The route to high integrity biodiversity markets

The global loss of biodiversity and habitats presents a challenge of similar magnitude to climate change. Protection and restoration are urgently required to restore ecological function, including the sequestration and storage of carbon. Financing ecosystem restoration is arguably its single biggest barrier: international organisations, national governments, and corporations are increasingly working together but the mechanisms to channel funding are currently insufficient. The growing interest in biodiversity markets could be a way to connect scalable finance to nature recovery.

Biodiversity credit producers will need to substantiate what is being claimed. Methodologies are beginning to emerge for project developers to adopt, but face significant technical challenges.

We discuss the development of biodiversity credits, methodologies and markets, and the aspects that will impact on objective ratings.