A major carmaker in Japan has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government of Thailand to develop a prototype for Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) managed by private companies in a bid to take the Southeast Asian nation closer to meeting its biodiversity commitments.
Toyota’s Thai subsidiary agreed the move on Monday with the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy after securing OECM status for the Biodiversity and Sustainability Learning Center within its production facilities in Ban Pho.
“Toyota expects that the Biodiversity Center in the Toyota Ban Pho plant will be part of inspiring and encouraging greater participation in the conservation of biodiversity in the private sector through the sharing of knowledge and expertise to be a part of developing a comprehensive database of biodiversity in Thailand,” the company said in a statement.
OECMs are areas that don’t have formal status as protected areas, but still conserve nature due to the way they are managed, such as public parks, research forests, or freshwater sources used for the commercial production of beverages.
The 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework allows countries to count such OECMs toward their 30×30 commitments as long as the areas are registered in a global OECM registry.
Only around a dozen countries have sites registered so far, but a number of governments – especially across Asia – are in the process of drawing up domestic OECM frameworks as part of their strategies to meet their GBF goals.
Japan last year developed a framework for issuing ‘biodiversity support certificates’ for companies to assist in the creation and maintenance for OECMs that the corporations can use in their reporting under the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), though the certificates will not be tradeable.
Toyota has four OECMs registered in that domestic framework, with the one in Thailand becoming its first abroad.
Though it remains to be seen how the Thai framework will look, OECMs are emerging as a source of biodiversity credits.
Australia is including OECMs in its voluntary Nature Repair Market, while organisations such as Verra and Cercarbono will include OECMs in their crediting standards.
There is also growing interest for OECMs in China, where Huatai securities last month issued a call for expressions of interest in projects across Mainland China, after the government had said it will develop a framework to back such schemes.
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