Private landowners are increasingly pushing for the EU to clarify how and to what extent Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) will be part of the bloc’s biodiversity strategy, a European Commission official told a webinar this week.

Although there is increasing focus on the potential of OECMs – areas that provide long-term conservation for ecosystems even though that is not their primary purpose – as a means to meet the 30×30 target under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), only a handful of countries have had a significant number included in the global OECM registry.

Europe is one of the regions lagging behind, and though the EU has around 900 nationally registered OECMs there is no bloc-level reporting mechanism and the EU’s own OECM definition has not been fully aligned with that of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Officials working on addressing the situation are under growing pressure, however, according to Frank Vassen, a Commission policy officer.

“The whole discussion on OECMs is actually triggering a bit more pressure to look at alternative approaches to land conservation,” he told a webinar arranged this week by FACE, the European Federation for Hunting and Conservation.

Pressure is coming primarily from private landowners interested in qualifying for getting their conservation activities recognised as contributing to the Union’s GBF target, according to Vassen.

While the EU’s biodiversity strategy opens for the use of OECMs, work to clearly define their contribution has been delayed.

The EU is also struggling with a data gap, with detailed information lacking in most member states. Under the Natura 2000 programme member states were asked to voluntarily report the status of their existing OECMs by the end of 2022, but not a single country met that deadline.

Five EU nations – Germany, Denmark, Spain, Luxembourg, and Sweden – have submitted data this year, of varying quality, according to Vassen.

20 YEARS BEHIND

The lack of leadership on the issue is troubling, according to Olivier Hymas, a senior researcher at Switzerland’s University of Lausanne who is preparing to set up an OECM working group in Europe.

“The EU is a leader in conservation policy and funding,” he told the webinar.

Over the last decades it has recognised the role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in protecting biodiversity. It is now time we do the same back in Europe, where … I sometimes see that we are 20 years what we do in other parts of the world.”

Hymas said that some of the OECMs around Europe would not qualify to contribute to the GBF target, but that others would, and that the system could contribute to as much as a percentage point towards the 30×30 goal.

“In Europe, to realise the full potential of OECMs, we need to recognise that many of the most cost-effective biodiversity protectors are invisible to policy makers and defenders of biodiversity,” he said, calling for a new approach to conservation.

MARKET ANGLE

Asked about how OECMs might be funded, Hymas said that some would likely need government funding while in other cases it would only be a matter of letting landowners or organisations continue to do what they have already been doing for decades or centuries.

At the same time, OECMs is beginning to emerge as a potential significant source of supply for the nascent biodiversity credit market.

Colombia-based standard Cercarbono last week released a draft biodiversity certification programme, specifically listing OECMs among activities that would qualify for crediting.

That follows an October move by the Japanese government, when it awarded OECM status to 122 sites across 77,000 sq. km and said these would be allowed to sell “biodiversity support certificates” to companies wishing to contribute to nature conservation, use in their Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) reports, or similar needs.

As well, Australia earlier this year launched a public consultation process on the use of OECMs. While there was no specific mention of crediting in that, the government this week legislated its Nature Repair Market (NRM), for which methodologies will be developed over the next few years.

Voluntary biodiversity credits from European OECMs might be attractive for potential EU buyers wanting to contribute to local projects or initiatives addressing the same type of ecosystems that their other activities impact.

SOME WAY TO GO

The conversation on OECMs is heating up, with some pushing for governments to speed up the process of recognising such efforts while other expressing concern they may contribute to water down the GBF 30×30 target.

But even if OECMs did become a success in a global voluntary biodiversity credit market, it would likely be a while until the first certificates are issued.

Cercarbono, becoming the first international voluntary standard to open the door for OECMs, set as a criteria that they would only be eligible for project proponents that get sites added to the World Database on OECMs.

Research published this week in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science found that only 20 privately owned OECMs have been registered in that database, with almost all the areas managed by NGOs.

The study, led by UNEP-WCMC’s Nature Conserved, found that privately-owned protected areas and OECMs provided significant contributions to protection, adding crucial connectivity even if their total area was limited.

Governments too often don’t take privately-owned land into consideration when making their biodiversity strategies, the study found.

“This study demonstrates that both PPAs and privately governed OECMs already play an important role in protecting biodiversity in some countries and territories around the world,” it said.

“The contributions of these areas – while modest in most cases – to the implementation of Target 3 go beyond coverage by extending protection to Key Biodiversity Areas and under-represented ecoregions, and by increasing the percentage of land that can be considered both protected and connected,” it added, referring to the part of the GBF target to effectively conserve and manage at least 30% land and sea.

It did point out some transparency issues with OECMs the way they are currently organised, however.

“Efforts are underway to better monitor this crucial aspect of Target 3, and the data gathered will provide new opportunities to assess the relative effectiveness of different governance types,” said the study.

“In the case of OECMs, it will also provide greater transparency regarding the basis on which individual OECMs are considered effective conservation measures, and may lead to changes in the currently reported data, for example if data providers choose to divide up very large OECMs into smaller parcels for which there is stronger evidence of effectiveness.”

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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