Learnings from our Việt Nam case study: Assessing biological ecosystems in consumer electronics supply chains

By: Aditi Kale, Sustainability Strategy, Platforms & Devices

Modern businesses depend on nature for ecosystem services, which are the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life.¹ They include a variety of contributions, such as pollination, disease resistance via genetic variation, clean water, clean air, and the raw materials to make products. These services are under increasing pressure and have crossed planetary boundary thresholds as defined by the Stockholm Resilience Center.² While many nations recognize the need for action, measuring biodiversity and ecosystem services is extremely difficult. Ecosystem services rely on biological complexity for their stability and function, so we’d like to create an approach that approximates that complexity at first, but expand it over time to encompass the full interconnectedness the system represents.

At Google, we're committed to responsible sourcing and building a more sustainable future. That's why we're excited to share our new white paper, "Assessing Biological Ecosystems in Consumer Electronics Supply Chains: Northern Việt Nam Case Study." This paper details a novel approach to measuring and managing our ecosystem impacts within our consumer electronics supply chain. By sharing our methodology and insights, we hope to provide a repeatable and accessible model that other businesses can use to better understand their own impact on the natural world. Along with this text-based summary of our methodology and conclusions, we are also adding other formats, such as a companion NotebookLM, which includes podcasts, and chat options to share this work.

A Two-Part Approach: Combining Geospatial Data and Local Insights

Our methodology combines two powerful perspectives to create a holistic view of ecosystem health:

• Geospatial Analysis: We partnered with NGIS to augment their TraceMark platform, which utilizes Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud, to analyze ecosystem service categories with large-scale datasets combining water scarcity, key biodiversity areas, flood and fire risk levels, vegetation intensity and more. This allows us to assess risks like deforestation, water stress, and land use change, aligning our work with leading frameworks like the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN).
• Ground-Truth Assessments: Geospatial data alone doesn't tell the whole story. To truly understand the local context, we partnered with Second Nature Ecology & Design and ecologists and taxonomists from the Việt Nam Academy of Science and Technology. Together, we identified a set of "focal species" that are ecologically, economically, and culturally important to local communities. We then captured the missing ecosystem resources needed to support these species.

Insights from Our Northern Việt Nam Case Study

We piloted our approach in the Red River Delta region of Northern Việt Nam, an area chosen for its critical importance for both biodiversity and the consumer electronics supply chain.

Our most compelling finding? Even highly industrialized sites can support a surprising number of species and thus, biodiversity programs can become a part of a holistic supply chain engagement strategy. For example, we discovered that a highly industrialized site in Bắc Ninh supported a similar number of species as a site located much closer to an ecological reserve.

This approach provides actionable data for real-world impact. Our analysis revealed that:

• 39% of the focal species in the region could benefit from water-related interventions, such as removal of physical pollution from waterways or water treatment initiatives.
• 31% of focal species could be helped by improvements to their nesting habitats.
• Even small interventions, like installing window deterrents or avoiding upward-facing lights at night, could benefit all focal bird species (23% of the total species of local interest).

A New, "Cohort-Based" Approach to Conservation

This research has led us to propose a shift from traditional conservation methods, which often focus on a single endangered species. Instead, we advocate for a species "cohort-based" approach for developed, industrial landscapes. These cohorts are created by identifying which species could inhabit developed zones that are important to the local community from an environmental, economic, or cultural perspective. This new approach focuses on high-impact mitigations that address the needs of many species, important to the local community, that could inhabit the developed region.

The Path Forward: A Call to Action

We are at the beginning of this journey and are committed to continuously improving our methods and expanding our impact. Our next steps include expanding these ground-truth investigations to some of our supply chain locations in India and Taiwan.

Protecting our planet's biodiversity is a collective responsibility. We invite other businesses, researchers, and organizations to collaborate with us, share knowledge, and join us on this journey to better understand and protect the ecosystems we all depend on. To connect with our team, please email us at devices-nature@google.com.