Biodiversity & the Construction Value Chain Series
This article series explores the negative impact on biodiversity from the construction value chain – and explores solutions from changemakers.. Learn how the built environment is impacting our natural world and get inspired to address the biodiversity crisis.
Lesson 1: Analysing materials exposes the data gap
MTH is one of Denmark’s largest construction and civil engineering companies. It handles large-scale infrastructure, building, and renovation projects across the country. It was amongst the first wave of companies required to conduct a double materiality assessment and report under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in 2024.
The first step involved a material analysis to understand the origins of materials used in business operations. MTH chose 15 critical materials (based on their heavy footprint or purchase quantity) and conducted an analysis against ten Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) parameters.
Desktop research revealed an uncomfortable truth: while databases on emissions and water use were relatively accessible, biodiversity impacts remained almost invisible. “It’s difficult to pinpoint our actual biodiversity impact. It’s a huge challenge that we don’t know where materials and their components come from,” Ottesen says.
Lesson 2: Price still rules - But sustainability is catching up
“It’s basically all about price,” says Ottesen. In day-to-day project purchasing, decisions are still driven primarily by client demands and cost. Yet sustainability is steadily gaining ground. New legislation and market demand are forcing demonstrable, quantified sustainability data onto the same line as price. “Suppliers now position low emissions data as a competitive differentiation point – in a few cases as important as price. The law is facilitating this prioritisation of data and mitigation actions around suppliers’ chemical use and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions,” explains Ottesen.
Lesson 3: Where there's law, there's data - Elsewhere, silence
Where emissions and chemicals are concerned, the combination of legal requirements and financial consequences has driven suppliers to prioritise data collection and reporting. Supplier interviews confirmed it: “It is very clear that suppliers had great knowledge around GHG emissions, chemicals, and water use… I definitely think that biodiversity is the biggest question mark among the environmental parameters”.
By contrast, biodiversity remains largely outside market demands and legislative frameworks. Without a “price” or legal mandate attached to biodiversity metrics, suppliers have little incentive to map, track, or disclose their impacts. This highlights a critical systemic issue: without regulation or market incentives, the impact on biodiversity is overlooked across the construction value chain.
To learn more about the legal landscape guiding the construction sector, see PRF’s Nature Regulation series.
Lesson 4: Risk assessment without the right tools
Faced with fragmented information, MTH’s team manually constructed a risk matrix in Excel. “We would be open to using a risk tool,” Ottesen reflects, citing the logistical challenges of a five-person team sharing a single spreadsheet. But in the absence of an alternative, “ Kristine Bernat Ottesen welcomes industry peers to contact her to access the risk assessment methodology developed and used by the MTH project team.
Despite the effort, the results were sobering: “We found multiple material risks, even within our own operations, that cannot be fully addressed because there is no clear data.”
Lesson 5: Action requires measurement
“We can’t do it all,” Ottesen acknowledges. With eight out of ten material topics flagged, the scope of necessary action is overwhelming. The lack of specifics forces reliance on assumptions – a poor foundation for strategic decisions. “What gets measured gets managed,” she stresses. Without credible biodiversity data, prioritizing, allocating resources, and mitigating risk becomes guesswork.
Lesson 6: The hardest impacts to measure are the most important
While MTH is well-practiced at mitigating on-site impacts, the double materiality assessment revealed material off-site biodiversity risks that warrant targeted action under the CSRD. “It is much more difficult but also much more important for us to work with offsite biodiversity”, explains Ottesen.
MTH is now working with external stakeholders, experts and suppliers to:
Uncover the real impacts of large material purchases through deeper analysis of procurement data, and
Define targeted mitigation actions.
The outcomes of this exercise will be described in the 2025 annual report, which will be published on the MT Højgaard Holding website.
A call for strength in numbers
MTH’s experience makes one thing clear: no single company can fix the data gap alone. “We think we have a responsibility to share best practices,” says Ottesen. “If we can be more transparent and comparable across the industry, we can make a difference together.”
For more insights on tackling biodiversity challenges across the construction value chain, contact the Planetary Responsibility Foundation.
Biodiversity & the Construction Value Chain Series
This article series explores the negative impact on biodiversity from the construction value chain and explores solutions from changemakers. Learn how the built environment is impacting our natural world and get inspired to address the biodiversity crisis.
