Nature First: A Framework for Data Centers

Nature First is a framework developed over the past year by Biohabitats, a firm that does ecological restoration, conservation planning and nature-based water work, and written up by its founder Keith Bowers. It is organised in four parts: site selection, communities, living systems and adaptive futures. The starting point is site selection, because the most consequential decisions about a data center are made before any design begins: whether the land should be converted at all, whether the footprint could be reduced, built vertically or placed below grade, and whether previously developed or industrial land could carry it instead of forest, wetland or greenfield.

The framework asks planners to define a project's boundary by the systems it affects rather than by the property line: the watershed, wildlife corridors, water availability and quality, climate vulnerability, existing conservation investments, cumulative development pressure, and the energy, water and transport infrastructure and off-site mitigation lands that a facility depends on. It also argues that communities need information on land, water, energy, tax incentives and ecological impacts early enough to take part in decisions, and that the living systems affected should be represented through ecological science, monitoring and Indigenous knowledge alongside Western methods. Biohabitats says it is explicitly not a rating or certification scheme.

Intended users are communities, local governments and planning and design professionals. Biohabitats describes the framework as a practical starting point that will keep evolving. Published on the firm's blog on 1 September 2026 and discussed in a three-part series by Bowers for the ASLA's The Dirt, the second part dated 7 October 2026.