A French initiative launched this week to develop a methodology for assessing the biodiversity benefits of activities, a move expected to underpin the creation of voluntary biodiversity credits.
The French National Museum of Natural History (MNHN), the Biodiversity Research Foundation, and consultants Carbone 4 will carry out the study, backed by the Organisation for Biodiversity Certificates (OBS).
“The purpose of this programme is to define a standard methodology for evaluating actions deemed favourable to biodiversity based on a consensus of experts,” MNHN said in an announcement Wednesday.
Such a methodology can create the foundation for determining how many and what type of credits can be issued to projects that involve certain activities.
Sylvie Goulard, co-chair of the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPP) – a French-British led initiative to build the basics of a global biodiversity market – was present at the programme launch.
The study will primarily focus on activities related to temperate agriculture and forest, with the scope to be expanded later, including to tropical forests.
Romain Julliard, a professor of ecology with MNHN, said the study would take an innovative approach as the concept is “far removed” from traditional approaches based on counting species.
“It will make it possible to distinguish the good performers from the less good, and to respond more easily to the internal and external reporting requirements of private and public players in the field of biodiversity,” said Fabiola Flex, president of OBC and co-founding partner with nature project developer aDryada, in a separate statement.
OBC was launched just over a year ago and now counts around 20 members, with apparel brand Kering, offset standard Gold Standard, and investors Ardian among recent sign-ups.
Through OBC, members Pernod Ricard, Kering, and Fransylva are supporting the new methodology study.
OBC is seeking to “define the market mechanisms that will enable the emergence of a complete value chain and transactions in quality biodiversity certificates”, it said, with a position paper due to be released in a year’s time.
“The next step will be to develop and enrich the methodology so that it can be used to create standards and be deployed in as many ecosystems around the world as possible,” the organisation said.
While the emerging biodiversity market is still in its formative process, with continuous discussions ongoing about its basics and fundamentals, a number of market participants are simultaneously eager to get started with projects and funding due to the severity of the nature crisis.
On LinkedIn, one delegate at the launch ceremony of the French initiative was quoted saying that “we don’t have the time or the money to wait and deal with complexity”.
But Frederic Hache, the executive director of the Green Finance Observatory who has been warning about negative outcomes of commoditising nature, said in a separate LinkedIn post that the delegate’s comment “sums up the debate quite well”.
“It doesn’t matter that biodiversity compensation has a catastrophic record, it doesn’t matter that academic research has amply highlighted its insoluble problems of environmental integrity and the high risks of landgrabbing, it doesn’t matter that these pseudo-markets are systematically less efficient than traditional environmental regulations, we have to do it quickly and simply, and too bad if it doesn’t make any sense environmentally speaking,” Hache said.
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