Businesses, governments, and non profits are all turning an eye toward biodiversity credit markets as a way to keep tabs of conservation gains, mitigate damages, and enhance corporate responsibility. But biodiversity is a lot more complicated than carbon, so special care is needed to do this right. Our team of scientists from academia, industry, government, and non-profit sectors just published this paper setting forth “Guideposts and Guardrails” to highlight risks and opportunities in biodiversity accounting and point this ongoing, exciting discourse in a safer, more scientifically sound, and fairer direction.

Click here to Read this Open-Access Paper

In our work on Nature-based Solutions and Natural Infrastructure, colleagues have repeatedly highlighted the need for reliable biodiversity accounting systems that can help document or even anticipate the biodiversity benefits or impacts of projects. This has become even more important as Biodiversity Net Gain has been formalized in Criterion 3 of IUCN’s Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions. This paper forms the conceptual basis and philosophical approach which we are tackling this issue in a new project to develop biodiversity scorecards for Nature-based Solutions applications. More to come soon!