Australia’s GreenCollar will hand its NaturePlus biodiversity crediting scheme to Accounting for Nature, in early 2025, for independent administration in a bid to enhance credibility and lay the foundations for market growth.

GreenCollar, Australia’s biggest developer of carbon credits, which is also involved in programmes like the country’s Reef Credit Scheme, launched NaturePlus in 2022 as a means for developers to earn revenue-generating credits for activities that conserve biodiversity.

Its plan from the start has been to at some stage transfer the administration of the scheme to an independent body. Last year, investor Pollination said in a report that independent administration of schemes will be needed in the biodiversity market in order to satisfy integrity considerations.

“If we are to truly achieve lasting landscape scale gains for nature, we must measure and confirm the outcomes of projects, and that say they are benefitting nature, and have them rigorously and independently verified,” James Schultz, GreenCollar CEO, said in a press release on Tuesday.

“This move is a major step for attracting investment and building rigour, legitimacy, and trust into markets mechanisms aimed at repairing nature through environmental projects.”

To date, around 60,000 NaturePlus credits – each representing restoration or conservation of one hectare of project area – have been issued to two projects, both run by GreenCollar and both also earning Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).

According to the scheme website, a total 20 projects have been registered under the programme, though their names and the identity of their owners are not available.

Accounting for Nature (AfN) said in Tuesday’s press release that it is in the process of building a digital registry for the NaturePlus scheme.

GOVERNANCE

AfN is a non-profit environmental accounting body with more than 90 methods across land, freshwater, and oceans.

It said it will enable project developers to issue NaturePlus credits without them having to establish their own standards, so as to provide them with a clear route to market.

“Strict governance and integrity requirements will ensure the separation of responsibilities between standard management and credit issuance, safeguarding the credibility of the system,” the company said.

“This will also apply to third-party issuance standards that wish to use the AfN framework to support their own branded credits.”

Any credits to be issued under the scheme will be subject to independent auditing, digital registry tracking, and stringent transparency measures.

GreenCollar has set up an Independent Science Committee to help ensure the quality of the NaturePlus scheme, and AfN will add a Standards and Integrity Committee to that, it said.

“This pilot initiative will help us create a robust framework that not only strengthens the NaturePlus standard, but also sets a new benchmark for independence, transparency, and accountability in environmental markets globally,” said AfN CEO Adrian Ward.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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