Almost a year after the scheme was officially launched, Australian carbon project developer GreenCollar has announced the very first issuance of its NaturePlus Credits, which it hopes to establish as a leading global biodiversity credit type.

GreenCollar said 8,500 credits were issued to a sustainable grazing and carbon farming project in western New South Wales, as part of its NaturePlus biodiversity scheme designed to protect and restore ecosystems, habitats, and threatened species.

According to the new NaturePlus website, each credit represents one hectare of measured and verified restoration or conservation of environmental condition.

To be eligible for validation as a NaturePlus project, projects must first be registered and certified under the Accounting for Nature (AfN) Framework, according to its website.

AfN sets the overarching standard for measuring the trend in ecological health for different environmental assets in a “cost effective, scientifically robust, fully transparent, and verifiable way”, according to GreenCollar.

The first-ever credits were issued to the Argyle NaturePlus Native Vegetation Restoration Project in the Mulga Lands bioregion of NSW, and was first registered with Accounting for Nature in Dec. 2021.

Argyle covers an area of 5,364 ha, and uses GreenCollar’s native vegetation condition monitoring methodology to monitor the condition of native vegetation across the project area, according to the project documents on the standard’s website.

Its first monitoring period ran from Oct. 2015 to Aug. 2022, during which the land manager implemented what the documents call the Environmental Asset Adaptive Management Strategy (EAAMS).

The strategy includes best practice rotational grazing, and establishing and maintaining fencing to support the growth of tree and shrubs in the area, as well as minimising and preventing weed and feral pests in the project area.

It said 23% of the project area was found to overlap with the Paroo Floodplain Key Biodiversity area, and as such qualified for Tier 1 – being the most significant type of biodiversity richness. The rest of the project area was considered to be Tier 3 – the least significant.

OVERLAPS

The project area overlaps with an Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme project of the same name, also run by GreenCollar.

The Argyle carbon project uses the avoided deforestation methodology and has been issued 265,000 ACCUs since it was first registered by the Clean Energy Regulator in 2015.

This overlap might cause controversy, given that some believe the practice of ‘stacking’ a biodiversity unit on top of a carbon credit is a form of greenwashing and naturewashing at the same time.

Others argue that landowners will be able to derive higher revenues from environmentally-friendly land management and that stacking creates a more efficient market, given that many of the aims of those for carbon and biodiversity are interlinked.

Anjali Nelson, general manager of new initiatives at GreenCollar, confirmed to Carbon Pulse that the NaturePlus project was stacked on top of the Argyle ACCU project.

She said the company had been measuring projects using its native vegetation model for the last 8-10 years, which looks at a range of factors that wouldn’t necessarily be observed in a carbon project, such as recruitment of canopy species, site context, species richness, and non-native plant cover.

“We baseline surveyed Argyle in 2015, we surveyed it again in 2022 to show that there’s an increase in condition of native vegetation,” she said.

“That forms the NaturePlus unit itself, and that’s not the case for all carbon projects, so that additional knowledge does lead to different management decisions on what they do on their property. You’re looking at your property through a different lens.”

She said that while all nature-based carbon projects should support biodiversity, additional action is required if proponents want to get an uplift in the condition of biodiversity.

“So not all carbon projects are necessarily increasing the condition of nature,” she added.

Nelson also noted that NaturePlus credits have not been designed for use in any existing compliance market and are not biodiversity offsets.

“NaturePlus credits are being generated by land managers who are committed to doing the work required to deliver real outcomes for nature, including measuring and understanding how their management is improving the environmental condition,” she said.

“Data is collected across multiple indicators and compiled into independently verified and audited accounts. NaturePlus is designed to incentivise these resource managers to continue to adapt management to restore and protect biodiversity over the long term.”

So far, 20 projects have been registered with the scheme, while a number of Australian and international projects are undergoing feasibility and scoping.

The scheme has been explicitly designed to have application to any ecosystem, including marine areas, and allows for continuous crediting to support longer term impact.

THE STANDARD

GreenCollar on Friday also publicly released its pilot standard, guide, and claims guidance for the scheme.

The NaturePlus standard went through five different drafts before being finalised.

According to the objectives of the standard, projects are to achieve restoration or conservation in the condition of environmental assets within project areas.

Restoration and conservation outcomes must also be measured, validated, and verified as determined through environmental accounts certified by independent audits, under Accounting for Nature.

The standard also includes requirements for project eligibility, validation, monitoring and verification, and an assurance framework.

GreenCollar will initially administer the standard and act as its administrator, overseeing all processes and procedures, such as methodology approval, issuing and approving documentation, and ensuring the integrity of the scheme.

However, it will eventually seek to hand that role over to a third party in order for it to become a project proponent.

During the beta phase, the standard will be continually tested, validated, and refined during commercialisation of the product, it said.

A review of the beta phase will be undertaken to transition the standard from a pilot stage to fully operational, with key recommendations and proposed revisions to be submitted to GreenCollar for approval and incorporation in version 2 – which will go through a formal peer review process.

Phase three will add complexity over time, with potential to include social co-benefits and rules to allow NaturePlus Credits to be issued for “multiple, overlapping environmental projects, and for projects that are developed under other voluntary standards”.

The current beta standard will allow a single project to have multiple project proponents, however only one will be nominated to interact with GreenCollar on other proponents’ behalf.

Project proponents must demonstrate achievement of free, prior, and informed consent where the project impacts the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

They also must be a member of the People’s Forest Partnership, and committed to their principles and criteria for membership.

A NaturePlus project must comprise of a single environmental asset that makes up the project area, and use an Accounting for Nature method applicable at project scale and at an accuracy level of 90-95%.

If evidence of material negative changes are identified by GreenCollar, it may request additional information from the proponent to authenticate whether change identified is accurate, or substantiate attribution of change.

Proponents must also submit evidence as part of the application process that they have the legal right to undertake the project and receive all credits generated by it.

Project applications will be made available in a public register, and what is deemed to be commercially sensitive will only be withheld if GreenCollar is reasonably satisfied that it is commercially sensitive.

Auditing requirements mean all environmental accounts will be certified by an independent auditor under the Accounting for Nature Framework.

The standard said GreenCollar may also require the proponent to undertake separate third-party assurance engagements through NaturePlus to assess compliance of a monitoring report with the requirements of the standard.

A project may have multiple, consecutive monitoring periods, and the first monitoring period must be no earlier than the date 10 years before the project start date, and no later than the date two years after the project start date.

The first monitoring period must end no more than five years after the project start date, and run for a minimum of 12 months.

During each monitoring period, the clearing rate for the bioregion that a NaturePlus project is located in must be estimated based on the best available data.

To generate credits, proponents must demonstrate either ‘restoration’ or ‘conservation’ of the condition of the environmental asset within a monitoring period.

INTEREST

Laura Waterford, a director with investor and advisory firm Pollination, said there was increasing interest from the private sector about how it can understand and invest in biodiversity regeneration and stewardship.

“Globally, there is increasing pressure on businesses to disclose their nature-related risks and therefore to demonstrate a commitment to mitigating those risks by reducing their impacts on nature and investing in the regeneration and stewardship of nature,” she said.

“Growing demand from the business community for solutions and projects to invest in to support positive biodiversity claims, including via voluntary biodiversity credit markets, is therefore driving the need to understand the strengths and differences between the various voluntary biodiversity credit schemes and products that are coming online as the ‘supply side’ of the market grows and the business case for investment builds.”

By Mark Tilly – mark@carbon-pulse.com

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