Measuring Nature’s Contributions to People – what data do we have?

Sebastian Theis, Neil Burgess, Arnout van Soesbergen, Kate Egan, Andrew Gonzalez 

The concept of Nature’s Contributions to People, established by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, extends the ecosystem services approach by acknowledging the many perspectives and world views about human-nature relationships. Quantifying these relationships requires robust data and tools. Using existing databases and artificial intelligence-assisted web searches, this study identifies and evaluates 297 online resources across the 18 categories of Nature’s Contributions to People. We assessed these resources based on their functional roles, ranging from Foundational Data Infrastructure to industry- and policy-focused tools, as well as their confidence levels, maturity, and adherence to Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable principles. Our mapping reveals data gaps, particularly in material and regulating categories such as energy and regulation of ocean acidification. While Ecosystem Assessment and Modeling Platforms demonstrate high confidence through primary observations, policy and industry-focused tools are less frequent and often rely on inference. Furthermore, categories like pollination and water quality frequently lack spatial and temporal coverage. Network analyses linking these resources to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework show weak alignment with Goal C and Targets 13, 20, and 23. This indicates that access, benefit-sharing, and distributional dimensions of Nature’s Contributions to People may be insufficiently represented. We provide these resources as a modular, expandable database to support bridging the existing data gaps.