Biodiversity monitoring and protection has taken centre stage in talks around forest carbon credits at the Climate Week NYC, with standards, project developers, and policymakers pushing for more nature accounting within the market.

Biodiversity and community benefits should be inseparable from a credible forest project, actors from the carbon space told a panel hosted by US tech company Chloris Geospatial on Tuesday.

Thibault Sorret, co-founder and CEO of the Ecosystem Restoration Standard (ERS), said that even among the biggest standards such as Verra, biodiversity should be a minimum standard, not just an add-on.

ERS focuses on afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR) projects, using an area-based method which evaluates changes in biomass over a given site.

Sorret said ESR employs what he called a “centralised approach”, meaning that the carbon calculations happen at the standard level.

“Ecological recovery and livelihoods are pillars of our standard as well as carbon,” he said.

Celia Francis, co-founder and CEO at Ponterra, added that leveraging reliable monitoring technologies is key to enhancing biodiversity protection within carbon projects.

The company has six projects listed under Verra’s VM0047, the methodology the standard developed for certifying ARR projects, while also carrying out a pilot for the standard’s SD VISta Nature methodology to issue biodiversity credits.

However, challenges are still remarkable, Francis said, as reflected in the emerging voluntary biodiversity credit market, where developers are grappling with identifying a reliable baseline to build confidence among buyers.

“Within our projects, we have to measure both biomass and biodiversity using technologies such as drones, satellite layers, bioacoustics, and LIDAR [light detection and ranging] remote sensing,” she said.

“This means that we probably have hundreds of different types of data to deal with. Monitoring biodiversity is much harder and more expensive than carbon.”

But improving monitoring could also lead, inversely, to a cost reduction, according to Julia Strong, executive director of the Symbiosis Coalition.

“One of the promises of data and monitor evaluation is actually that it can reduce transaction costs,” she said.

“By leveraging new technologies, it can be possible to reduce the amount of time and effort on the ground for monitoring evaluation”.

Launched in May by tech giants Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce, the Symbiosis Coalition represents the largest nature-restoration advanced market commitment (AMC) in the carbon space, initially focusing on procuring credits from forestry and mangroves projects.

“I think that one of the things that the market’s missing is the understanding of how much data is needed, both on the ground and remote sensing,” Strong said.

“Standard should be able to clarify what is the threshold of certainty of impact, and the data that are needed to have that amount of certainty.”

INVOLVING INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

As well as in the voluntary biodiversity market, involving Indigenous Peoples in the forest carbon projects is crucial.

​Mike Korchinsky, founder and president of conservation company Wildlife Works, said that while technologies are necessary to identify where the problems are, developers still need to figure out how to engage Indigenous People better.

“Let’s not forget the one thing you can’t see when in all your remote sensing images: the hundreds of millions of people who live in and around forests in the Global South, who are the solution to the problem.”

As a REDD+ project developer, Wildlife Works has initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Colombia.

It is also setting up a new standard called Equitable Earth, designed in partnership with Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the Global South.

“The definition of quality can’t just be about the technical aspect. It has to be about the impact that it’s having on the ground and the people who live in the forests,” he said.

“Safeguarding biodiversity and Indigenous People must be a minimum criteria for issuing carbon credits.”

PARA STATE AND THE LEAF COALITION

Biodiversity protection and benefit sharing with Indigenous People will be among the priorities of a newly announced deal between Brazilian state Para and the LEAF Coalition, an international public-private initiative aiming at providing finance to support forest governments and local communities in their efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation.

The agreement, which has been announced during a panel hosted on Tuesday by monitoring firm CTrees, will provide for the purchase of up to 12 million forest carbon credits generated by reductions in deforestation in Para over 2023-2026, said Helder Barbalho, Para governor.

Each credit represents 1 tonne of carbon emissions reductions from cuts in deforestation, and will be purchased upon issuance at $15 per tonne.

Under the agreement, LEAF Coalition buyers – including Amazon, Bayer, BCG, Capgemini, H&M Group, and Walmart Foundation – committed to purchasing 5 mln emissions reduction credits, with a further 7 mln credits available for additional corporate buyers. The agreement is worth an estimated $180 mln.

“The state government will use the proceeds from the LEAF agreement to finance programs to reduce deforestation and support traditional people’s way of life and sustainable economic development,” the governor said.

“70% of the revenues will go towards economic Indigenous Peoples, traditional communities, and family farmers on the front line in the battle against deforestation.”

According to a report released on Monday during the Climate Week NYC, annual nature-based solution investments in Brazil and the Caribbean grew past $1.6 bln, with agriculture-focused solutions seen as the top priority.

In recent months, several other biodiversity-related initiatives have been launched in Brazil, as the country prepares to host the COP30 UN climate summit in 2025, due to be held in Belem, Para.

In July, the government of Parana announced the upcoming implementation of a legal regulation to offset corporate impacts on nature, making it the first state in the country to establish a biodiversity crediting scheme.

By Giada Ferraglioni in New York – giada@carbon-pulse.com

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