Nature is in crisis. Yet, there’s a massive $700 billion gap between the financing needed to stop biodiversity collapse versus what’s available each year. In December 2022, nearly 200 governments agreed to close this financial gap by 2030 by signing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP15. With this goal only six years away, one source of finance has recently caught attention: voluntary biodiversity credits. However, several Indigenous and environmental groups and researchers are worried that, like carbon credits, biodiversity credits will become yet another way for companies and governments to continue business as usual. “At its current state of conceptual development and thinking and measurement, all of it is greenwashing,” says Arun Agrawal, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. Biodiversity credits vs. offsets There’s no universally accepted definition of biodiversity credits, yet. But several international agencies such as the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the World Economic Forum, the Global Environment Facility and others have described it as a purely voluntary, “positive investment” in nature by the private sector. The idea is that any company that wants to support nature conservation can pay those who are directly protecting or restoring nature. For each “unit” of habitat restored or preserved, thanks to the payment, the buyers earn voluntary biodiversity credits. Biodiversity offsets, on the other hand, are meant to “cancel out” the damage caused to nature in one location by paying for reparations elsewhere. However, critics of offsetting say that no two habitats or species…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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