‘Greenwashing’ through biodiversity credits must be avoided via the development of robust methodologies, the director general for the environment at the European Commission has said.
Florika Fink-Hooijer said the EU’s executive “very much supports” the development of methodologies around biodiversity credits in theory.
Fink-Hooijer has been talking “a lot” with organisations like the UN and the World Bank about biodiversity credit methodologies, she said during a panel at the EU Business and Nature Summit in Milan.
“The real issue is the methodology for biodiversity credits or biodiversity certificates – precisely how to make it comparable, how to avoid greenwashing.” Credits must be understood at a local level, Fink-Hooijer said.
“What makes me hopeful is the pace in which this discussion is evolving is the right one, and more and more actors are asking for it – that’s what we need.”
Despite bodies such as the Biodiversity Credit Alliance and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s panel of experts on resource mobilisation discussing methodologies, they are not yet ready, she said.
The Commission has not yet addressed biodiversity credits, although it stripped biodiversity offsets from its taxonomy of sustainable activities earlier this year. Credits indicate actions to improve biodiversity across an area of land, while offsets use the same measures to try to balance out harm to the environment.
The Commission has proposed a Nature Restoration Law that intends to support incentivisation for supporting biodiversity, Fink-Hooijer said.
EU co-legislators still need to reconcile a final text, having reached their own positions over the summer on the proposal to place recovery measures on 20% of the bloc’s land and sea by 2030.
Speaking about nature-related opportunities in general, she stressed that she “did not want to sell out nature”.
“Those who are the custodians of nature, those who are having to invest in restoration, maintaining it, they should be rewarded. Nature should become a business ally for business, if you want to have sustainable competitiveness, you need to factor nature in and that’s where the challenges are.”
Mario Nava, director general for structural reform at the Commission, said it would be “improper to give a yes or no reply” to a question from Carbon Pulse on whether the Commission is considering encouraging biodiversity credits.
“I’ve been 29 years at the commission and the one thing I’ve learned is not looking for one single thing within a within a strategy – seeing it holistically,” Nava said.
“We have a principal at the Commission, which is whatever legislation we do, it goes subject to impact assessment and stakeholders consultation.”
Nevertheless, there are “huge financial opportunities” in nature that can contribute to the transformation of the financial sector, he said. “There are huge opportunity costs of not acting.”
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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