UN-backed Biodiversity Credits Alliance (BCA) announced on Monday it is about to launch a digital framework to enhance transparency in the nascent voluntary biodiversity market, amid pressing concerns over how to guarantee Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty over data.
The framework will undergo an extensive consultation process among the alliance’s 500 members, starting from Oct. 22, before being publicly released, Manesh Lacoul, global BCA coordinator, told an event at the COP16 UN biodiversity summit.
“It aims to lay the foundation for a market which is experiencing a lot of challenges, including dealing with a variety of technological solutions and digital platforms,” he said.
According to Hania Othman, director of sustainable finance at impact fund HBAR Foundation, the framework seeks to provide a standardised toolkit for how to track transactions and verify claims in real time by leveraging distributed ledger technology, such as blockchain.
“The toolkit will set the foundation on how we can scale biodiversity credits with integrity, transparency, and accountability,” Othman said.
“The biodiversity market is at risk of fragmentation, and if every single entity and project operates under a divergence of standards, we will never move further. That’s why, in this document, we are pushing for a standardisation.”
The framework will also address the issues of fair data governance and benefit sharing, including ensuring that technologies used for monitoring biodiversity gains are accessible to Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
“We have to look at how we integrate communities with the newest digital infrastructures and, at the same time, bring their knowledge to the market,” said Nathalie Whitaker, co-founder of the New Zealand tech company Toha Network.
“With the right digital tools, we can give visibility to the work that Indigenous Peoples and local communities are already doing, and build trust on that.”
However, concerns over how to guarantee the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples and local communities over biodiversity data collected in their lands remain, according to representatives of several NGOs on the panel.
Marcello Birto from the Interstate Amazon Consortium in Brazil noted that almost 10,000 communities in the pan-Amazon regions in South America do not have access to the Internet, while a representative for the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) called for more efforts to ensure that revenues are equally shared.
To address most of these issues, the BCA established the Community Advisory Panel (CAP), which earlier this year released a set of recommendations on biodiversity credits in a bid to bring attention to Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ rights.
Enhancing the active involvement of Indigenous Peoples in the decision-making process is one of the priorities for the COP16 outlined by the Colombian presidency, including recognising their land ownership and ensuring their participation in the high-level talks.
The BCA is expected to launch a separate set of high-integrity principles for the market developed in partnership with the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB) and the World Economic Forum.
By Giada Ferraglioni in Cali – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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