement existing pressure and response measures. The proposed framework considers nature at site and landscape/seascape scales, with increasing levels of measurement detail depending on the use case, data, and capacity.

Developing a credible, practical set of metrics is a major step. The next challenge is putting those metrics into practice — connecting the right data, methods, spatial information, monitoring, and expertise so they can be measured consistently and revisited as nature changes.

What does “state of nature” mean?

The State of Nature Metrics focus on measuring the condition and extent of nature and how it changes over time. The proposed metrics include ecosystem extent, ecosystem condition, species populations, and species extinction risk, with connectivity also considered at the landscape and seascape scale.

This shifts the focus from simply asking what an organization did to asking what happened to nature as a result.

That distinction matters. An organization can restore habitat, reduce a pressure, establish a protected area, or invest in conservation without knowing whether those actions actually changed the state of nature. Measuring outcomes requires evidence of what changed, where, when, and at what scale.

What do you actually have to measure?

That depends on the place, ecosystem, species, question, and level of measurement required.

You may need to understand whether an ecosystem has expanded or contracted, whether its condition has changed, whether populations of priority species are increasing or declining, or whether connectivity across a landscape or seascape is changing. You may need to measure at a specific site while also understanding what is happening in the surrounding landscape or seascape.

There is no single dataset that answers all of these questions. Good measurement often requires multiple data sources, different methods, spatial information, and observations collected over time.

Where does the data come from?

Nature metrics can draw on many types of evidence, including satellite and remote sensing data, existing biodiversity datasets, field surveys, research programs, monitoring programs, restoration projects, consultants, communities, and Indigenous organizations.

Each source provides a different view of nature. The challenge is understanding what each dataset represents, where and when it was collected, how it was collected, what its limitations are, and how it can be combined with other evidence.

Ground-truthing can be particularly important. Remote sensing can provide powerful information across large areas, while observations from the ground can help test whether those datasets accurately represent conditions at a particular site.

Do you need perfect data?

No. Different questions require different levels of measurement detail, and the Nature Positive approach recognizes that organizations will have different data, resources, and capacity.

The important thing is to understand what your evidence can support and where its limitations are. Measurement can improve over time as better data become available, monitoring becomes more detailed, or new technologies make additional observations possible.

What about the baseline?

Measuring change requires something to measure change against.

The Nature Positive guidance proposes 2020 as a common baseline, while recognizing that a later or pre-impact baseline may be appropriate in some circumstances when there is a clear rationale.

Whatever baseline is used, it needs to be documented and connected to subsequent measurements. A number without a baseline is just a number.

What does GIS have to do with it?

A lot of nature measurement is inherently spatial.

The proposed Nature Positive approach considers sites as well as broader landscapes and seascapes. Spatial boundaries and datasets are needed to understand ecosystem extent and condition, calculate measurements, interpret species trends, and put site-level changes into their broader context.

This also creates a practical challenge. Organizations may be working across spreadsheets, databases, GIS software, remote sensing products, field data, and reporting systems, with different people responsible for different parts of the process.

How do you make the measurement defensible?

A metric is only as useful as the evidence behind it.

That means knowing where the data came from, when and where it was collected, who collected it, which methods were used, what spatial and temporal resolution is available, what quality checks were applied, and how the final result was calculated.

It also means being able to repeat the process. If new data arrive, another person joins the project, a method changes, or a result is challenged, the organization should be able to understand how the measurement was produced and what has changed.

The Nature Positive guidance emphasizes data quality, metadata, transparency, repeatability, and good monitoring practice for exactly this reason.

What happens when nature changes?

This may be the most important part.

Nature metrics are not intended to produce a single number that is calculated once and forgotten. Their value comes from being able to measure change over time.

That means collecting new observations, incorporating new datasets, applying consistent methods, comparing results with the baseline, and understanding whether apparent changes represent genuine changes in nature or changes in sampling, methodology, coverage, or other factors.

It also means being able to revisit the measurement as new information becomes available.

Can site-level measurements tell the whole story?

Not always.

A site can improve while surrounding habitat is deteriorating. A population can increase at one location while declining elsewhere. An apparently positive result at one site may look very different when viewed in the context of the broader landscape or seascape.

This is why the Nature Positive approach considers both site and landscape/seascape scales. The broader context can help organizations understand the significance of site-level trends, identify connections between places, support collaboration, and avoid focusing on one location while impacts are simply displaced elsewhere.

What does this mean in practice?

Putting nature metrics into practice requires considerably more than choosing a metric.

You need to define the scope and baseline, establish spatial boundaries, identify appropriate data sources, collect or obtain observations, document methods and metadata, assess data quality, connect information from different sources, apply the appropriate analyses, interpret the results, and communicate what they mean.

Then you have to do it again.

As new data arrive, the measurements need to be updated. As methods improve, they may need to be revised. As projects expand from a site to a landscape or seascape, the underlying data and spatial analyses need to work together.

This is where measurement can become difficult to maintain. The scientific framework may be well defined, but the practical work required to implement it can involve databases, spreadsheets, GIS, statistical analysis, data cleaning, quality control, reporting, and people with different technical skills working across different systems.

How eOceans helps put Nature Metrics into practice

eOceans is designed to provide the working system behind this process.

Instead of building a separate workflow for every assessment, eOceans connects the project definition, methods, data, spatial information, observations, quality control, analyses, maps, visualizations, and reports in one system.

Bring in existing datasets or collect new observations. Define the methods you want to use. Onboard contributors. Apply quality checks as data are collected. Connect observations with spatial and temporal context. Run analyses and generate maps, graphs, tables, and metrics. Keep adding data as monitoring continues.

The technical work does not disappear. It becomes part of the system, rather than something that has to be rebuilt manually for every project.

That also means the evidence can remain connected to the process that produced it. You can see what data were used, how they were collected, which methods were applied, and how results change as new evidence arrives.

What if you already have years of data?

You don't need to start over.

Existing research, monitoring, biodiversity, restoration, or environmental datasets can be brought into eOceans and connected to new observations. Magic Uploads™ can turn existing spreadsheets into structured project data ready for analysis, mapping, and reporting.

This makes it possible to use the evidence you already have while creating a foundation for collecting more.

What happens when new data arrive?

The project keeps going.

New observations can be added to the same workflow, with analyses and visualizations updating as the underlying evidence changes. Reports can remain current rather than becoming static snapshots of what was known at one point in time.

That makes eOceans suited to the ongoing nature of nature measurement — where the question is not simply what was the state of nature when we assessed it? but how is it changing?

Does eOceans replace scientific or ecological expertise?

No.

Experts still determine what questions matter, which evidence is appropriate, how monitoring should be designed, which methods should be used, and what the results mean.

eOceans automates more of the technical work around that expertise — so scientists, consultants, conservation practitioners, Indigenous organizations, monitoring teams, and others can spend more time applying what they know rather than rebuilding the infrastructure needed to use it.

The result

Nature Metrics provide a common language for measuring whether the state of nature is changing.

The next challenge is making that measurement practical, repeatable, transparent, and continuous.

eOceans helps turn the framework into an ongoing evidence system.

Bring the data together. Apply the methods. Measure change. Keep the evidence current.

So when someone asks, “Is nature actually improving?”, you have more than a commitment or a one-time report. You have a system designed to help answer the question — and keep answering it as the world changes.

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