Global forest investor and management firm New Forests is preparing to expand its biodiversity credit baselining work in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a company executive.

The Sydney-headquartered sustainable timber investor plans to collect the metrics required to potentially generate biodiversity credits from future assets acquired under its Sub-Saharan African strategy, Sarah Clawson, global head of investor relations at the company, told a webinar hosted by the financier on Tuesday.

The investor is already baselining for biodiversity credits in areas in Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania, said Clawson. In May, she said this was across 37,800 hectares.

“Our team on the ground, based out of Kenya and Nairobi, is continuing with the baseline work,” said Clawson in response to a question from Carbon Pulse.

“The objective is very much to build those out in future assets that we will acquire across Sub-Saharan Africa. There’s assets we’re looking at right now, especially in South Africa, and a few others that are in the pipeline.”

In 2022, with investment partners British International Investment, Norfund, and Finnfund, New Forests launched a Sub-Saharan Africa forestry strategy with focus areas including biodiversity. It raised $200 million that year towards its target of hitting $500 mln by 2026.

COMMON UNDERSTANDING

The challenge with biodiversity credits is in identifying the past, present, and potential future state of a landscape, and transforming it into something regenerative, said Mark Rogers, CEO of New Forests Asset Management.

“We need to very quickly move to a common church of understanding around biodiversity and nature positive methodologies … regulators will help with that process,” said Rogers.

Biodiversity markets could become as complicated as those of carbon without focus, he said.

“We need people to roll up the sleeves, get a set of methodologies in place, and to start moving in the right direction, to start trading and start regulating for these outcomes.”

“Otherwise, we’ll end up in 20 years’ time with a far more degraded environment.”

New Forests manages A$11.7 billion ($8 bln) over 1.3 million ha globally.

CASSOWARY CREDITS

On Tuesday, an Australian nature market regulator published a draft credit standard for restoring the habitat of cassowary birds.

“I think it’s fantastic that these projects are starting from an investor perspective. A lot of people want to wait until it’s all done and there is an existing market, but I really think that you do have to start somewhere,” said Clawson of the cassowary credits.

David Brand, executive chair of New Forests, said the company was trying to understand how the credits would work in practice.

“The Australian Nature Repair Market is in its early stages, and we’re trying to understand how it’s structured. It’s not really like a credit market, it’s more like a project market,” said Brand.

Eco-Markets is seeking feedback on the method and standard until Oct. 30.

By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com

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