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<\/a>Without clarity, experts worry that voluntary biodiversity credits, too, will offer companies yet another opportunity for virtue signaling, without actual positive impact. The governments of England and Australia, for instance, recently announced their own biodiversity credit schemes, while India has put out rules for a new green credits program \u2014 in all the schemes, credits can partly be used as offsets.<\/p>\n
So, in January this year, Campaign for Nature, a U.S.-based advocacy group, came out with a report critiquing this new scheme. \u201cWe wrote this paper because we didn\u2019t see enough concerns being raised in civil society,\u201d says Mark Opel, finance lead at Campaign for Nature.<\/p>\n
Who are the buyers?<\/h2>\n
Biodiversity credits are meant for the private sector to voluntarily increase their funding for nature conservation. But there is a lack of such a clear demand from companies, the Campaign for Nature report notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you have to ask the fundamental question of why a company would buy biodiversity credits?\u201d says Opel. \u201cIf they can\u2019t claim it as an offset, what are they buying? If they\u2019re going to make limited claims, and say that we\u2019ve made this contribution, then they can just put it into their philanthropy bucket. And our point is, you don\u2019t need to buy credits to make that philanthropic contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2023 that \u201cno major companies have confirmed their interest in purchasing biodiversity credits.\u201d Giants such as Unilever and Nestl\u00e9 even declared they weren\u2019t exploring biodiversity credits but were focusing on their own nature-positive supply chain measures instead.<\/p>\n
The voluntary carbon market, which has been in the works for more than two decades, amounted to only under $1.9 billion in 2022. Even if the biodiversity credit market managed to scale up to that amount \u2014 existing biodiversity credit schemes have seen about $8 million in funding pledges, per a report in May 2023 \u2014 it\u2019s unlikely to make a dent in the $700 billion annual nature funding gap, the report notes.<\/p>\n
Recent trends in the voluntary carbon market don\u2019t look rosy either. Companies such as Nestl\u00e9, Shell and others are pulling out of the market after its credibility hit a wall in recent years. Several reports have found that carbon credits often overestimate carbon reductions, count reductions that would have happened even without the project and can harm the Indigenous peoples and local communities whose lands are often at play in the carbon projects \u2014 several Indigenous groups and researchers have even called for a moratorium on the carbon trade. Companies such as Delta Air Lines are also being sued for \u201cfalse and misleading\u201d claims of carbon neutrality through the use of carbon credits.<\/p>\n
With declining demand for voluntary carbon credits and increased litigation risk, Opel says he doesn\u2019t see a big enough demand for voluntary biodiversity credits arising, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a capitalist; I spent 30 years of my career in that world,\u201d Opel said at the launch of their report. \u201cBut at the end of the day, it\u2019s important to keep in mind what capitalists are in business for, and that is to generate a return on capital and to maximize risk-adjusted returns for their shareholders. They are not going to invest in public goods that do not generate those returns without government policies that either require them to, or that provide a financial incentive.\u201d<\/p>\n The carbon market has a common currency. One unit of carbon credit equals one ton of CO2. That makes the credit tradable and fungible in a market; that is, the units are thought to be interchangeable and equivalent. A company that buys five carbon credits can emit an extra 5 tons of CO2 in exchange. But biodiversity is inherently complex\u2014is a hectare of a tropical forest with two tigers equal in monetary value to a hectare of desert with two great Indian bustards, for example?<\/p>\n For decades, researchers and economists have tried and failed to come up with a universal measure of nature. Moreover, the way scientists, governments and businesses value plants and animals or an ecosystem can differ vastly from how communities view them. Placing a monetary value can also be morally problematic for certain communities. \u201cWe see our territories as our mother that can provide us with anything,\u201d says Monica Ndoen, an activist from Indonesia\u2019s main Indigenous alliance, AMAN. \u201cWhen these schemes of carbon and biodiversity credits come into our territories, we monetize our own mother.\u201d<\/p>\n In short, opponents say an agreed universal unit for biodiversity credit might not work. But there are around 26 private-sector biodiversity credit schemes already out there, creating their own methodologies for calculating what a biodiversity credit is.<\/p>\n Colombia\u2019s Terrasos, for example, has developed a formula based on factors like how rare and degraded a habitat is, whether it offers an increase in connectivity with other habitats and its potential for preservation or restoration. For U.S.-based company Savimbo, its methodology was co-developed with Indigenous peoples and local communities in Colombia\u2019s Amazon. One biodiversity credit represents photographic or video evidence of a pre-decided indicator species, such as the jaguar, on a 1-hectare (2.47-acre) piece of land within a critical ecosystem. The continued, documented presence of the animal is meant to act as a proxy for the ecosystem\u2019s health. On the other hand, The Wallacea Trust, a conservation research organization, is more outcome-focused: It defines a biodiversity credit as a 1% improvement in nature or loss avoided in a hectare of the project site compared with a reference site.<\/p>\n Demand for these biodiversity credits is still emerging, says Drea Burbank, founder and CEO of Savimbo. \u201cYou have to make your supply side solid before you can sell it, but I see so much interest,\u201d Burbank adds. \u201cLots of people love the idea and it\u2019s a really cool way to contribute to nature.\u201d<\/p>\n To prevent greenwashing, as in the carbon credit market, the IIED report recommends coming up with a set of principles and screening tools for buyers of these credits. These include demonstrating how the buyer is minimizing and avoiding biodiversity damage on its own and showing that the credits won\u2019t be used to offset damage elsewhere.<\/p>\n How these checks and balances come into play, however, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n Moreover, some experts worry that other issues of the voluntary carbon market, such as additionality (showing that the outcomes of conservation wouldn\u2019t have happened without the buyer\u2019s investment) or permanence (demonstrating that the positive changes to nature will last for a long time), will continue within the biodiversity market as well.<\/p>\n It\u2019s estimated that 80% of the world\u2019s remaining biodiversity lies within regions where Indigenous peoples and local communities live. Many of the world\u2019s carbon credit projects have targeted these lands because they are vast carbon sinks. Several communities have also actively supported forest protection-related carbon projects and the financial flows they receive through them. However, there are many fundamental problems with the carbon credit market that need fixing if the biodiversity credit market is to succeed, they say.<\/p>\n One of these problems is that despite being the stewards of much of Earth\u2019s biodiversity, many Indigenous peoples still lack legal recognition of rights to their lands. Without land rights, the areas they manage can quickly be taken over by governments or companies to sell carbon or biodiversity credits. And so, as with carbon credits, biodiversity credits can become a new form of land-grabbing of Indigenous territories, says Ndoen.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve been asking for is that our lands and territories are in our hands, and that we\u2019re allowed to govern it the way we want to govern it,\u201d adds Carling.<\/p>\n Carbon credit schemes have also brought in an influx of middlemen, those who connect big companies looking to buy carbon credits with Indigenous communities or people who have forests or farms that can act as carbon sinks. This process can often be iffy, experts say, sometimes treading on the rights of people, creating conflicts within communities and diluting the fund that actually reaches the community members. In Indonesia, for example, Ndoen says that companies approaching members of Indigenous communities have brought in \u201cmoney politics,\u201d pitting families against each other and creating disharmony.<\/p>\n In South America, too, companies try to bypass \u201cpre-informed consent\u201d by getting the consent of only the Indigenous leaders in lieu of the entire communities, says \u00d1awi K. Flores, a thought leader of the Andean and Amazonian Kichwa, Kutakachi Nation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe select a leader to represent us in the public, but he doesn\u2019t make the entire decision for us \u2014 we, the community, need to vote,\u201d Flores says. \u201cSo, a lot of these carbon credits, biodiversity credits that are in existence, they\u2019re buying off Indigenous leaders and claiming that they have pre-informed consent.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there are issues with contracts and funds. Some companies such as Shell and ONE Amazon, for example, have been accused of coercing communities into signing corrupt and inequitable 30-year carbon credit contracts. Moreover, reports suggest that only about 17% of international conservation funding actually reaches organizations led by Indigenous people and local communities.<\/p>\n To counter these issues, companies and organizations emphasize the need to \u201cequitably engage\u201d with Indigenous peoples and local communities in the design and delivery of the credits, and to ensure that financial benefits reach them.<\/p>\n So far, Pollination Group, a climate change investment and advisory firm, has reviewed existing voluntary biodiversity credit schemes and found that \u201cthe majority of schemes do not establish comprehensive requirements for obtaining free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and do not require co-ownership, partnership or benefit-sharing models with IPs and LCs.\u201d<\/p>\n One company attempting to take a different route is Savimbo.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is the only for-profit, biodiversity credit company that has been bringing Indigenous people to sit down in internal private meetings that are just between us and Savimbo to think about what biodiversity credit looks like for us, and how we should be doing it,\u201d says Flores.<\/p>\n On its website, Savimbo notes, \u201cThe carbon market hasn\u2019t been fair. The biodiversity market can learn from that.\u201d<\/p>\n One of these learnings, the company\u2019s CEO Burbank says, is that the carbon credit projects involved complicated science, calculations and bureaucracy to measure carbon that was either too difficult, or Indigenous and local communities did not have the time to do. Instead, Savimbo worked with Indigenous conservationists and leaders, as well as smallholder farmers, to co-design a simple methodology: Pick one key species to monitor.<\/p>\n The idea is that many Indigenous communities rely on certain species to check on the health of their intact or threatened ecosystems. For some communities in the Colombian Amazon, for example, that indicator species is the jaguar. \u201cFor us, the jaguar is magical,\u201d says Flores. \u201cSo, the species has been selected, one, because the scientific community has found it to be an indicator of healthy ecosystems; but the animal is also important from our cultural perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n The science, validated by multiple scientists, is kept simple enough for anyone to do, Burbank says. To earn a voluntary biodiversity credit, community members must have 1 hectare of land \u2014 they don\u2019t need to necessarily own that land but must demonstrate that they have been managing the area. Then, they deploy camera traps on their land. Every recorded sighting of a jaguar earns them a credit, valid for two months.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first day they get a jaguar video, they have a biodiversity credit on their balance sheet,\u201d says Burbank. \u201cIt\u2019s automated. And the minute they upload it and we validate it, they have credits on the balance sheet.\u201d<\/p>\n These are pre-certified credits, Burbank adds, and they are currently being sold on Savimbo\u2019s website for $5. Once a third-party certifier like Cercarbono validates that the projects adhere to their set of principles, the credits are sold for $7. Selling pre-certified credits gets money into the communities\u2019 bank accounts quickly, and buyers get a price discount for purchasing credits early.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason we do this is because the communities are constantly getting approached by mining and logging companies, and for some community members, that\u2019s easy money,\u201d says Burbank.<\/p>\nThe value of a credit<\/h2>\n
Who decides?<\/h2>\n
A different model?<\/h2>\n