The updated Environmental Benefits from Nature tool (v1-1) is designed to work alongside the Statutory Biodiversity Metric Tool and provide developers, planners and other interested parties with a means of enabling wider benefits for people and nature from biodiversity net gain. The tool uses a habitat-based approach to provide a common and consistent means of considering the direct impact of land use change across 18 ecosystem service services.
It has been developed by Natural England and the University of Oxford in partnership with Defra, the Forestry Commission and the Environment Agency to work with net gain approaches to include wider Natural Capital benefits such as flood protection, recreation and improved water and air quality.
The tool has been updated to make the tool quicker and easier to use and more integrated. Key improvements include:
• integration with the Statutory Biodiversity Metric and Green Infrastructure Standards
• improved landscape integration – through embedded use of Landscape Institutes’ Landscape Character Assessment Database and
• improved data access – through the NE Green Infrastructure mapping portal and a new EBNT QGIS template
Accompanying documents outline principles and instructions for use, along with supporting technical information. The principles documents should be read first to ensure correct application and use of results. Further information on how & when to use other documents are provided in their accompanying forewords.
The update to the Beta tool will be evaluated over the coming year, please provide via the accompanying User Survey.
Although designed to work with the Statutory Biodiversity Metric, the EBNT is an entirely voluntary tool that is not required to meet the biodiversity net gain provisions set out in the Environment Act 2021 for development in England. More information about the tool, including a short summary video, can be found at Green Infrastructure – Supporting Tools – EBNT (link below).