An Argentine conservation organisation has partnered with a French-headquartered environmental company to generate biodiversity and water credits within an area of 1.2 million hectares in the Andes.
Under the initiative, San Jose-based project developer Fundacion Tu Arbol (FTA) will lead an initiative aimed at conserving and restoring biodiversity on the land under its management, while Nat5 will monitor nature gains through applying its recently validated frameworks for biodiversity and water credits.
Credits will be verified by an independent third party, Guillermo Hinojos, CEO of Nat5, told Carbon Pulse.
“We’ll soon launch a call to identify the third-party verification body. Right now, we’re in the process of defining the financing strategy, and we plan to start the project assessment in July,” he said, adding that the first credits are expected to be issued next year.
“The first batch of units will be pre-sold to help the project developer and land owners finance their conservation and restoration activities. Buyers will most likely include local companies.”
Credits will be issued on condition that the anticipated positive outcomes for nature are demonstrated, Hinojos said.
Under the Nat5 biodiversity credit framework, approved by the certifier Bureau Veritas, one unit represents the conservation or restoration of a 100 sq. metres area for one year, with payments made at the end of each year.
Eligible activities include forest management, regenerative agriculture, urban forests, and water flow restoration, and species and ecosystem uplift will be measured through combining bioacoustics and satellite imagery technologies with on-the-ground observation.
The company recently designed a separate framework for water credits, with one unit representing the improvement in water infiltration of an area of land of one cubic metre.
PICKING THE METHODOLOGY
Nat5 plans to apply both methodologies to the upcoming project in Argentina, and pick the framework that fits each conservation or restoration activity best depending on the expected outcomes as well as the area it is being implemented in.
“The impact that FTA’s activities will have on one or more components of local biodiversity will determine whether they generate biodiversity or water credits, or both,” Hinojos said, pointing out that the project will see the collaboration of local researchers and universities.
“FTA has been working for decades on conserving and protecting the natural and cultural-historical heritage in the area of San Juan. They have strong connections with local communities and Indigenous Peoples.”
Nat5, created last year by the Franco-Mexican ecological engineering company Ases, started piloting its biodiversity credit methodology for nature conservation and restoration projects last month at three sites in the Mexican states of Durango, Oaxaca, and Chihuahua, with the first results expected by the end of October.
The company also launched a separate project on land of around 8 ha in Chihuahua to pilot its water credit methodology, which was greenlit in mid-May by an academic body at the Faculty of Zootechnics and Ecology of Mexico’s Autonomous University of Chihuahua.
Nat5 plans to kickstart another water credit pilot project in Colombia in the next few months.
By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com
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