Unravelling biodiversity impacts of consumption: a production layer decomposition analysis for the Netherlands

Unsustainable consumption patterns, through factors like land use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and pollution, are significant drivers of global biodiversity loss. In this paper, we demonstrate the usefulness of unravelling biodiversity footprints, including the direct and indirect biodiversity impacts of final consumers, in order to examine the location of impacts on biodiversity in the supply chain of consumption. We do so by performing a production layer decomposition, which is novel for biodiversity footprints. We illustrate this method for the Netherlands as an example of a high-income country and for biodiversity footprints that are expressed as losses in Mean Species Abundance (MSA). In 2015, Dutch consumption resulted in 16 million MSA-loss·ha·yr all over the world. Of these losses, 12% originated directly from consumers, 29% from production within the Netherlands for Dutch final demand, and 59% from upstream suppliers that were based abroad. Losses due to final consumers themselves, mainly households, include land use for housing, or GHG emissions from motor fuels. Overall, housing and food contributes most to the Dutch biodiversity footprint. Our decomposition analysis shows that housing also generates the largest loss in sectors directly producing for Dutch consumption, while goods and services have more losses further upstream in their supply chains. The relevance of our findings is that to reduce biodiversity impacts of consumption, actors in different parts of the supply chain have to be targeted depending on the consumption category. Our study emphasises the necessity for specific policies per product supply chain, both national and international in scope, to reduce global biodiversity loss, going beyond direct suppliers.