The One Forest Summit in March 2023 spotlighted biodiversity credits, focusing on biodiversity-positive carbon credits, guided by the GEF’s report on innovative finance for nature. This paper builds on the summit’s outcomes and outlines the rising trend and design challenges of biodiversity credits. It proposes a Global Roadmap to create robust, high-integrity biodiversity credit markets, ensuring they support global biodiversity and climate goals, with France and the UK leading the initiative.
Key Messages
- Policy and governance: clear policies, good governance, and transparent engagement are vital for effective biodiversity credits.
- Financial mechanisms: biodiversity credits can enhance financial tools to achieve global biodiversity and climate goals.
- Current trends: increased visibility of biodiversity is driving definitions, measurement schemes, trading pilots, and regulatory developments.
- International cooperation: essential for scaling biodiversity credits and channeling financial flows to meet sustainability targets.
- Financial support: needed for biodiversity maintenance, threat mitigation, restoration, and regenerative practices.
- Design challenges:
- Measurement: credible and affordable biodiversity monitoring.
- Demand: sustained high-integrity demand.
- Supply: ensuring high-integrity supply with positive outcomes.
- Equity: fair pricing and distribution of rewards.
- Governance: robust and transparent institutional arrangements.
