UN Says New Biodiversity Credits Can Succeed Where Carbon Offsets Failed
As negotiators gather for the COP15 biodiversity summit, a new UN study says “biocredits” may help boost conservation financing. Critics warn they might enable greenwashing.
From biodiversity funds to rhino bonds, previous financing efforts have failed to arrest an unprecedented decline in the breadth and variety of life and ecosystems.
Photographer: Kevin Sutherland/BloombergThe United Nations is backing biodiversity credits as a way to boost conservation financing, but critics warn the new financial instrument may give companies another tool to burnish green credentials without changing the way they do business.
The research published Monday by the United Nations Development Programme and the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK-based think tank, comes as negotiators gather at the UN’s flagship biodiversity summit in Montreal with the hope of finalizing a global agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
Biodiversity — the breadth and variety of life and ecosystems on earth, from polar bears to plankton — is declining at an unprecedented rate, posing a threat to the planet and the financial system and accelerating the pace at which the planet is warming. The World Economic Forum estimates that roughly half of global gross domestic product, or about $44 trillion of economic value , depends on the natural world in some way, meaning its destruction also carries an enormous financial toll.