UK-headquartered biodiversity credit developer RePlanet has stressed the need to develop tailored biodiversity units for marine conservation due to critical challenges holding back the market.

The nascent biodiversity credits market is focused on developing projects on land because of the “unique challenges” posed by marine environments, though attention to water-based credits is increasing, RePlanet said.

Max Bodmer, biodiversity project manager at RePlanet, said a lot of work is happening to address the problems associated with developing marine biodiversity credit-funded projects, but “does not yet have definitive solutions”, in an article published on his company’s website.

“While terrestrial environments are threatened by the global phenomenon of climate change, the major factor causing biodiversity decline is agricultural expansion leading to deforestation and deep-ploughing of grasslands,” he wrote.

“Conversely, while marine ecosystems are threatened by local phenomena, the main drivers of biodiversity decline are the global threats of ocean warming and acidification.”

In light of that, Bodmer suggested creating a “new type” of unit, which “accepts” that global threats cannot be mitigated on a local scale and rewards projects for slowing biodiversity declines through the establishment of “interventions that remove local threats and increase ecosystem resilience”.

“This approach may facilitate the survival of marine species and ecosystems through a period of extreme stress that represents an existential threat, while the political and technological solutions required to mitigate the global threats associated with human-induced climate change are developed and scaled,” he said.

Wallacea Trust, a non-profit partner of RePlanet, has included coral reefs as one of the example habitats its biodiversity credit methodology can apply to, with a ‘basket of metrics’ including indicators such as reef roughness. One oyster conservation company is looking to use the methodology to generate marine biodiversity credits.

RePlanet is partnering with companies on five biodiversity credit initiatives around the world that could each generate “$10 million or more”, including a coral reef in Anguilla. It is also looking to pilot a method to enable monitoring of biodiversity credit projects.

MAIN CHALLENGES

Establishing a biodiversity credit market for marine ecosystems is much more challenging than setting one up for land-based environments, due to ownership and measurement issues, sea conservation experts explained to Carbon Pulse earlier this month.

For instance, monitoring biodiversity in marine ecosystems is more problematic than on land, since scientific knowledge of intra-species and intra-habitat relationships is more limited.

This lack of knowledge can also add to uncertainty regarding the so-called ‘additionality’ of marine biodiversity credit schemes.

“With the exception of seagrass meadows and mangroves, marine ecosystems have low carbon storage and sequestration potential, meaning they have largely been excluded from the carbon market,” Bodmer said.

“This exclusion has prevented significant private investment and there is now an urgent need to establish alternative financial mechanisms that will allow the hundreds of billions of dollars required to protect marine environments to flow from the private sector into ocean conservation.”

More companies are developing advanced tools for remote sensing and environmental DNA analysis that can help address many of the challenges and scale financing towards marine conservation.

The biodiversity credit market is gaining traction as a key means to mobilise private funding and fill the $700 billion nature finance gap. To date, only 3% of marine and water bodies are considered marine protected areas.

Carbon Pulse has reached out to RePlanet for further information.

By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com

*** Click here to sign up to our twice-weekly biodiversity newsletter ***