A conservation finance organisation has started developing a framework for stewardship certificates, with plans to submit it for consideration to crediting standard Verra, Carbon Pulse has learned.

Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA) has set up a task force that brings together non-profit organisations, philanthropies, and government agencies, seeking to finalise the proposal by year-end.

“Biodiversity credit methodologies systematically exclude areas of high biodiversity value that have been well managed. We want to fill this gap,” David Meyers, executive director of CFA, told Carbon Pulse.

“We will find a place for the stewardship certificates we’re working on, and Verra is our first choice. They have been open to this but want to focus first on their main unit.”

Verra, which is part of the CFA task force, recently said it is on track to launch its nature framework towards the end of the year, while confirming it intends to explore nature stewardship credits or certificates as a separate unit type.

The concept of stewardship certificates is based on the aim to increase the financial viability of areas that have been well managed, mostly by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, without using counterfactuals.

SHIFTING THE FOCUS

“At the moment, everyone is focused on finding a way to demonstrate biodiversity uplift. But we can’t create a mechanism that ignores these areas as well as their guardians,” said Meyers.

“Also, from a financial perspective, it is much more cost-effective to maintain what we have rather than cutting it down and then attempting to replant it.”

The framework that is being developed by the CFA task force would apply both to terrestrial and marine ecosystems, according to Meyers.

One certificate would represent the maintenance of a high-quality ecosystem at a certain percentage of its intactness for a year.

“If you’ve maintained 90% integrity in the ecosystem for five years, then you get five years of certificates. If it drops down, you don’t get the certificate. If you can reestablish it, then you can get certificates again,” said Meyers.

“It’s like a pay-for-success model, where the success is maintenance, not change.”

PROTECTED AREAS DILEMMA

Meyers said the framework could also apply to protected areas to ensure they are not downsized or downgraded and can effectively prevent intact lands from being converted to other uses, such as agriculture.

Land use change is regarded as a primary driver of biodiversity loss, threatening over 460 million hectares of the world’s natural land, according to a study published this week.

“Protected areas are our best option to avoid land conversion, but we need to find the right way to include them in our framework,” said Meyers.

“These areas are largely funded by governments, and we must be cautious not to disincentivise countries to finance nature conservation.”

Meyers said the CFA task force intends to present its plans at this year’s COP16 UN biodiversity summit, in order to generate feedback before the framework is finalised.

In recent months, other initiatives have emerged to develop stewardship credits. Carbon standard Social Carbon plans to release a methodology for nature stewardship credits during the third quarter of this year at the latest, with the first pilots expected to launch in 2025.

Last year, four organisations in the UK and Peru partnered with the aim to facilitate pilot biodiversity stewardship credit transactions.

By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com

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