Uncertainty looms over coastal and marine habitat conservation, as the emerging biodiversity credit markets are not yet consistent enough to drive adequate investments in ecosystem protection efforts, a NatureMetrics executive said Tuesday.

Samantha Howlett, business development manager at UK nature intelligence firm NatureMetrics, emphasised the potential of biodiversity credit methodologies in accounting for nature in blue carbon habitats, although the market is still in its development phase.

“Emerging biodiversity credit methodologies tend to take an in-depth approach and place emphasis on site-level data, but these are very nascent,” Howlett said during a webinar on blue carbon organised by NatureMetrics.

“Sadly, what we see for a lot of coastal and marine habitats is an air of uncertainty. Carbon markets aren’t established for a number of habitat types, and biodiversity credits are in the very early stage.”

Correctly measuring carbon storage in marine ecosystems is considered one of the main challenges for developing successful blue carbon projects.

At the same time, establishing a biodiversity credit market for marine ecosystems is much more problematic than setting one up for land-based environments due to measurement issues arising from the limited scientific knowledge of intra-species and intra-habitat relationships.

To date, the focus in marine environments has been on building markets around carbon, because it is seen as easier to quantify than biodiversity, Howlett said.

“This is no longer the case. There’s a lot of data out there, and there’s a lot of opportunity to build meaningful reporting mechanisms and markets around biodiversity.”

Sean Fitzpatrick, technical lead at blue carbon project developer West Africa Blue, said biodiversity credits could prove a viable solution, once measurement challenges have been overcome.

West Africa Blue is looking to register its projects under the Verra Climate, Community, and Biodiversity standard.

“Biodiversity markets are a very hot topic right now. Lots of people are trying to figure out how they will work. There are a couple of ongoing pilots to try to decide what metric you would require to translate biodiversity into something tangible and valuable,” Fitzpatrick said during the webinar.

“The appetite is definitely there. We’re working actively with all the different stakeholders to try to anticipate what’s going to happen and provide our own input to help guide that.”

The conservation of marine ecosystems is one of the main goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, whose national signatories have committed to protecting at least 30% of land and seas by 2030.

According to the Marine Conservation Institute, less than 3% of oceans are considered marine protected areas.

By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com

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