• Mitigation, Restoration + Adaptation Strategies
  • Nature
  • Water
  • Pharmaceuticals + Healthcare

Developing a biodiversity strategy for a global pharmaceuticals company

Quantis supported a global pharmaceuticals company in understanding its impacts and dependencies on nature, assessing the related risks and opportunities, and evaluating the need for an overarching biodiversity strategy.

Challenge

A global pharma company and Quantis client wished to take action on nature topics by setting targets in alignment with the Science-Based Targets Network (SBTN) methodology

In addition to being a trusted partner, Quantis had played a role in the development and piloting of SBTN’s freshwater and land methods, and had also developed a tool to identify hotspots across different impacts for the pilot land method — land transformation, land occupation, species loss and land pollution. 

Solutions

To determine if biodiversity was a material topic for the company to pursue in the future, Quantis analyzed the company’s value chain to identify its hotspots, impacts and dependencies and completed a risk and opportunities assessment. Quantis also helped the company define the level of ambition. The project utilized a 3-step process following the SBTN methodology: 

  • Create a benchmark of programs and actions implemented by 10 companies in pharma, medtech and tech for five nature pressures. 
  • Identify and prioritize the company’s most material impacts on four nature pressures (land use, water quantity and quality, climate change and solid waste pollution) across its value chain, focusing on purchased goods & services and direct operations, at both a local and regional scale. 
  • Map the company’s existing initiatives to gain insight into where and how existing strategies may already address nature loss and where there are opportunities for improvement. 

Results

After determining the pharmaceutical and medtech industry’s key impact areas and dependencies on nature, Quantis researched the main strategies and levers to help reduce those pressures.

The Quantis team also identified the client’s top impacting purchased goods & services and sites by examining over 60,000 individual commodity locations and over 50 sites. Quantis encouraged the client to design a holistic, ambitious nature strategy while simultaneously reinforcing its current initiatives on nature.

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