Meeting the 30×30 target of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) will be a major challenge for many countries, though OECMs – other effective area-based conservation measures – are increasingly seen as a useful tool, with IUCN this week showcasing how they could help Vietnam achieve its biodiversity commitments.

OECMs are areas in which nature and biodiversity are protected and conserved, but without being officially recognised as a protected site, usually because their primary function is tied to something other than conservation, or for various legal reasons.

The concept was included in the 2010 Aichi biodiversity targets, though only in 2018 was it given a proper definition.

As a result, fewer than 10 nations worldwide have registered OECMs, even though the number is rising, with Australia last month becoming the latest country to initiate the process of including OECMs in national regulations.

However, the concept could be of great help to many governments facing various restrictions domestically in meeting the 30×30 target, according to IUCN – the conservation group that coined the OECM definition five years ago.

In a note released this week, the group highlighted how Vietnam, where the 2030 nature protection target is almost impossible to meet due to a scarcity of land, could make use of OECMs to meet its goals.

“Institutionalising OECMs would not only assist Vietnam in meeting its international conservation commitments but would also allow it to protect some of the most biodiverse but threatened habitats, such as isolated karst hills, seasonally flooded grasslands, and coastal mudflats that are poorly represented in the protected area system,” it said.

TIGHT RACE

The Southeast Asian nation’s conservation headache is rooted in the fact that only areas regulated as special-use forests (SUFs) by the agriculture and rural development ministry can have legal status as protected.

That is difficult, however, and the government’s biodiversity strategy has set a 9% land protection target for 2030, up from 6% currently, and even that might be a stretch despite falling far below the GBF’s collective 30×30 goal.

“Vietnam is home to many large protection and production landscapes outside of the protected areas estate, including areas of high biodiversity value. Here, there are opportunities to recognise, support, and report on OECMs. This is perhaps Vietnam’s best opportunity to meet the 30×30 target,” IUCN said.

Production forests with logging bans owned by state-owned companies, highlands shifting from coffee monoculture to mixed agroforestry, and wetland areas ordered by the government to shift to just one from three rice crops annually are among potential OECMs in Vietnam, according to IUCN.

If the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment were to include OECMs in the national biodiversity law and introduce regulations and technical guidelines for them, Vietnam would stand a much bigger chance of being in compliance with the GBF, the note concluded.

MARKET IMPACT

For project developers looking at getting involved in the emerging voluntary biodiversity credit market, though, the increased attention on OECMs is more than an exercise in regulators trying to meet numerical targets.

Should the concept be adopted by and widely implemented in a large number of countries, it could have a significant impact on access to project development, depending on whether market participants decide OECMs are appropriate or inappropriate for biodiversity crediting.

In its draft OECM regulations released last month, Australia did not indicated whether or not activities on OECM sites would be eligible to generate credits under the nation’s planned nature repair market.

But in a set of draft integrity and governance principles for the biodiversity market released in January, the World Economic Forum (WEF) specifically said OECMs should be eligible to host crediting projects, provided that additional actions are undertaken to enhance biodiversity outcomes.

“We propose that a more flexible approach to additionality is required in biodiversity credit markets,” the WEF said in the paper.

“That is a project should be considered additional if it led to positive biodiversity outcomes that would not have otherwise occurred under business as usual, regulatory requirements, or pre-existent lender requirements,” it said.

However, in various public consultation processes, other stakeholders have maintained that the biodiversity market must have strong additionality requirements as part of efforts to ensure it does not end up facing the same integrity and credibility issues as part of the carbon market is struggling with.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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