Step 2b is divided into two tasks

• Task 3 - Harmonize spatial units

  The pressure and state of nature indicators associated with each of your activities will likely be defined at different spatial scales. For example, a pressure indicator might be associated with a given coordinate or country of origin, while the associated state of nature indicator might refer to a subnational location or landscape division (such as a water basin). Of the two scales used for the same activity, select the one that is coarser in each case (i.e., less specific or less granular, such as the country level instead of the landscape).

  Group all activities that fall within the same locations. For example, if you identified that a water basin is the coarser scale for a given activity, you will make a cluster of all other activities (and their volumes and pressures) that fall within the same water basin.

  Aggregate the pressure values of all activities that fall within the same locations. For example, you would add the pressures (water withdrawals) of all activities in the water basin.

  Take note: This task, as well as all others for Step 2b and Step 2c, are only applicable for your direct operations and activities in upstream target boundary A.

  Output(s) of this task:

  • Tables of your activities, along with their respective pressures and state of nature indicators, with their location data changed to harmonized spatial units (a separate table for each target boundary).
• Task 4 - Create index values for all pressure categories

  In Task 4, you will combine the pressure and state of nature values at each location into a pressure-sensitive index value (Ip), calculated as follows:

  Ip = P x SoNp

  Before creating the index value, you must normalize the pressure and state of nature indicators. Record the Ip values at each geographical location and associate them with the specific activities in those locations.

  The pressure-sensitive index value will allow you to consider the relative urgency of acting in different geographic locations based on the magnitude of your pressures and how fragile the state of nature is in those locations.

  Remember that this task applies to each target boundary separately (so there will be separate pressure index values generated for each of the target boundaries).

  Output(s) of this task:

  Tables from Task 3, with Ip values added for each location (a separate table for each target boundary).

• Task 5 - Rank locations by their environmental urgency to act

  For Task 5, you will create two separate rankings, one based on the Ip values and one based on the SoNB values, and then combine them.

  For each target boundary, rank the locations based on their Ip values from highest to lowest (where highest denotes the places that are most degraded or at risk). At this point, you will also be able to exclude certain activities and locations from the Freshwater target boundaries (water use and water pollution). This will be the case when the basin represents less than 1% of your total pressures and the state of nature is healthy (meaning that there is little to no need for change there).

  Create a second ranking of the (same) locations in the target boundary considering their SoNB values (once again, where highest denotes the places that are most degraded or at risk). As you collected at least two biodiversity indicators in Step 1b (e.g., one at the species level and one at the ecosystem level), you first need to harmonize their spatial resolution and normalize them in the same way as you did with the pressure and SoNP indicators. For each location, keep only the highest of the two SoNB values and create a separate SoNB ranking with these values.

  You will now integrate these two separate rankings into a combined ranking. In this process, you take the highest-ranked location(s) in either of the separate rankings and place them in the first position of the combined ranking. To avoid repetitions, and assuming these were two different locations, cross both of them out from the separate rankings. You will then take the locations in the next highest position (of either ranking) and place them in the second position of the combined ranking. Once again, cross out these locations from the separate rankings, to avoid repetitions.

  As you continue with this process, your combined ranking will show, in the highest positions, the locations that are ranked as the most important based on either their Ip or their SoNB values, and leave the locations that are not ranked highly on either the Ip or SoNB lists in the lowest positions. This combined ranking will inform your prioritization in the next task.

  Output(s) of this task:

  • Tables from Task 4, with the locations reordered by their combined ranking values (a separate table for each target boundary).
  • As intermediate outputs: You will need to create separate tables for the Ip ranking and the SoNB ranking, but these will not be used beyond this task.