A Bogota-based carbon developer is piloting a biodiversity credit project in an Indigenous reserve in the Amazon, planning to put the first credits on sale after COP16 in Colombia, the company has told Carbon Pulse.
The Community Forest partnered with developers Yauto and Carbo Sostenible and consultancy Terra Commodities to implement a conservation initiative in 27,800 hectares within the Indigenous reserve of Monochoa, located around the Caqueta River.
Led by experts specialising in birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and flora, the project aims to deliver monitoring activities in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples, leveraging technologies such as eco-acoustic sensors, satellite imagery, and camera traps.
Juan Daniel Correra Salazar, strategic partnerships and communications officer at the Community Forest, told Carbon Pulse the whole initiative was designed together with the Indigenous communities that legally own the land, involving the Huioto, Andoke, and Muinane people that live within the Cano Negro, Tirivita, and Saini communities.
“Our efforts are enriched by the involvement of approximately 20 members of those communities,” he said.
“Their ancestral knowledge deeply informs the research, ensuring that the biodiversity credits are scientifically robust, culturally significant, and grounded in traditional ecological wisdom.”
As one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, the Monochoa reserve is home to flagship animal species such as jaguars, tapirs, giant otters, red and blue macaws, charapa turtles, and monkeys.
The region is largely threatened by deforestation and ecosystem degradation due to economic drivers, such as illicit use of crops, illegal and informal mining, land accumulation and speculation, and the expansion of agricultural and cattle ranching activities that generate income.
“Although many of these drivers take place in areas belonging to the Indigenous communities, their governance capacity to control and avoid degradation is limited, in large part due to the lack of resources,” Juan Andres Lopez, project leader of the initiative for Carbo Sostenible, told Carbon Pulse.
“This biodiversity credit project aims to enhance economic security and access to basic services, such as healthcare, housing, education, water supply, and transport.”
As Colombia prepares to host the COP16, due to be held in Cali, over Oct. 21-Nov. 1, the country’s environmental ministry recently announced an agreement with the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon to value their contribution and strengthen their participation in conserving and restoring the rainforest.
METHODOLOGY AND CREDITS
Lopez said the team is still considering various methodologies, focusing particularly on those developed by Plan Vivo and Biocarbon.
“Both are similar as they rely on a set of various biodiversity indexes,” he said.
Under the Biocarbon methodology, biodiversity gains would be measured by combining 15 indicators, ranging from landscape composition to species richness, Lopez said.
The overall increase in biodiversity is then multiplied by the hectares of the project area, determining the number of credits that can be issued every year.
The Community Forests said it expects to make the first transaction after the UN biodiversity summit, and that the credits will be listed on Plan Vivo or Biocarbon’s registry, depending on the methodology they pick.
“We will also rely on a third-party verification body to assess the outcomes on a yearly base,” said Correra Salazar.
While the price for the credits hasn’t been defined yet, Correra Salazar said they expect them to be much more expensive than carbon credits due to the cost related to the monitoring and conservation activities.
“That’s why we are trying to attract funds from overseas,” he said, mentioning that they are still in the process of identifying potential buyers.
The company already runs large REDD+ projects on over 2.5 million ha within Amazon reserves of Monochoa, Puerto Zabalo y Los Monos, and Crima.
The nascent biodiversity market is increasingly regarded as a key means to channel funds towards Indigenous Peoples and various conservation efforts, with a number of projects recently launched across Latin America ahead of COP16.
According to Drea Burbank, CEO and co-founder of US-based Savimbo, market interest in biodiversity projects led by Indigenous Peoples is surging, adding that native communities increasingly see biodiversity credits as a means to tackle threats to their territory coming from big companies.
By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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