Biodiversity credits are an emerging vehicle for pro-environmental financing, yet much uncertainty remains around how and when they could boost biodiversity conservation. Here we define what biodiversity credits are and explore impact pathways through a proposed theory of change. Based on evidence from 34 pilot projects and a review of lessons from related market-based incentives for conservation, we further explore potential opportunities and pitfalls, including future supply and demand, bundling/stacking options, and needed social safeguards. We explore how biodiversity credits can better tackle challenges linked to additionality, permanence, leakage, and commensurability. While new monitoring technologies can help quantify biodiversity, trade-offs exist between simple metrics enabling liquid markets and costlier ones more adequately representing biodiversity. To avoid past mistakes, sound credit design and implementation require more robust crediting baselines, standards, governance, and impact evaluation. Quality credits will be more expensive than those cutting integrity corners, which may dampen the expected biodiversity credit boom.
Tag: biodiversity
An operational model for implementing conservation action
The preoccupation of many conservation planners with the refinement of systematic assessment techniques has manifested an “implementation crisis” in conservation planning. This preoccupation has provided systematic assessments with well-tested tools (e.g., area selection algorithms) and principles (e.g., representation, complementarity), but our understanding of these techniques currently far exceeds our ability to apply them effectively to pragmatic conservation problems. The science is informative about where one needs to do conservation, but silent on how to achieve it. Operational models, defined as simplified conceptualizations of processes for implementing conservation action at priority conservation areas, are essential for guiding conservation planning initiatives because they assist understanding of how these processes function. Operational models developed to date have largely been linear, simplistic, and focused on the systematic assessment of biological entities. Experience in the real world indicates that operational models for conducting conservation planning initiatives should explicitly complement a systematic conservation assessment with activities that empower individuals and institutions (enabling) and explicitly aim to secure conservation action (implementation). Specifically, implementing effective conservation action requires that systematic assessments be integrated functionally with a process for developing an implementation strategy and processes for stakeholder collaboration while maintaining a broad focus on the implementation of conservation action. A suite of hallmarks define effective operational models (e.g., stakeholder collaboration, links with land-use planning, social learning, and action research). Greater development and testing of the practical application of operational models should lead to higher levels of effective implementation and alleviate the implementation crisis. Social learning institutions are essential for ensuring ongoing improvement in the development and application of operational models that deliver effective conservation action.
Choosing between native and introduced tree species when planting
Key messages
- Both native and introduced tree species are important for planting, but the choice of which category to plant depends on the desired products and ecosystem services, the location and the planters themselves.
- Global planting initiatives are making an increased effort to include a wider range of native trees. This is to counter the current focus on a narrow species base, which leaves planted trees susceptible to system shocks and may impact the supply of tree products and services, and reflects a greater focus on tree planting for ecological restoration.
- This brief presents pros and cons for planting native and introduced tree species, and explores bottlenecks in the use of native trees for planting.
- Important measures to address these bottlenecks include making high-quality seeds and seedlings more available for planting, as well as developing and sharing decision-support tools to better target planting, improve tree management and ensure more effective use.
Envisioning nature-positive futures for Europe: inspiring transformative change at the biodiversity nexus
Transformative change is required to secure a liveable future for people and nature. The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for supporting the creation of plural visions of nature-positive futures that build shared motivation for transformative change. Integrating nexus approaches with the NFF highlights the foundational role of biodiversity in supporting desirable outcomes across sectors (i.e. the biodiversity nexus). We bring these areas of biodiversity research together to ask: what could plural nature-positive futures for Europe in 2050 look like that explicitly leverage synergies in the biodiversity nexus? To address this, we co-created nature futures for Europe with 26 participants representing diverse sectors and regions, resulting in three visions underpinned by different value perspectives: Dòigh Nàdair: The way of nature (Nature as Culture), NaturAll (Nature for Nature) and Return to Nature (Nature for Society). Subsequent analyses and a follow-up webinar enriched the visions, identifying opportunities for more synergistic nexus interactions. Our findings highlight how plural visioning processes can generate distinct visions with positive nexus synergies enabled by unique indirect drivers (e.g. biodiversity-food synergies enabled by re-ruralisation and spiritual human-nature connections in ‘Dòigh Nàdair’, technological advancements in ‘Return to Nature’ and mimicking natural ecological processes in ‘NaturAll’). Yet, the visions also share common features (e.g. restored ecosystems and participatory governance) underpinned by overlapping value perspectives. We demonstrate how explicit consideration of the biodiversity nexus in visioning processes can reveal opportunities to align biodiversity goals with broader sectoral priorities, thereby helping sustain ambitious biodiversity outcomes amid diverse and competing agendas.
Measures for conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of its components, section 13.3.3: managing biodiversity in forestry
Establishing Long-term Biodiversity Assessment and Monitoring in Northwest Yunnan, China: A Growing Need for Baseline Information
Increasing attention is being paid to land use changes in the mountain environments of southwest China. Yet it is essential to develop a network of relevant sites for long-term analysis and comparison. For this reason an important part of an ongoing ethno-ecological project being undertaken by the Kunming Institute of Botany is the establishment of permanent vegetation plots across key environmental gradients in northwest Yunnan.
Structure and diversity of dipterocarps in a lowland dipterocarp forest in East Kalimantan
Curbing the pressure on biodiversity and endangered species: Luba Caldera Scientific Reserve in Equatorial Guinea
The Luba Caldera Scientific Reserve in Equatorial Guinea is a biologically rich and ecologically complex area located on the southern slopes of Bioko Island. It hosts rare natural phenomena, diverse ecosystems across elevation gradients, and cultural heritage sites, making it a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage designation. The reserve supports high biodiversity, including 11 primate species, 2,000 plant species, and over 280 bird, reptile, and amphibian species. It provides vital ecological services and holds strong potential for ecotourism. This report reviews the ecological and management changes in the reserve over the past 20 years since the initial FAO assessment.
Options for Enhancing the Contributions of Forests to Social and Economic Resilience
In this Chapter we identify the resilience-enhancing potential of management and governance interventions, or ‘response options’ that have forests at their core or that could address forest social-ecological systems, for instance, by seeking to improve forest extent, condition, and biodiversity. Interventions may be focused on reducing the drivers of deforestation and degradation or on enhancing and amplifying positive forest-based actions (e.g., governance, social, cultural). We identify response options that may contribute to improvements in forest condition and/or the reduction of drivers of forest decline and degradation. We consider a range of more common and more nascent response options, and the overarching frameworks that may support their application. We examine resilience-enhancing response options by incorporating widely recognised social-ecological, resilience-enhancing attributes and placing an emphasis on well-being, including social and economic attributes, which have so far received less focus or, in some cases, been supplanted by environmental, legal, or technical priorities. We also consider the scale at which interventions are applied and their propensity to support incremental or transformative change, as well as the potential for divergent outcomes in the Global North versus the Global South. We explore whether common interventions are sufficient and if there are additional options that hold promise for enhancing resilience. Further, we identify intervention adjustments or calibrations that may be required to increase their resilience enhancing potential, and point to cross-cutting elements and approaches that may advance
forest contributions to social and economic resilience in particular, and to social-ecological system resilience more broadly.
Avoid Cherry-Picking Targets and Embrace Holistic Conservation to Pursue the Global Biodiversity Framework
The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) marked a renewed commitment to addressing the global biodiversity crisis. This framework of four goals and 23 interim targets is intended to guide and accelerate conservation efforts over the next 25 years and is more ambitious than its predecessor, the Aichi 2020 targets. However, the pursuit of multilateral agreements is dependent upon national pledges, and the limited success of the Aichi targets shows that national pledges are of little worth without aligned (sub)national action. We assessed the submitted National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans of several member countries to determine their alignment with the bold ambition of the GBF. We find a lack of alignment between the GBF and country submissions across many targets, with the notable exception of Target 3—commonly interpreted as increasing protected area coverage to 30% by 2030. Reflecting on the submissions, recent developments, and our collective experience, we outline key considerations that could help guide future submissions and implementation strategies. We caution against cherry-picking specific targets, highlighting that an overemphasis on Target 3 will fail to achieve the overarching vision of living in harmony with nature. This requires a more holistic and inclusive approach to conservation and a focus on the full suite of GBF targets.