Marine biodiversity credit methodologies should focus on addressing quick shifts in aquatic ecosystem conditions to create reliable units for the market, an expert told a webinar on Wednesday.

Speaking at an online panel hosted by the Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA), Kristina Koenig, nature markets lead at the Australian-based Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF), said aquatic ecosystems are highly exposed to rapid changes, as seen with coral bleaching caused by the climate crisis.

“Aquatic ecosystems respond quickly to climate change impacts, and you might end up accounting for a baseline looking different five or 10 years down the track to what you thought it looked like when you started the project,” Koenig said.

“We need to be comfortable providing for more flexible baselining approaches in our methodologies.”

The GBRF has already started a project to explore biodiversity credits in the area, supported by the beauty product brand L’Oreal’s Fund for Nature Regeneration and the Australian federal government.

The partnership, announced last year, seeks to pioneer a methodology to calculate the value of coral reef biodiversity and support the deployment of heat-tolerant corals.

“It’s really crucial to get the science right at the start, in order to establish a market with strong scientific integrity that the demand side can trust,” Koenig said

“The key for scaling the market is to be really clear about what the credit represents and the claim that can be made about it.”

Currently, tens of biodiversity credit methodologies have been developed by multiple actors, employing various approaches and metrics to assess units.

Due to the unique challenges posed by aquatic environments, especially marine ecosystems, the nascent biodiversity credit market has focused so far on developing projects on land – though attention to water-based credits is increasing.

According to Virly Yuriken, chairperson at Misool Foundation, the charity arm of the private island resort Misool, marine biodiversity credit methodologies should be tailored to fit long-standing and solid projects to be more effective, since local developers have already dealt with an ecosystem baseline for years.

“When we started our project, we were very far from perfection,” said Yuriken. “Establishing a baseline can be very complicated.”

Moreover, according to Yuriken, if methodologies are tailored to ongoing projects, it would be easier for them to be eligible and access the market.

The charity, launched in 2008, operates in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, with the aim of protecting a 1,220-square kilometre area within one of the most biodiverse reefs in the world. It is also committed to restoring 1,000 sq. m of reef per year.

“Forget about credits, units are probably the most important issue we have at the moment,” Tim Coles, CEO of UK-based RePlanet, added during the online panel.

“Even the BCA’s definition of biodiversity credits does not mention units. But imagine the carbon market without the tonne of CO2e as the unit: how would you measure and ensure the uplifts?”

In an article published by RePlanet earlier this year, the company stressed the need to develop “a new type” of biodiversity units for marine conservation due to critical challenges holding back the market.

Wallacea Trust, a non-profit partner of RePlanet, has included coral reefs as one of the example habitats its biodiversity credit methodology can apply to, with a ‘basket of metrics’ including indicators such as reef roughness.

By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com

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