The story was updated on March 22 with comments from Bluebell.

A Brazilian fintech startup has released a methodology for measuring biodiversity impacts in farms, paving the way for issuing biodiversity credits.

Sao Paolo-based Bluebell Index developed a model to estimate the avoided amount of biodiversity loss generated by restoration projects by combining various ecosystem assessments.

Bluebell’s approach was piloted in a 1,434-hectare ranch in Brazil’s Cerrado, the country’s second-largest biome and one of the world’s most biodiverse regions.

“The production of biodiversity credits involves many steps and challenges, such as accurately measuring biodiversity benefits and ensuring that compensations are effective,” said the paper.

“These challenges should be seen more as an opportunity to enhance frameworks than obstacles. The most urgent impact to address using our biodiversity evaluation is the negative effects of land use and cover to biodiversity.”

Leveraging datasets such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species and MapBiomas’ satellite imagery, the framework correlates three key indicators – species density, landscape connectivity, and agrobiodiversity.

“We simulate scenarios of land use change and occupation, both to understand the current state of the property, and to present the benefits of biodiversity restoration to the property as a whole,” Joao Horst, COO at Bluebell, told Carbon Pulse.

SPECIES DENSITY

The model, designed to estimate impacts on biodiversity in areas of small and intermediate sizes, such as farms and ranches, identified seven categories of land use and cover.

Each of these is associated with the pressure of human activities on a zero to four scale, zero being the lowest impact:

• Forests – zero
• Naturally non-forest areas, such as mountainous areas  – zero
• Water surface areas – zero
• Pastures – one
• Woodlands– one
• Agricultural areas – two
• Non-vegetated areas due to human action, including paving and mining activities – four

Information on land cover change is overlayed with species richness to generate the first indicator, which estimates the impact on species density in a hypothetical 1,000-ha area.

LANDSCAPE CONNECTIVITY

The second indicator evaluates landscape connectivity, reflecting the ease of movement for species within that area.

“The way fragments of different land use and cover categories are connected, directly affects biological dispersal,” the paper said.

“Organisms can perceive changes in the landscape configuration, to the extent that these changes can encourage or inhibit the dispersion from one site to another.”

Bluebell’s methodology also seeks to estimate species “resistance” to movement, attributing values from one to eight to each of the seven land use and cover categories.

Forests, naturally non-forest areas, and water surface areas are associated with the lowest values, followed by pastures, woodlands, and agricultural areas.

Non-vegetated sites are assigned the highest value, indicating that species movement is significantly restricted.

“We evaluate landscape connectivity as a cost – the risk that an individual assumes, for example when moving in a landscape modified by human action, since it would be more exposed to predators or dehydration, imposed by landscapes without vegetation cover,” Horst said.

AGROBIODIVERSITY

A third indicator entails the evaluation of the biological biodiversity in terms of food and agriculture.

“Agrobiodiversity is usually neglected as a positive component of biodiversity,” the paper said.

“For instance, the varietal diversity – e.g. black, brown, and white beans – reflects genetic diversity that is important both to food diversity and biodiversity conservation, because the varietal can exhibit traits adapted to new ecological conditions.”

Agriculture is usually criticised for its harm to biodiversity due to its destructive impacts globally on land use, water, and soil.

Under the framework, monitoring, reporting, and verification techniques will include monitoring based on unmanned aerial vehicles and cameras, as well as surveys on agrobiodiversity and wild species.

Since its launch in 2021, Bluebell has used drones, satellite images, and other technologies to assist landowners in mapping the content of soil, water, biodiversity, and carbon.

Last year, the company announced a partnership with Seed Group, a company linked to the royal family in Dubai, looking to gain a foothold in the carbon credit market while also foraying into the emerging biodiversity credit space.

Measuring ecosystem and species uplifts is regarded as one of the most critical challenges holding back the nascent biodiversity credit market.

While the voluntary biodiversity credits market was estimated at around $8 million last year, global demand could reach as much as $180 billion in a radical future scenario, the World Economic Forum said in December.

By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com

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