Biodiversity Credit Schemes Database: Version 2

The most extensive database of voluntary biodiversity credit schemes at your fingertips

Hi folks 👋

For those who don’t know me, I’m Simas from Bloom Labs - a biodiversity finance newsletter & consultancy. I focus on all things biodiversity markets, nature accounting & biodiversity measurement, reporting and verification (MRV).

Cheers!

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It’s been almost a year since I first published my list of every biodiversity credit scheme I could find. A lot has changed since then. And although I’ve been keeping the initial list as up-to-date as I could, enough has changed to fully revamp it.

The result: 52 total schemes and more categories of assessment (including sales data for some!). Many new ones have launched or are in private development. Some have wound down their operations or pivoted. Others have integrated their methodologies into larger standards. In one way or another, virtually every scheme has updated its initial approach.

Here’s the link to the updated biodiversity credit scheme database.

📢 A call-to-action to all the credit schemes: I’m exploring building the most complete biodiversity credit data transaction database out there. I can assure full or partial anonymity and more, if needed. If you’re open to sharing your transaction data to help move the market forward, just ping me or fill in the “credit sales” part of this form. I’ll reach out then!

And now, let’s dive in 🌱

Disclaimers

As always, a couple of disclaimers:

1. Some inaccuracies in the database are inevitable.

   The space is still very foggy. That’s why next to public & (non-confidential) private information, I also did some educated guessing where I could.

   If you’re a biodiversity credit scheme and would like to add or update any information about your work (or I, god forbid, forgot your scheme), feel free to fill in this Airtable form.

2. Today’s scope: voluntary biodiversity market only

   There’s plenty of action happening on the compliance and government-led voluntary market front. With some exceptions of high voluntary & compliance market overlap, anything beyond non-governmental voluntary schemes is out of scope for today though. Maybe next time!

Setting the scene

Before I dive into the main trends & observations, let me share the logic of how I compiled this database.

General

Scheme selection criteria

I kept the scheme selection criteria broad. As long as it’s a mechanism to unitize, issue, sell & make claims on biodiversity gains or avoided losses, I considered it. Unless there is no information about the scheme beyond its announcement or I have serious doubts that the scheme is still operational, I included it.

I decided to refrain from trying to act as an arbiter for quality - I usually don’t have enough information (nor knowledge) to do so.

Category granularity

More than anything, I hope that this database is useful to you. And for it to be useful, it should be actively, well, used. That’s why I created as many meaningful categories as I could.

Two best ways to slice and dice the database in my experience: custom filters and category hiding. These allow you to manipulate the database in hundreds of different ways.

Updates

Categories added

• Organization type

  Knowing if the organization is a for-profit, a non-profit or a research institution helps to understand its inherent incentives.

• Roles

  Most schemes wear multiple hats at this point (e.g. credit scheme, project developer, MRV provider and sometimes even a nature accounting company). Again, knowing that helps to understand their incentives.

• Credit length

  A blatantly missed category from last year. Shows the time period over which the credit represents biodiversity outcomes (e.g. 30 days, 1 year, 20 years, etc.).

• Demand drivers

  The integration of my deep dive on biodiversity credit demand drivers.

• Pricing strategy

  Helps to understand if the credits are mostly based on the cost to generate biodiversity outcomes or the economic value that such outcomes provide.

• Tags

  I tried to tag the schemes with any of their features that stand out but don’t fit into any of the categories. Again, it’s meant to help you filter through the database.

• Partners & affiliations

  Some of the more important partners & affiliations with membership-based organizations of each scheme.

• Indigenous rights

  Concrete actions each scheme is taking to support Indigenous rights. More on that in a bit.

• Sales information: credit sales, total sales & buyers

  Who wouldn’t want to know that?

Categories removed

• Strengths & concerns

  As the list of schemes increased, I realized that I was just not able to give each a nuanced impartial take on its strengths and weaknesses. The devil is in the details and keeping these categories felt like doing more damage than good.

Trends

Contributory demand driver is proving not enough; offsetting is creeping up

Last year, the contributory use case (i.e. credit retirement without making any claims equated to biodiversity damage done) might’ve been the defining feature of a biodiversity credit. This year, the conversation is very different. The contributory corporate demand for biodiversity credits is lower than expected.

Naturally, that brought the uncomfortable topic to light: offsetting. We’re seeing that, in their current legal form, companies aren’t charities (I know, a shocker). Many are “very interested” in this newly hyped financial instrument but aren’t willing to spend money at scale on anything that offers questionable commercial returns and might become a potential hornet’s nest of PR & legal risk. Whether you believe in environmental markets or not, it’s a very contentious space. People love to love it. They also love to hate it.

Result: nature tech companies who over-indexed on biodiversity credit revenue, are starving. And we’re seeing virtually unanimous Indigenous opposition to offsetting.

Again, you can find some deeper thinking about it in my previous article.

Policy - biggest demand driver

If that wasn’t clear last year, it is now. A big part of the future expected biodiversity credit demand is built on the corporate nature-related disclosure and target setting frameworks & their integration into regulations. Prime examples are Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) & Science Based Targets Network (SBTN).

A good primer of what could happen at a wider scale is the recently enacted England’s Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) policy that has caused a lot of movement around its compliance biodiversity market. Australia's Nature Repair Market (voluntary national biodiversity market) development is also making noise.

More and more schemes position themselves as being aligned with these frameworks (e.g. 3Bee, Savimbo or Terrascape).

Voluntary and compliance market integration

On a related note, the line between the voluntary and compliance biodiversity markets is slowly blurring out. Not a surprising result if policy indeed turns out to be the biggest demand driver for the voluntary market.

South Downs National Park Authority & Earthly launching their voluntary biodiversity credits built on top of BNG is a good preview.

Standardization: a tug of war

There are two forces at play in this market. Let’s call them practical realities & innovation.

We’re seeing efforts to standardize around general definitions & best practices, metrics and even a biodiversity unit. Biodiversity Credit Alliance’s recent paper about the definition of a biodiversity credit and Savimbo’s work on promoting a species-centric, commodity-first biodiversity unit are great resources to dive deeper. My last piece covers some of it as well.

On the other hand, for every new scheme launched, we see different assumptions, metrics and, most importantly, units used. This is a force of dilution.

Credit stacking & bundling is on the rise

Many biodiversity-first players have realized that they can enter the market using the pre-built carbon rails more easily (as much as the “reconstruction” taking place now allows). And since there’s a significant overlap between biodiversity and carbon market players (I’d guess ~70%), carbon folks are all the more incentivized to explore stacking or bundling biodiversity outcomes with the carbon ones. It’s becoming one of the primary market entry strategies.

Having said all that, the market is gaining shape fast. It’s difficult to imagine the progress slowing down any time soon.

Observations

A lot has been said already. So I’ll only reiterate a couple of points.

Transparency is key

It always is. I applaud every company and credit scheme in this market that “builds in public”. It might not lead to the best individual outcomes (although I could argue about that). It certainly leads to a more just & effective biodiversity market.

My hunch is that folks who remain in stealth mode for long are either afraid to lose their competitive/”proprietary” edge or to fail in public.

Complexity kills

Yes, nature is unimaginably complex. But it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Complexity is a feature. Complication is a choice.

Just something I had to share after plowing through hundreds of methodological documents :)

Biodiversity credits - an even more loaded term

When folks hear the word “credits” in an environmental context, they tend to attach their beliefs to it. It quickly becomes a religious topic. Result: many are “co-opting” the biodiversity credit term to utilize the post-Global Biodiversity Framework hype while others are running away and demonizing it.

Supply is high, demand is low

Not news anymore. But I have an elegant example (at least to me) to prove that: the credit pricing strategy of most schemes. The two sides of the spectrum of credit pricing are cost-based & value-based. The former prices credits based on how much it costs to achieve certain biodiversity outcomes (plus a humble margin). It displays low pricing power. The latter, on the other hand, prices credits based on the economic (for now) value that these biodiversity outcomes provide. It displays higher pricing power.

And what do we see? The voluntary biodiversity market is dominated by cost-based pricing (although I am aware that current biodiversity science limits the ability to confidently derive economic value from biodiversity outcomes).

Indigenous rights

This topic is so important that it deserves its own section.

The facts are plain: the Indigenous Peoples steward more than a large portion of the global biodiversity (whether it’s 80%, 36% or anything in between, it’s significant). And while the marked-based nature finance movement is promising, it’s just as risky. Ensuring that Indigenous Peoples living in these lands targeted for these new markets have the right to represent themselves & have their views operationally respected is key.

Lack of transparency is a blocker

Here’s a little secret: initially, version 2 of this database was supposed to include a rigorous assessment of how each scheme upholds Indigenous rights. It was supposed to be mostly based on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) & cover the most important topics. Operational acknowledgment of the Indigenous rights, FPIC (free, prior, and informed consent), participation in decision making, right to compensation, benefit sharing - you name it.

That didn’t happen. One of the reasons? Limited publicly available information on it.

Instead, I just added a column for any Indigenous rights-related public stance or policy that I could find for each scheme. It’s inherently unstructured, limited and is only meant to paint the general picture.

Many schemes publicly support Indigenous rights. That’s great. I’d welcome more specifics though. Ideally, the schemes would integrate the most important official documents (e.g. UNDRIP or ILO Convention 169) straight into their standard & methodology documents.

I urge the schemes who (plan to) operate in Indigenous lands to 1. share as much as possible 2. adopt best practices (BCA's Community Advisory Panel's (CAP) recommendations is a great start) & 3. implement binding safeguards for it.

Environmental markets are built on trust and sharing your concrete Indigenous-related policies would help.

Offsetting

Not much to add. Indigenous leaders have squarely spoken against offsetting being used in their lands. And if the voluntary biodiversity market becomes offset-driven similar to carbon, we’ll see further conflict. Many signs point to it.

Oh, an fyi: mandatory biodiversity offsets is already a $6-9b market.

Indigenous leaders should be compensated for their work

One last thing here - if we want the qualified views of the Indigenous leaders, I believe we should fairly pay them for it. Whether that is them visiting conferences, engaging with market forums or providing advice to industry organizations (for-profit or not).

Even keeping up with this market is a full-time job (trust me 🙂). Some Indigenous leaders are already deep in this space & can share their expertise immediately. Others would need to spend time to educate themselves about this market. We can’t expect them to do this on their own time though.

Having seen some of them work, I’m convinced they can be priceless in infusing the Indigenous views in the biodiversity finance products (e.g. credit methodologies & project design, MRV infrastructure, proper FPIC, general education & more). Now, there should probably be some guardrails around this to minimize the risk of conflict of interest. But we should stop chronically underpaying the Indigenous leaders and set a precedent by compensating them for the services they provide. Otherwise, it’s naive to expect them to meaningfully engage in this space.

If you want to work with qualified independent Indigenous leaders, I suggest looking at this list that Savimbo compiled. If you want to work with them, Savimbo recommends doing so through them (just to ensure success; 100% of the payments go directly to the Indigenous leaders).

Having said all of that, I must acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of folks working on biodiversity markets I know are doing this for the right reasons. They’re usually passionate, overwhelmed and under-resourced themselves. My infinite respect goes to you.

Summary

That’s it for today. Would love to hear your thoughts & feedback!

Thank you to all the folks from these credit schemes who have graciously set aside time to share their work & vision with me. 🙏

Enjoy!

Further suggested reads

• Deep Dive: Biodiversity Credit Schemes | Part 1

• Biodiversity Credit Calculation Overview

• Deep Dive: Biodiversity Credit Demand