Photo credit: David Clode, Unsplash
Welcome to the Marketplace for Nature maps of voluntary biodiversity credit initiatives across the globe. For these maps, we’ve been rigorous in only including voluntary biodiversity credit initiatives rather than carbon credit initiatives that have biodiversity co-benefits. We’ve excluded compliance initiatives such as regulatory biodiversity offset programs, many of which have been in operation for decades. You’ll notice the initiatives are at program level only at this stage. Some programs have multiple projects underway. In the future, we hope to add project level information to these maps. Lastly, the dots on the maps are to signify the country of origin of each initiative rather than their applicability. Some initiatives are local to a region or country, others apply globally – that detail is in the descriptor for each initiative. Click on the dots to bring up more detail about each program. There’s more information about our maps and the decision choices around what’s been included and what hasn’t in the “about the maps” tab.
For integrity reasons, we have included only publicly available information rather than personal communications. However, the maps are designed as a resource that will be added to over time as the market develops, so please reach out to us if you have an initiative that’s not publicly available or that we haven’t included in these maps and you’d like it to be included. And, if you’ve been included in these maps but you’d like to update the information about your initiative, we’re very happy to do that, just let us know.
We hope the maps are useful.
There are currently very few IP&LC-led voluntary biodiversity credit initiatives.
By IP&LC-led, we mean IP&LCs make the decisions.
It is anticipated that as the market matures, there will be growing demand for such initiatives, given 80% of the world’s biodiversity is stewarded by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.
The only governments to have taken substantive steps to establish a national voluntary biodiversity market are the Australian and New Zealand Governments. The Government of Niue’s Ocean Credit program and the Government of Gabon’s foreshadow biodiversity credit markets but are at the very early stages of development. Recently, India has also indicated an intention to launch its ‘Green Credit Programme’, to complement its newly-launched domestic Carbon Market. In August 2023, the Scottish Government engaged CreditNature, an initiative developer based in the United Kingdom to develop a voluntary biodiversity credit market in Scotland.
A significant number of private-sector initiatives are emerging globally, at different stages of development. Many of the private-sector initiatives are opting for an area-based approach to unitisation (i.e. using a specific area metric as a means to unitise positive biodiversity activities/ outcomes).
Private-sector initiatives are generally targeting corporates for uptake, with fewer schemes also directly targeting individual buyers.
(coming soon...)
There are intermediaries playing a variety of roles in emerging voluntary biodiversity credit markets globally. These include governance initiatives, standards bodies, registries, exchanges and platforms of various kinds. As the market grows, we expect the differentiation of the roles of intermediaries will become more apparent across the market.
For example, for now, many of the biodiversity credit initiatives have their own standards, methods, registries, project validation and verification and sales platforms. Some of those functions are likely to be administered by independent third parties in the future.
Marketplace for Nature contributes to Pollination Foundation’s vision to support place- based economies create a climate resilient future where people and nature thrive. Our Foundation is supporting the growth of Indigenous and community nature-based enterprise, and improving the management and protection of natural resources as the flow of finance into nature-based solutions increases.
We seek to build communities, partnerships and networks willing to explore and realise new ways to scale nature-based solutions and at the same time, grow confidence amongst corporate and financial sectors and governments, in the value of investing in nature.
