Carbon credit standard body Gold Standard has announced it has joined several prominent companies and institutions to work on biodiversity crediting approaches, following other carbon standards that recently released draft methodologies.
Gold Standard has joined the Organisation for Biodiversity Certificates (OBC), it announced on Thursday. The OBC aims to provide measures and market rules for biodiversity uplift credits, as well as enable mixed carbon-biodiversity projects to emerge, according to its website.
“Protecting our planet’s biodiversity is not just a responsibility, but a necessity for a sustainable future. By combining scientific expertise with collaborative efforts, we can make meaningful strides in biodiversity conservation. Gold Standard is proud to be part of this journey, emphasising the importance of rigorous methodologies in preserving the natural world.” said Margaret Kim, Gold Standard CEO.
“In this period when certain financial mechanisms put in place to encourage private actors to finance environmental projects are being disrupted, OBC is delighted to support Gold Standard in its search for excellence for this tool intended to serve the restoration and preservation of Nature: biodiversity certificates,” said Fabiola Flex, president of the Organisation for Biodiversity Certificates, in a statement.
The Organisation of Biodiversity Certificates was founded by nature-based carbon project developer Adryada and sustainable agriculture company Le Printemps des Terres. OBC claims to prioritise scientific rigour and open-source approaches, which are coordinated by the French National Museum of Natural History, the Foundation for Research in Biodiversity, and consultancy Carbone 4.
METHODS IN FOCUS
While most assessment methods aim to measure in situ data, the OBC’s methodology states that this is extremely difficult to achieve due to biodiversity’s complexity.
The organisation takes an alternative approach and seeks to find expert consensus for individual ecosystems to quantify the gain in biodiversity based on a particular activity within them.
The approach requires the agreement of an ecosystem’s “Biodiversity Carrying Capacity”, based on agreed parameters. These may include human activity and ecosystem characteristics.
Experts then develop a participatory research protocol that, once completed, feeds into an evaluative grid with scores of zero to one for changing activities, to indicate biodiversity gains within a certain ecosystem.
Details on the certification mechanism itself are in development, but the OBC states in its methodology that it is taking inspiration from “best-in-class” carbon standards with a focus on third-party auditing and ensuring additionality.
The organisation’s methodology outlines three approaches to claims, mirroring those laid out by Carbone 4 in Dec. 2022.
Under the methodology, certificates could be used for an impact reduction within an organisation’s biodiversity footprint, local contribution where the organisation is located, or global contribution to wider biodiversity strategies and hotspots.
Gold Standard said it will work with OBC and its “Methodology Consortium” to explore how the organisation’s carrying capacity approach can be tailored for different ecosystems to measure their health and offer certification pathways, as well as market approaches.
The standards body said that it will also work on the development of the OBC measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) approach, and if its technical benchmarks are met, then it will adopt the methodology.
Thursday’s announcement builds on a growing trend of carbon credit standards placing increasing focus on biodiversity credit markets.
Earlier this month, Verra released its nature credit standard for consultation, which looks to have two credit types for biodiversity uplift as well as nature stewardship.
Plan Vivo is also on its second round of consultation with its PV-Nature standard, having recently announced a partnership with MRV firm Pivotal to support data and reporting processes.
All the standards have categorically stated that biodiversity credits or certificates should not be used to offset damage done to nature.
By Tom Woolnough – tom@carbon-pulse.com
** Click here to sign up to our twice-weekly biodiversity newsletter **
