UK-based RePlanet is looking to pilot a method with 10 project sites to enable relatively cheap monitoring of biodiversity credit projects.

The method, created in partnership with data company Mozaic Earth, aims to overcome the barrier to entry to the biodiversity credit market of measuring nature for landowners, RePlanet said in documents seen by Carbon Pulse.

“In this trial period, we are hoping to work with enthusiastic landowners and managers who will provide valuable insights to inform the further development of our framework to ensure that it is as user-friendly and scientifically robust as possible,” it said.

It plans to initiate the pilot in the UK, starting in April.

The package will cost £10,000 for an initiative of under 500 hectares over a maximum of five habitat types. It aligns with the methodology produced by non-profit Wallacea Trust, a partner of RePlanet.

The approach aims to keep costs low, partly by instructing users how to gather data via the Mozaic app rather than having to pay ecologists, RePlanet said. It also combines artificial intelligence with remote sensing and DNA samples. The app

Landowners should be able to prepare biodiversity credit project data for independent review by the Biodiversity Futures Initiative, or use it for internal reporting, via the method.

The process aims to help organisations produce metrics on species richness of some plants, beetles, pollinators, and birds, along with the UK government’s biodiversity net gain (BNG) indicator.

Gathering methods include:

• 50 photos of a habitat, taken once in May-June and again in July-August
• Pollinator samples each month from May to September
• Insect samples
• 100 audio recordings in May and June

The Wallacea Trust launched a third version of its methodology for measuring uplift in biodiversity credits last October. The organisation defines a credit as a 1% uplift, or avoided loss, in biodiversity per hectare using a location-dependent ‘basket of metrics’.

“Landowners and managers are under increasing pressure to quantify biodiversity, and many are hoping to secure investment from private finance to support the implementation of environmentally beneficial interventions across their estates,” RePlanet said.

“The high costs associated with conducting the large-scale field assessments required to accurately estimate species richness and abundance across a project site have prevented the widespread adoption of biodiversity quantification as standard practice.”

Source: RePlanet and Mozaic Earth

RePlanet told Carbon Pulse this month that it is partnering with other companies on five biodiversity credit initiatives around the world that could each generate “$10 million or more” under a rough early estimate. However, these initiatives use different data gathering processes from the above proposed pilot.

The credit developer has partnered with a company based in Switzerland working on a process that will be able to issue blockchain tokens for independently verified biodiversity credits in the next month or so.

The nascent biodiversity credit market has attracted an increasing amount of attention over the last couple of years, with lots of project announcements seeking to help plug the nature financing gap, but few actual transactions have taken place.

Cercarbono, Verra, Terrasos, and Plan Vivo are developing approaches to measuring biodiversity uplift in nature-related credits.

By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com

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