Definition of biodiversity credits
“A biodiversity credit represents…biodiversity outcomes brought by the project or activities aimed to produce these outcomes.”
Summary
The paper’s primary goal is to provide readers with a comprehensive, one-stop review of the emerging biodiversity credits market. It adopts a market and literature review approach, covering aspects such as key market players, current initiatives, prospect standards, and regulations, and explaining the formulation of different market models and technicalities such as additionality, leakage, and claims.
Results
The report underscores the importance of considering the measurement of biodiversity credit projects due to their wide-ranging implications for the market. However, it emphasizes that focusing solely on metrics might obscure other crucial aspects such as quality issues like baselines, additionality, permanence, leakage, and double counting, all essential for ensuring genuine impact. The paper also emphasizes the need for more attention and discussion on corporate claims of biodiversity markets, acknowledging the difficulty of creating simple yet effective claims in such a complex field. Additionally, the report stresses the importance of establishing necessary institutions, quality assurance mechanisms, and transparent arrangements to foster integrity and transparency in biodiversity markets, given their multidimensional and plural nature in terms of formulation, technicalities, and participation.
Methodology
Market and literature review.
Limitations
The paper provides a strong explanation and discussion of the financing logic, market landscape, and credit mechanisms. However, the review on the ecological and social/community aspects is relatively thin but provides links for further reading.
Relevance
The report offers a comprehensive overview of the emerging biodiversity credits markets and raises several less-discussed yet important topics related to biodiversity credits.