Hi, Martin from bloomlabs here.

This is the third edition of the Monthly Market Overview based on our intelligence platform Bloom. It covers market activity, global trends, news, and developments from the Voluntary Biodiversity Market (VBM) across transactions, projects, organizations, headlines, and events.

For more in-depth VBM insights and access to Bloom data, sign up for free on the platform.

Disclaimer

Since the February edition, we engaged extensively with two of our data partners, Wilderlands and Le Printemps des Terres (LPDT), to clarify their data and ensure maximum accuracy.

We have integrated Wilderlands’ granular transaction listing of more than 5,500 items, which was previously a set of 5 aggregations. They now represent 81% of all transactions by count, and their all-time sales sum up to $1.8m, 34% of VBM value. Here are the restated monthly sales for the previous months: January 2026 hits $156k (previously $56k), and February 2026 increases to $42k (previously $20k).

We also received LPDT’s corrected data, previously identified as the 2nd developer by sales value with $1.7m. This number was inflated (and that was completely on us), and now sits around $630k. It brings the total VBM all-time value to $5.4m instead of $6.3m as stated in the previous edition.

Even though the market “loses” value from what we recorded before, I couldn’t be more satisfied to get closer to accurate numbers. Many thanks to our partners for helping us to cut through the fog.

If you have voluntary biodiversity credit transaction data, we want to hear from you. Suppliers who share data with us gain visibility on the Bloom platform, receive additional access to our market data, contribute to market transparency, and help build the pricing benchmarks very much needed. You can reach us at hello@bloomlabs.earth.

We are building the second version of Bloom, launching end of April / beginning of May. It will be much more intelligence-oriented and simpler to use regardless of one’s knowledge of the market. Until then, the data on the current version of Bloom will not be updated, so it will not match the figures in this article. We do apologize for the inconvenience.

Market context

VBM has sold $5.4m worth of credits since the first recorded sale. However, we still believe a significant part happened over-the-counter (OTC) and has not been publicly announced yet. We maintain the estimate that actual total sales sit around $8m.

The year 2024 saw $1.7m in sales and 2025 recorded $2.4m. Q1 2026 closed at $229k across 242 transactions. Most other quarters land between $70k and $448k, so the beginning of the year is quite average, and is in fact the lowest quarter since the end of 2024.

One could try to draw some lines from Q1 2022 to Q3 2024, then from Q3 2024 to Q1 2026, and infer that VBM is on an exponential curve. That’s not a game I want to play though, for we should only use data-backed assumptions. A lot of high-quality supply is coming to market in the next few years (Verra, Plan Vivo, CreditNature, Wallacea Trust, Cercarbono, etc), and this makes us confident that sales will increase. But without properly addressing the demand problem, a higher supply will not necessarily convert to higher sales, as we already see today with an estimated $50m credits stock unsold*.

We are not going to change the economic reality that companies seek profit. This is quite literally what they are built for, so either we accept it and we frame VBM in a way that accounts for it (building profitable investment opportunities, pushing for regulations and incentives, bundling credits to consumer products…), or we stay stuck in dependence on the philanthropic goodwill of a few organizations.

*This estimation should be treated with caution, since the exact volumes of credits issued and the credit price are still hard to obtain with precision for a significant portion of projects.

March 2026

March 2026 saw $31k in total sales across 60 transactions, down from February’s $42k across 94 transactions and January’s $156k across 88 transactions. For perspective that’s one brand new car’s worth of credits sold in the world during 30 days, by all projects combined. The Q1 trajectory looks like a decline, but let’s remember that monthly comparisons in VBM are unreliable. Across all three months individually, the top 5 transactions consistently account for roughly 85% of total sales. Hence, a single $10k purchase landing in one month rather than another is enough to change everything.

Pricing

The $/ha/year indicator: Since the industry currently lacks a single, standardized credit unit, we use the price per hectare per year ($/ha/year). Every biodiversity credit transaction includes pricing, size, and duration parameters, making it the most efficient way to compare them so far and ensure relevance when analyzing different projects around the globe.

This month’s credit-weighted average $/ha/year reaches $1,276, the lowest in Q1. January was $1,588, February was $1,564. For reference, H1 2025 averaged $663 and H2 2025 averaged $1,032.

The drop comes from Wilderlands, for Coorong Lakes at $523/ha/year carries 54% of March’s sales weight, pulling the average down. Marereni at $3,000/ha/year counterbalances, but only represents 24% of this month’s sales.

Nothing systemic to overanalyze here, it mostly boils down to two project types with very different methodologies and pricing: a mangrove uplift credit in Kenya and an avoided loss credit on Australian shrubland are not the same product. Different ecosystems, different activities, different geographies, different cost structures.

The $/ha/year increase between 2024 and 2025 (with the beginning of 2026) is entirely due to Marereni credits sales from its developer Seatrees, which began in October 2025 (we can clearly see the effect on the chart). A good narrative could be that buyers are interested in more expensive projects, hence forecasting an increase in demand quality, but that is simply not provable yet.

Projects

Wilderlands quite simply dominated March with four projects, 39 transactions, $19,626 total, 64% of the month’s sales. Coorong Lakes alone accounted for 54%, driven by one anonymous $16,495 purchase (3,154 credits). All Wilderlands’ projects are Australian, terrestrial, and primarily Avoided Loss (prevention of biodiversity decline through project interventions such as preservation or land designation, in areas facing demonstrable and imminent threats).

Marereni followed on its steady course with 13 transactions, $7,302, mangrove uplift at $3/credit. The split was 5 B2B transactions summing up to $6,423 and 8 B2C purchases for $879. Marereni is the most consistent non-Wilderlands project in Q1 and sells every month. This is an achievement that very few developers can claim today.

Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari recorded a single $3,500 B2B purchase from Moneyworks.

Buyers

More than 60% of March sales have no buyer enrichment, which limits buyer analysis for the majority of the month’s activity. The transactions that we know are B2B account for 91% of sales with known channel, consistent with January (96%) and February (94%), which both have been recalculated following the changes mentioned in the disclaimer.

Only one named buyer appears in March, Moneyworks, a small New Zealand financial services firm. The company is an NZ firm buying from an NZ project, following on the “local buyer, local project” pattern from February (and from the beginning of VBM).

This structural pattern has not changed, as small, locally anchored businesses buy from nearby projects. These are not large corporates making strategic biodiversity commitments under disclosure pressures or incentives. For the market to reach meaningful scale, it needs intentional B2B purchases from companies engaging with biodiversity as a material business risk, or at least a business case.

If you are exploring whether and how biodiversity credits fit into your organization’s strategy, we would love to talk. Reach out at hello@bloomlabs.earth.

Wilderlands case study

Wilderlands strategy, being VBM’s largest actor by volume ($1.8m in all-time sales), can provide some sales insights.

They designed a clear unit that represents 1 square metre of protected land for 100 years, priced between $2 and $7. Simple enough for anyone to understand and cheap enough for anyone to buy. Thanks to that, they accumulate thousands of sub-$50 purchases (90% of their transactions) that prove demand exists and can be used to attract bigger fish.

Speaking of them, the 51 transactions above $10k generate 76% of their sales. Wilderlands has a true commercial approach to selling their credits. They partnered with Adelaide Festival two years in a row to protect habitat in the Coorong Lakes with $20k committed each time. They also partnered with al.ive body, an Australian personal care brand, which launched a limited edition product where each unit sold came bundled with a credit.

Wilderlands experiments with integrating its credits into existing purchasing decisions, and I find the al.ive body case particularly interesting. If a developer wants to sell 10,000 credits, it can either try to sell them to one company directly or it can partner with another that will bundle the credits to its products. In my opinion, the second path is worth exploring more and might be easier to implement, since the developer uses the company’s distribution, and the company uses the credits to increase the demand for its products.

Yes, an Australian company may have higher “goodwill” purchasing power than a Kenyan one. But the approach should be duplicable at each location’s own scale. I’m not on the ground trying to sell credits, so I may be disconnected from reality. But if so, I would be glad to hear some arguments as to why the Aussies’ system could not work everywhere else.

News

Featured

EU Expert Group on Nature Credits met in Brussels - March 20-21

My co-founder Simas attended the EU Commission’s 2nd Expert Group meeting on Nature Credits in Brussels on March 20-21. He published a full article with his takeaways and here is the tl;dr.

The Commission was well prepared and the amount of resources allocated to this project is serious. Five workstreams were discussed (methodologies and metrics, governance and integrity, market readiness and finance, policy coherence, international cooperation), each with a detailed concept note.

One of the most interesting design elements is the two-step certificate-credit lifecycle. The Roadmap is exploring how certificates could unlock upfront capital before full biodiversity results are in, and transforming them into credits once the outcomes are verified.

Demand-side representatives were however missing. The discussions were led by integrity providers, standard administrators, and project developers. Simas made the point clearly: if we expect nature credits to have impact at scale, “supply is only high-integrity if it is used”. Designing the system without the companies expected to buy credits, and then hoping they will participate once the infrastructure is set up is simply not realistic.

The key open questions are whether the Commission will pursue a purely voluntary model or move toward hybrid/compliance mechanisms, what the credit unit will look like (ecosystem condition seems to be the leading candidate), and at what scale the market will operate (local, national, or EU-wide).

Read the full article

National news

Germany proposes “Naturgutschriften” in federal law reform - March 31

On March 31, the German federal government published a draft law reforming the nature conservation intervention regulation (Eingriffsregelung) with a new section 16b in the Federal Nature Conservation Act. The reform introduces “Naturgutschriften” (nature credits) for the first time in federal legislation, creating a legal basis for voluntary private-sector investment in nature restoration beyond mandatory compensation obligations.

Trutz von der Trenck, co-founder of green account, shared: “For the first time, the concept of private-sector nature conservation is anchored directly in law. Through the introduction of nature credits, a bridge is created that we have long waited for: A legally secure basis for companies to invest massively in the restoration of our natural infrastructure, and specifically beyond mere legal obligation!”

Germany doing this at the federal level while simultaneously sitting on the EU Expert Group on Nature Credits tells me that national and EU-level market infrastructure are developing in parallel. This can be a great approach to experiment, iterate, and find solutions faster, which can then feed the EU’s regulations. Ideally every member state takes the same approach individually while building a common knowledge pool earned from practice.

Thailand launches national biodiversity credit roadmap - March 26

Thailand’s Biodiversity-Based Economy Development Office (BEDO) held a three-day workshop in Bangkok titled “Biodiversity Credit Roadmap of Thailand” with government, private sector, and international experts to study market mechanisms appropriate for the country’s ecosystems.

This makes Thailand one of the first Southeast Asian nations to develop a formal government-led biodiversity credit roadmap. Following the Philippines reef pilot covered last month, it is the second strong hint in two months that Southeast Asia is starting to seriously move.

Germany’s BfN launches research project on nature credits - March 18

On March 18, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) commissioned the Fair Finance Institute, in collaboration with the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOW) and NABU (an NGO we work with on the EU LIFE project), to conduct research on nature credit approaches and develop policy recommendations. The project will aggregate existing knowledge, interview stakeholders, monitor policy developments, and support BfN’s participation in European processes.

Two German federal initiatives on nature credits in the same month (the Naturgutschriften law and this research project) confirm that Germany is putting resources into building domestic market infrastructure for voluntary biodiversity credits.

Indonesia explores biodiversity credits for national park management - March 16

Indonesia’s Deputy Forestry Minister announced the government is exploring carbon trading and biodiversity credits to finance the management of its 57 national parks, currently funded entirely through the state budget. Way Kambas National Park is being prepared as a pilot project.

Indonesia’s national parks cover roughly 16 million hectares. If even a fraction of that enters biodiversity credit markets, the supply-side impact would be significant since Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse countries on earth.

Market news

Finnish landowners launch Luontoarvot nature values marketplace - March 27

MTK, Finland’s Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners, launched the Luontoarvot marketplace to connect nature credit project developers with buyers. The platform, which received €500k in funding from Kone Foundation, currently lists 11 sites across Finnish forests. MTK is also a member of the EU Expert Group on Nature Credits.

Finland is joining the growing list of EU member states building domestic nature credit infrastructure. The landowner-led model is particularly relevant for Europe, where land is fragmented. According to MTK’s surveys, 80% of Finnish landowners consider protecting biodiversity important.

CDC Biodiversite and Removall partner on French national scheme credits - March 25

Removall, a carbon developer, announced an exclusive partnership with CDC Biodiversite to sell the first voluntary biodiversity certificates officially recognized by the French government, under the SNCRR programme (Natural Compensation, Restoration, and Renaturation Sites).

A carbon developer signing an exclusivity deal to sell nationally certified biodiversity credits is a strong hint that carbon market players see commercial value in biodiversity. The convergence between carbon and biodiversity I noted with Social Carbon last month is happening on the sales side as well.

To learn more about the links between those two markets, take a look at our Biodiversity and carbon credits in practice article.

Savimbo expands to Canada with InSight Biodiversity - March 20

Savimbo, the Colombia-based developer and one of the few with an actual track record of sales, is entering Canada. The expansion is led by InSight Biodiversity, a British Columbia-based team that will bring Savimbo’s ISBM methodology to Indigenous Communities and First Nations.

InSight Biodiversity is not looking to manage projects themselves, for their role is to act as a bridge between ISBM and communities by supporting the technical work, co-designing project management plans, and advising on certification and credit sales pathways. The funding and governance stay with the communities entirely.

Jake Raynard from InSight Biodiversity told me: “There is a growing movement here towards supporting conservation via Indigenous governance, for example with Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), so there is a good amount of government and philanthropic funding available for these projects. There’s also a recognition that there needs to be a movement away from reliance on grants though, towards a more self-sustaining financial model, and that’s where we are hoping to show that biodiversity credits can be one piece of the solution.”

Savimbo started in Colombia, built a methodology that works and sells, and is now exporting it. Drea Burbank, Savimbo’s founder, shared her vision with me: “We wanted a market, not a monopoly. The evidence is conclusive that fairness, standardization, inclusiveness, and interoperability are principles for scaling markets. We’re just following them.”

FSC publishes climate and biodiversity strategy (2026-2032) - March 10

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) published a new strategy that includes developing methodologies to measure and monetize ecosystem services, including biodiversity credit systems, and integrating them into its framework: “FSC will develop and integrate methodologies into its normative framework to measure and monetize impacts on ES, such as high-quality carbon or biodiversity credit systems, helping companies to meet regulatory requirements and voluntary targets.”

FSC’s size and reach in forestry certification is unmatched (173m hectares), but the majority of FSC certificate holders are productive forest owners. The organization sees biodiversity credits as an entry point for non-productive forest owners. The infrastructure (auditors, registries, chain of custody systems) already exists and could greatly facilitate credits adoption.

Cambridge tests Wallacea Trust methodology on UK sites - March 3

A University of Cambridge-led team tested the Wallacea Trust‘s biodiversity credit methodology on two English sites: a conventional arable farm in Lincolnshire (Boothby) and the Knepp estate in West Sussex, which has been rewilded for 20 years. They found that biodiversity at the conventional farm would increase by 69-92% after 30 years of restoration, worth an estimated GBP 1.5 million in voluntary biodiversity credits, but restoration costs would be roughly fifteen times higher.

They concluded that voluntary biodiversity credits alone will likely not fund nature recovery. They could work as complementary funding alongside carbon credits, public funding, payments for ecosystem services, and other revenue streams.

The Evenlode project last month made the same structural argument, in that biodiversity credits can be one layer in a blended finance stack, not the sole revenue source. That’s an interesting approach that I would love to see more of.

Suggested reads

Connecting nature, climate, and capital

Bank of New Zealand, Deloitte, and The Nature Conservancy published a joint report on nature finance. The demand curves they project are speculative given where VBM is today, but the core argument makes sense: the biggest demand driver will be mandatory corporate disclosures on nature, not voluntary contributions.

I would love to see more discussions around incentives alongside the regulatory-oriented ones. The carrot has what the stick lacks, in that it creates a system where everyone wins. Corporates win through, for example, tax benefits on biodiversity credit investments, and developers win by selling more credits. It bases the exchange on a positive relationship rather than an obligation, and could, in my opinion, favor deliberate quality procurement from companies.

Read the report

50 investible opportunities for a new nature economy

The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Oliver Wyman, published a report identifying over 50 investible opportunities that could generate up to $10.1 trillion in annual business revenues and cost savings by 2030. The report frames nature risk as a systemic economic risk and a missed commercial opportunity.

I agree with the framing and core message of the report, stating that businesses will transform their operations only if it makes economic sense, not because someone asked them to. VBM needs this framing to attract real money.

Read the report

Upcoming events

April 22 - LIFE Biodiv CrEW webinar: biodiversity credits in European wetlands - online

We will host, alongside Eurosite, aeco, Sylva, NABU, and the European Landowners’ Organization (ELO), a joint webinar as part of the LIFE Biodiv CrEW project. Simas will present on biodiversity credits, schemes, and the market. ELO will cover project sourcing lessons, and Sylva will close on financial flows. This is the first public presentation of our LIFE benchmarking findings.

On a related note, our consortium members are engaging with companies that want to learn, test, and help shape this emerging market, including options for early participation. To learn more, contact Marc Maleika from Sylva at marc@sylva.earth.

April 27-30 - Environmental Markets Conference - US

Mitigation banking, carbon, water quality, and biodiversity markets. The US compliance mitigation market (over $6.2 billion) offers the most mature infrastructure lessons for VBM in terms of practically every market design aspect. Simas will attend and present. If you are at EMC and want to discuss biodiversity credit market intelligence, reach out to him at simas@bloomlabs.earth

May 4-8 - European Conference for Biodiversity Monitoring (BioMonWeek) - France

Inaugural edition of a planned biannual European conference on biodiversity monitoring, co-organized by Biodiversa+, GBIF, MARCO-BOLO, BioAgora, and Alliance for Nature. Nine thematic tracks will cover terrestrial, marine, and freshwater monitoring, data management, mass monitoring methods, policy, governance, and private sector cooperation.

I will attend the event and present the state of the market with a focus on monitoring, in partnership with Biotope, one of the leading European biodiversity consultancies. If you plan to attend and want to discuss, reach out to me at martin@bloomlabs.earth

May 11 - “Make Nature Count” seminar and workshop - Norway

Morning seminar at KPMG Oslo exploring how nature can be valued as an economic resource, organized by KPMG, Fossagrim, Gjensidige, and Belief Group. Speakers include Per Espen Stoknes (BI Center for Sustainability), Thina Saltvedt (Nordea Bank), and Dominik Maczik (BCA). The seminar will be followed by an afternoon workshop on building a high-integrity nature market in a European context.

I will attend the event and discuss the state of the market during the workshop. If you plan to attend or will be in Oslo around this day and want to discuss, reach out to me at martin@bloomlabs.earth

May 19 - “A Credit to Nature: A Matter of Interest” conference - Belgium

Organized by the Belgian Federal Council for Sustainable Development, with Wageningen University presenting on nature credit market development in the Netherlands, followed by a buyer use-case panel and a lunch marketplace for developers and funders. I love the idea of speed-dating between buyers and sellers, we need more of these.

June 3-4 - EU Green Week 2026 - Belgium

The 26th edition, organized by DG Environment, will be all about the business case for nature. The programme includes a startup-investor matchmaking event for nature-based solutions and nature-related technologies. Simas will attend the event and present the state of the market, so reach out to him at simas@bloomlabs.earth if you want to discuss.

July 14-16 - Global Nature Positive Summit - Japan

An international event to assess the current progress of the Global Biodiversity Framework, under the Japanese Ministry of Environment patronage. If you attend, please reach out to share your findings with us.

October 19-30 - CBD COP17 - Armenia

This is the single most important policy event for VBM in 2026. More details to come throughout the year.

Two weeks ago Martin and I attended the EU Commission’s 2nd Expert Group meeting on Nature Credits and the annual meeting of Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA).

It left us with our minds buzzing and a couple of takeaways:

Disclaimers:

1. Nothing written below represents the official views of the European Commission or BCA. Below are my thoughts about the EU Nature Credit Roadmap and the recent market developments. I’ve also avoided any specifics discussed in the meetings.

2. In this article, I used “biodiversity credits” and “nature credits” interchangeably.

3. The voluntary biodiversity market statistics below are powered by Bloom - our market intelligence platform.

Takeaways

There is progress

As much as one could wish for more speed, progress is here. Discussions that started at COP15 and led to the creation of BCA and the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits are now mulled over at the highest level in the EU. Key definitions, claims, use cases, legal status of nature credits and more are being clarified. Separately, the High-Level Principles (HLPs) are being operationalized.

That said, we are still deep in the policy-making phase. Naive me in 2023 would’ve expected a functioning market by now. It will take years before scale is reached with biodiversity credits outside of the few functioning markets.

The Commission was well-prepared

5 workstreams were discussed (meeting agenda):

1. Methodologies and Metrics

2. Governance and Integrity

3. Market Readiness and Finance

4. Policy Coherence

5. International Cooperation

Each workstream came with a well-researched concept note. They were good discussion starters. For those who found the concept notes too lengthy, I think more is better than less at this stage. “Throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks” is a proven strategy in reaching consensus. It also gave confidence that the Commission is allocating meaningful resources to the topic.

More importantly, the Commission was honest about the challenges and risks of nature credits and different design options.

Integrity and supply groups continue to lead market development

Throughout the week, the discussions were led by market integrity providers (standard administrators, market forums, NGOs and researchers) and credit project developers. Both are reflected in the market map here. It was also great to see the representatives of nature stewards: farmers, landowners, foresters and Indigenous Peoples.

We did miss the demand-side representatives though. Although the “high-integrity supply → high-integrity demand” thesis sounds great on paper, both sides have to develop at the same time.

If we expect nature credits to have impact at scale, I would argue that supply is only high-integrity if it is used. If so, high-integrity supply cannot be developed without the input of future demand.

The companies that are expected to buy these credits should share their opinion. I’m aware it’s more nuanced, with many of them being represented by lobby groups and other intermediaries. But to expect meaningful voluntary demand, their input needs to be considered. We can’t expect them to simply participate in the market once the infrastructure is set up.

Certificate-credit lifecycle: new design element

The two-step model (certificates → nature credits) mentioned in the Nature Credit Roadmap is a new design element, different from virtually all voluntary credit schemes. At first glance, it looks similar to the EU Regulation on Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) and their own two-step approach (certificates of compliance → certified units).

However, under CRCF, the certificate of compliance confirms that an activity has passed an audit. It does not seem to have a financial function. Instead, the Roadmap is exploring how certificates could build investor confidence and enable project developers to access payments before full results are in, since biodiversity outcomes usually take longer to materialize than carbon and can be less predictable.

Without deeper analysis, the certificate-credit model seems like an elegant way to tackle the upfront costs of conservation. I’m sure the devil will remain in the details.

Finally, I find it interesting that for nature, it is “nature credits” but for carbon, it is “certified units” when carbon is the one with a proven standardized unit. I’m sure I missed a fun discussion when it was decided in the carbon circles.

Key decisions to be made

The Roadmap has plenty of design decisions to make. Here are a couple I think about a lot:

Claims: contributions vs offsetting

Similar to the voluntary biodiversity market, the Commission has positioned contributions as the primary nature credit buyer claim category. The EU legal backlash against carbon-neutrality claims and related directives (e.g. Birds/Habitats/Water Frameworks) make offsetting seemingly unworkable. The contribution framing is intellectually (and legally) sound. It does create a weaker demand signal than the offset model though.

A lot will depend on the early market modeling results but I wouldn’t dismiss a scenario where a certain version of offsetting (or compensation/counterbalancing - whichever term you prefer) is explored. If that happens, the most straightforward scenario is a local-to-local like-for-like model, additional to any existing related regulations, as outlined in IAPB’s framework. A more ambitious scenario is the EU-wide biodiversity cap and trade system that BioInt’s Joshua Berger has been thinking about for some time.

Of course, biodiversity offsetting without regulations has proven to be unworkable integrity-wise. That leads me to the next design decision:

Legal regime: voluntary vs hybrid vs compliance

It is unclear whether the Commission will pursue regulation after the Roadmap is complete. Over-regulation is now a big topic in the EU and more justification is expected before sticks are introduced. Unsurprisingly, the Roadmap communication stuck to the voluntary framing.

That said, the Roadmap seems to follow the Better Regulation methodology. It is the same process the Commission uses to prepare legislative proposals. If we produce proof showing that voluntary demand cannot meaningfully close the EU biodiversity finance gap, the Commission would have political cover to propose harder measures in 2027.

So far, the data does not support the thesis that voluntary biodiversity credit demand will be enough with $6.4 million in total global sales over the past 4 years. Of course, the EU support and guidance would give a crucial credibility boost to the market. Still, given the evidence of other voluntary environmental markets, it is unlikely to play a meaningful role in bridging the €65 billion EU biodiversity financing gap.

So, unless we successfully link biodiversity credits to economic value (the north star of most nature finance geeks), we will need more direct incentives for corporates to buy beyond high-integrity contributions to nature. Carrots (e.g. tax benefits, lending incentives, procurement rules) and sticks (regulations, mandatory corporate reporting) will be required. Philanthropy and marketing, the dominant demand drivers now, cannot generate sufficient voluntary demand but they can play a part in ramping it up.

Here’s how the evolution of credit demand sources could look like:

It is a raw representation but the idea is that different credit demand drivers exist: different reasons, timelines and, most importantly, scales. The holy grail of voluntary demand is risk mitigation (if a market structure around it can be designed) while the compliance counterpart is a mandatory biodiversity credit market.

Every major biodiversity market has scaled through legal obligation. Germany’s eco-point system, England’s Biodiversity Net Gain, France’s compensation law and especially the US wetland and stream mitigation banking under the Clean Water Act - the largest functioning biodiversity credit market in the world.

An important detail: all these compliance markets were built around compensation. I’m aware that many nature credit market stakeholders are staunchly opposed to any form of biodiversity offsetting but these are the facts.

Scale: local vs national vs EU-wide

It is unclear at which scale the market would operate. From the perspective of volume and liquidity, a EU-wide market is the ideal. From the perspective of ecological integrity and current voluntary buyer patterns, local and national scales make more sense. A gradual bottom-up approach is also possible, starting from the least risky (local) and building towards a EU-wide market.

So far, voluntary biodiversity credit demand is hyper-local. Practically all B2B buyers (187) purchase credits from the country they are headquartered in: 96% in value and 99% in volume. France and New Zealand (the two largest B2B markets by sales) are completely domestic. Cross-border B2B purchases total just $144k across 16 transactions - less than 4% of the total B2B sales.

Credit unit and metrics: will there be any consensus at all?

This topic is still a big unknown. Ecosystem condition has become the unofficial backbone of voluntary biodiversity credit measurement. If the same happens for the EU nature credit measurement, one could assume that the credit (not certificate) unit might look something like “1 percent/point increase in ecosystem condition over 1 hectare for 30 years”. That’d be very close to the units of the well-known schemes such as CreditNature, Verra or Wallacea Trust.

One thing is certain - if a nature credit cannot be expressed in standardized physical terms (outcome, area, duration), it cannot function as a tradable commodity. The unit definition question alone can shape whether EU nature credits become a liquid, fungible market (or a set of markets) or develop into a custom project-finance instrument.

From our experience, using only biodiversity indicators (e.g. species richness, species diversity, habitat cover, etc.) for credit calculation and leaving out other indicators (e.g. socioeconomic, governance, etc.) as safeguards is the most reliable method to develop standardized units expressed in physical terms.

Tradability: yes or no

Tradability (or secondary markets) will likely vary in the certificate-credit lifecycle and will depend on credit type and geographic scale. However, if nature credits are based on ecosystem condition, that would create a base of a level of fungibility, and hence, tradability.

As always, secondary markets is both a big opportunity and risk. We expect to hear the well-known pro and against arguments. Pro: tradability is the only way to scale the market. Against: tradability is the path to lower ecological integrity, less efficient financial flows and harmful speculation.

Nature credits and carbon units: how will nature credits interface with CRCF?

No answers yet but the Commission is fully aware of the different ways the two could work together and is focused on ensuring clear links and boundaries between them.

Some argue that the nature credit roadmap shouldn’t have even existed and the biodiversity considerations should’ve been rolled into CRCF since the carbon market infrastructure is more mature. That’s an imperfect argument since not all natural ecosystems sequester carbon. CRCF is not designed for the conservation of inland freshwater ecosystems, grasslands or pollinator habitats in agricultural landscapes.

That said, I’m sure the Commission is aware of the market fragmentation risks by introducing another environmental credit.

Side notes

How do we not over-engineer?

As with most supply-led markets, there is a risk of designing a comprehensive, beautiful system that checks all the boxes.. but is not used. One way to avoid that is to include more end buyers in the market design. If we don’t include them, we shouldn’t kid ourselves - the only way to get them to buy credits is to enforce it through regulations. A voluntary system designed without the end buyers will simply not scale.

Ideally, we achieve elegance with a light set of guidelines that lead to the right outcomes instead of a prescriptive, polished but unusable framework. A couple of ideas:

1. We should admit what actually drives buyer activity: direct commercial benefits and simple compliance.

Indirect commercial benefits, such as philanthropy or marketing, have proven limited and unreliable in the voluntary carbon market. The same is true in the voluntary biodiversity market so far. I don’t expect that to change.

To start, the EU could provide early investor and buyer incentives to kickstart the market. Tax incentives, price floors, establishment of the EU nature credit buyers’ club or nature credit recognition in the EU Taxonomy are some examples.

2. We should not try to make nature credits the tool for all conservation.

As Sophus zu Ermgassen said, without strict guardrails of what a nature credit project is, it “very quickly degenerates into a system that generates almost no conservation benefits“.

There should be strict criteria for what projects are eligible to issue nature credits. The market is already over-supplied ($6.4m in sold credits vs an estimated ~$70.9m in unsold credits) with many more suppliers targeting the market. Additionality and transparent ways to verify it will become even more important in establishing which schemes/projects are considered high-integrity. As always with additionality, incentive management will be the challenge. Since it is easier to prove it for restoration, it is bound to fit the nature credit project activities best.

Two more cents: if we want nature credits to work, we should not get too creative. We should not try to imagine “what if corporates thought this way” or have the perfect answer to every single market design question. Instead, we should make the smallest set of market design decisions that minimize the blow-up risk (e.g. a catastrophic greenwashing scandal) and maximize learning. After a few years, we should reconvene and adjust. In other words, we should experiment more. As top-down as the EU regulations are, I believe that incrementalism is possible.

We don’t know what we don’t know. And even the things we should know from decades of nature credit market experience, we still often don’t.

My hope: the Commission ends the philosophical debates

Usually people disagree on the nature credit market design because they want it to be different things or don’t want it to exist at all. For those who support the market, most fall in the outcome-based philanthropy or full-stack financialization camps.

Unsurprisingly, since we’ve bet the farm on nature credits at bloomlabs, we believe that we can go beyond outcome-based philanthropy and form real markets in the EU and beyond the existing pockets elsewhere. The time is right: our ability to pull it off (technology, governance advances and, hopefully, political will) is meeting our need (undeniable and increasing economic effects of the nature crisis).

However, that is only possible with clear and consistent market rules. Usually, such rules are only established with the support of an influential organization. The Commission is in the perfect position to be that organization and set the precedent on how nature credits will operate in the EU and beyond.

That said, the Commission is under pressure to satisfy very different expert group stakeholders which often leads to agreeing on the lowest common denominator. And the lowest common denominator cannot be the most ambitious or productive. I hope the Commission doesn’t follow this approach and introduces data-backed opinions at the end of the Roadmap, even if that doesn’t please everyone.

Nature and EU competitiveness: how do we align them?

The common narrative is that regulations harm EU competitiveness. Since most of the EU sustainability policies are enforced through regulation, the same critique applies to nature conservation. As a big fan of EU-INC, this bothers me.

Being trained at startups, I’m used to the awkward silence once I tell my fellow tech bros what I do. The supportive will think I’m a “good guy doing philanthropy”. The cynical - that I’m a professional greenwashing enabler or a cog in a bureaucratic system that prevents the EU from competing with its gloves off.

There’s no denying that there is some conflict between nature conservation and competitiveness. Compliance costs are real and land use decisions are slower. Agricultural intensification and physical infrastructure development are major biodiversity loss drivers in the EU.

But the critique treats nature management as a cost and not critical infrastructure. That way, it’s easy to forget that all global economies completely rely on nature, including the EU. Statistical proof can be boring but here are a few of my favorites:

• Degraded soils already cost the EU ~€40.9-72.7 billion/year (Panagos et al., 2025, via EEA).

  That’s erosion, contamination, nutrient loss, compaction and sealing. And those estimates “may be around twice as high” because they exclude biodiversity loss, flooding and health effects.

• 75% of all corporate loans in the euro area go to companies critically dependent on nature (ECB, 2024).

  Ecosystem degradation is a credit risk problem.

Timeframes explain the rest. Over five years, skipping infrastructure maintenance (i.e. nature conservation) might reduce costs. Over twenty, it might lead to full depletion and stranded assets. Can you imagine Europeans 100 years from now blaming us for focusing on nature too much instead of our competitiveness? The economic case for nature is much easier than the climate.

That said, I wonder if the Roadmap will experience deregulatory pushback or whether it will make a convincing case for why nature credits make sense for the EU economy in the short-term and not only the long-term (which is well-established).

Final notes

Again, I was impressed by the Commission’s preparation for the meeting. Thank you for taking the topic seriously. If I had to summarize the key challenges of the voluntary biodiversity market in two words, I’d say “demand” and “standardization”. Folks expect the Commission to deliver on both.

We are ready to support the Roadmap with our voluntary biodiversity market data and insights across our key credit scheme, transaction and credit project datasets on Bloom.

For others, the time to engage with the Commission is now. The market is being designed at this very moment. Companies that wait for the Roadmap outcomes to engage will find the options already narrowed.

February was a quiet month with $20k in sales across 5 projects. But the signals from policy and standard-setting were louder: IPBES published a landmark assessment linking nature loss to systemic economic risk, Social Carbon officially entered biodiversity certification, the Biodiversity Credit Alliance questioned the idea of a single fungible biodiversity credit unit, and Sweden publicly backed a voluntary approach for EU nature credits.

This article is the second edition of the Monthly Market Overview based on our intelligence platform Bloom. It covers market activity, global trends, news, and developments from the Voluntary Biodiversity Market (VBM) across transactions, projects, organizations, headlines, and events.

For more in-depth VBM insights and access to Bloom data, sign up for free on the platform.

Disclaimer

Starting with this edition, Niue Moana Mahu project and transactions are excluded from Bloom datasets. The project does not incorporate direct biodiversity measurements or independent third-party verification of ecological outcomes, and therefore does not meet the requirements for being considered as a biodiversity credit. This results in a restatement of cumulative sales.

We are currently drafting a standard of inclusion for what counts as a voluntary biodiversity credit, and what does not. This standard aims to be compatible with scientific rigor and market reality.

Market

Context

Adjusted for the Niue exclusion, VBM has sold $6.3m worth of credits since tracking began. However, a substantial part of VBM transactions happened over-the-counter (OTC) and have not been publicly announced yet. Hence, we believe the the actual total sales estimates to be around $10 million.

If you have voluntary biodiversity credit transaction data, we want to hear from you. Suppliers who share data with us gain visibility on the Bloom platform, receive additional access to our market data, contribute to the market transparency, and help build the pricing benchmarks the market needs to mature. You can reach us at hello@bloomlabs.earth.

The year 2024 saw roughly $2.6m in sales and 2025 sold $3.2m. Q1 2026 has recorded $76k through its first two months. Quarterly trends should be treated with caution: a $1.1m Wilderlands aggregate in Q4 2025 alone accounts for roughly a third of the year’s total.

February 2026

February 2026 saw $20k in total sales across 40 transactions and 5 projects, less than half of January’s $56k. Month-on-month comparisons remain volatile at this stage of the market, so the drop is not necessarily a signal. The average single transaction value dropped to $165, down from $900 in January, alongside the total transaction count (63 last month). Overall, February was not an active month, but not an outlier: 7 months in 2025 had less than $20k in total sales.

Pricing

The $/ha/year indicator

Since the industry currently lacks a single, standardized credit unit, we use the price per hectare per year ($/ha/year). Every biodiversity credit transaction includes pricing, size, and duration parameters, making it the most efficient way to compare them and ensure relevance when analyzing different projects around the globe.

This month’s weighted average $/ha/year reaches $2,770, pulled up by the Marereni and Iford projects. Iford reaches $9,800/ha/year, Marereni sits at $3,000/ha/year, El Globo at $1,250/ha/year, Putumayo at $120/ha/year, and Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari at $7/ha/year - spread from $7 to $9,800 across five projects in a single month. For reference, H1 2025 averaged $1,153/ha/year and H2 2025 averaged $1,468/ha/year.

This variance reflects the fundamental heterogeneity of VBM. Different ecosystem types (mangroves, farmland, forests…), different project activity (uplift, maintenance…), different geographies, and different credit standards produce very different pricing. A mangrove restoration credit and a forest maintenance credit are not the same product, and can not be compared on their credit price.

Projects

The Marereni project continues to lead by volume and sales with 4,500 credits sold for $13.5k, although the exact number of transactions is unknown. Its strategy is built around cost-effective ($3) and small (1m2) mangrove restoration units, generating steady monthly sales through accessible price points.

Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari was the most active project by transaction count, recording 22 individual transactions totaling $4.3k across 612 credits. At $7/ha/year, its pricing sits at the bottom of the range, in line with a maintenance model.

The month’s largest single transaction was a $1.3k B2B purchase by the British Transplantation Society on the Iford project, a UK-based farmland uplift project in the South Downs National Park developed by the South Downs National Park Authority and certified through Earthly. At $9,800/ha/year, Iford’s pricing shows the high cost of biodiversity uplift on small land parcels in a high-income country.

El Globo and Putumayo maintained their thin but consistent B2C-driven activity.

Buyers

The B2B share at 88% is consistent with January (90%). The bulk of Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari 22 transactions was driven by a mix of New Zealand-based B2B buyers in travel, hospitality, and membership organizations (HQ Travel Group, Kimi Ora Resort, Tourism Industry NZ Trust), alongside a tail of smaller B2C purchases.

These are not large corporates making strategic biodiversity commitments. They are small-sized, locally anchored, consumer-facing businesses, likely motivated by their geographical proximity to the projects. The “local buyer buying local project” is a common theme found at all buyer size levels, a sign that VBM is not a truly international market yet.

This is valuable early demand, but for the market to reach meaningful scale, it needs to attract larger intentional B2B purchases from companies engaging with biodiversity as a material business risk. The IPBES assessment discussed later in this article could help accelerate that shift.

Projects

Evenlode Landscape Recovery

Over 50 farms in the North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster have formally begun work on the UK’s largest and most ambitious nature restoration programme. The Evenlode Landscape Recovery project will see farmers paid to work together to restore more than 3,000 hectares of habitat in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Warwickshire, aligned with existing food production, over 20 years.

The project operates under Defra’s Landscape Recovery scheme, one of the three pillars of England’s post-Brexit Environmental Land Management (ELM) system. Each participating farm commits 10-15% of its less productive land to wetland creation, riverside habitat restoration, and natural flood management. The rest continues as working farmland.

The blended finance model is what makes this project structurally interesting for VBM. The £100 million public funding from government provides the base layer, but the project is designed to stack multiple private revenue streams on top: Woodland Carbon Code credits, soil carbon credits, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) units, natural flood management offtake agreements, and voluntary biodiversity credits. The project has already secured its first flood management offtake and expects to generate 1 million carbon credits over its lifetime. For biodiversity credits, no specific methodology or standard has been publicly announced yet.

This is one of the most significant farmer-led landscape-scale projects to reach implementation in Europe, and the lesson for VBM is clear: biodiversity credits may not need to carry the full cost of restoration on their own. In a blended model, biodiversity credits become one revenue stream among several, stacked with carbon, water, or any other environmental asset. That changes the economics for project developers and could make biodiversity crediting viable in agricultural landscapes, where a single revenue stream might not cover the full costs.

Philippines reef-based nature credit pilot

France’s development agency announced a €1.5 million commitment to two innovative finance pilots for marine ecosystems, including a reef-based nature credit project in the Philippines. The pilot is one of the first marine-focused nature credit projects in Southeast Asia, a region where biodiversity credits have been virtually absent.

France holds significant overseas territories in the Indo-Pacific, including New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, Reunion, and Mayotte. All its overseas territories combined contain nearly 10% of the world’s coral reef area. These reef-dependent economies make France the fourth-largest reef nation on earth, behind Indonesia, Australia, and the Philippines. AFD, which committed €736 million to biodiversity-related initiatives in 2022 alone and has been a major funder of marine protected areas, has a strategic interest in proving that credit-based models can work for reef ecosystems. If it works in the Philippines, it opens a financing template directly applicable to France’s own Indo-Pacific territories and AFD’s broader marine conservation portfolio.

This pilot extends VBM’s geographic reach into a region with high biodiversity value but almost no biodiversity credit infrastructure today. It also tests the feasibility of reef-based crediting, an ecosystem type that remains heavily underrepresented in VBM schemes, which still skew toward terrestrial habitats. Whether reef credits can be measured, verified, and sold in a scalable way is still an open question. This pilot is one of the first attempts to answer it.

Headlines

Social Carbon launches Nature Stewardship Framework

The scheme released its Nature Stewardship Framework (v1.0). The framework provides a structured and transparent way to assess whether conservation and restoration activities deliver meaningful, measurable change for ecosystems and the communities that depend on them, covering ecological, social, and institutional dimensions together.

This is a notable move from an established carbon standard into biodiversity certification territory. Social Carbon’s existing market infrastructure, registry, and network could accelerate adoption if the framework proves scientifically credible. It also signals that carbon and biodiversity standard-setting are converging as expected, a trend that project developers and buyers should watch closely. Verra with the SD Vista Nature Framework, Plan Vivo with PV Nature, and Cercarbono with the CBCP-01 methodology are a few other examples.

IPBES publishes landmark Business and Biodiversity assessment

IPBES published its Business and Biodiversity Report, approved on February 9th by representatives of more than 150 member governments during the 12th Plenary session in Manchester, UK. The assessment is the result of three years of work by 79 experts from 35 countries and synthesizes thousands of sources into a single integrated framework. Key figures include $7.3 trillion in global finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature in 2023 and a 40% reduction in natural capital stocks since 1992, while human-produced capital doubled over the same period. The report finds that biodiversity loss poses a systemic risk to economic stability, financial markets, and human wellbeing and proposes over 100 specific actions for businesses, governments, and financial actors.

Until now, the business case for biodiversity credits has relied heavily on voluntary contributions and philanthropy. The IPBES assessment changes the framing by stating at the highest intergovernmental scientific level that nature loss is a material business risk. It gives corporate decision makers a credible, citable basis for allocating budget to biodiversity, moving the topic from a CSR line item to a systemic financial exposure. And this type of exposure is the one that can motivate money flows.

If you are exploring whether and how biodiversity credits fit into your organization’s strategy, we would love to talk. Reach out at hello@bloomlabs.earth.

BCA releases discussion paper on biodiversity credit metrics

The Biodiversity Credit Alliance published Understanding Biodiversity Credit Metrics: A Business Imperative, a discussion paper aimed at helping businesses navigate the measurement landscape for biodiversity credits. The paper is structured around ten questions a business might ask before purchasing biodiversity credits, from “how are these different from carbon credits?” to “will AI resolve measurement uncertainty?”

BCA frames the absence of a single fungible biodiversity credit unit as a reflection of what biodiversity actually is: inherently diverse, locally specific, and impossible to compress into a biodiversity version of a CO2-equivalent. The paper points to equity markets, real estate, and consumer goods as examples of functioning markets that price heterogeneous assets without a universal unit. For buyers, the practical guidance centers on three steps: embed credits within a corporate nature strategy that applies the mitigation hierarchy, select credits aligned with the High-Level Principles, and ensure claims are transparent and proportionate to actual outcomes delivered.

If participants accept that biodiversity credits will remain heterogeneous, the question shifts from “how do we standardize a unit?” to “how do we make diverse credits comparable across their attributes, and selectable by use case?” BCA points to the latter direction, with an analogy to equity and real estate markets where assets are routinely priced across multiple non-standardized parameters.

We have shared our initial thoughts on biodiversity credit unit standardization in two earlier articles: Biodiversity Credits: Assets or Commodities? and Biodiversity Credit Calculation Overview: Version 2. The biodiversity credit unit conversation is crucial to the market development and we plan to cover more later this year as well.

Sweden backs voluntary approach for EU nature credits

Sweden pledged to support the development of a voluntary scheme for nature credits in the EU. The announcement aligns with the European Commission’s Nature Credits Roadmap, which foresees the expert group providing expertise on criteria and methodologies for nature credit markets by mid-2026 and governance frameworks by 2027.

This signals that at least one EU member state is actively pushing for the voluntary model within the Commission’s framework, rather than waiting for mandatory regulation. Sweden’s position reinforces the likelihood that voluntary biodiversity credits will have a recognized complementary role alongside EU regulatory tools.

We are part of the EU Commission Expert Group on Nature Credits and will be in Brussels later this month for the next working session. If you are working on nature credits in the EU and want to connect, reach out to us at hello@bloomlabs.earth.

Upcoming Events

March 4-6 - The Business of Conservation Conference in Nairobi

The Business of Conservation Conference returns to Nairobi, hosted by the African Leadership University’s School of Wildlife Conservation. This year’s edition focuses on changing the conservation narrative to one where conservation and development are aligned rather than opposed. Sub-themes include innovative sustainable financing for conservation (biodiversity credits, payment for ecosystem services, debt-for-nature swaps), community empowerment, the blue economy, and measuring biodiversity impact with technology and AI.

BCC is one of the few conferences that positions biodiversity finance within an African-led development framing rather than a European or North American policy lens. With the majority of VBM supply-side projects located in the Global South, events like this matter for connecting developers with buyer networks that reflect their context.

April 22 - LIFE Biodiv CrEW webinar: biodiversity credits in European wetlands

Eurosite, aeco, Sylva, NABU, the European Landowners’ Organization, and bloomlabs are hosting a joint webinar on April 22nd as part of the LIFE Biodiv CrEW project. The session will explore how biodiversity credits are being tested in European wetlands and what early implementation experience can teach about project design, eligibility requirements, and financial flows.

The agenda includes a presentation by Simas Gradeckas from bloomlabs on biodiversity credits, schemes and market, followed by ELO sharing lessons from sourcing biodiversity credit projects on the ground, and a closing session by Sylva on how the money flows.

On a related note, our consortium members are engaging with companies that want to learn, test, and help shape this emerging market, including options for early participation. To learn more or get involved, feel free to contact Marc Maleika from Sylva, marc@sylva.earth.

April 27-30 - Environmental Markets Conference in Chattanooga, TN

The Environmental Markets Conference brings together professionals across mitigation banking, carbon, water quality, and biodiversity markets in the US. The conference connects regulators, investors, environmental consultants, and corporate sustainability officers around conservation and restoration market infrastructure.

The US environmental mitigation market is decades ahead of the voluntary biodiversity market in terms of market infrastructure and volume. The lessons from wetland and stream mitigation banking on registry design, credit pricing, and buyer engagement are directly applicable to VBM as it matures. we will be presenting our work there, so if you are at EMC and want to discuss biodiversity credit market intelligence, reach out to us at hello@bloomlabs.earth.

Initiatives

Academic research on biodiversity credits in the Portuguese montado

Carla Janeiro from Universidade de Lisboa invites biodiversity credit project developers to contribute to an ongoing research initiative led by the University of Lisbon and the University of Evora. The project aims to develop a biodiversity credit mechanism tailored to the montado system, a traditional agro-silvo-pastoral landscape unique to the Iberian Peninsula. Input from practitioners is essential to ensure the research reflects real-world opportunities and challenges in voluntary biodiversity markets. If you are involved in biodiversity credit projects, your contribution would be valuable.

You can access the questionnaire here.

2026 State of Private Investment in Nature report

Forest Trends and NatureVest (The Nature Conservancy’s impact investment team) are partnering on the 2026 State of Private Investment in Nature report, the most comprehensive update of the nature investment landscape since 2016. The report will capture actual deployed capital, transaction-level performance data, capital efficiency insights, and analysis of which catalytic capital structures work to mobilize private investment across forestry, regenerative agriculture, biodiversity, water, carbon, and nature tech. All data is confidential and presented only in aggregated, anonymized form.

If you are a private investor, fund manager, or financial institution active in nature-based solutions, consider contributing to the survey. Respondents receive free early access to key insights and benchmarks. The survey closes April 15, 2026.

Contribute to the survey

Upcoming from bloomlabs

We are working with key market participants to build the conditions for VBM to scale by providing extensive market intelligence. Our current focus is on understanding the demand side and the levers to unlock it.

Market Study on Scaling Biodiversity Markets with CDC Biodiversité

This study, commissioned by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and conducted together with CDC Biodiversité and the Mission économie de la biodiversité initiative, with the participation of bloomlabs, explores the demand for voluntary biodiversity certificates among French corporates and financial stakeholders, with the aim of informing EU-wide market design and policy recommendations.

The Nature of Demand with IAPB and WEF

This white paper is a strategic collaboration between IAPB, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and bloomlabs to publish a data-backed segmentation of buyer archetypes, which unpacks and contrasts current market action against market hesitation.

2026 Nature Markets Survey with Pollination Foundation

Jointly produced with Pollination Foundation, this survey will collect signals on market size, pricing, credit design, demand drivers, and rights-based participation to support a market snapshot covering the biennium 2024-2025.

We are excited to announce our most comprehensive report yet: The Benchmarking Report on Biodiversity Certification and Credit Systems for European Wetlands.

It is bloomlabs’ final report of a EU-funded project we are part of: LIFE Biodiv CrEW. The goal of the project is to pilot biodiversity credits in European wetlands from 2025 to 2027. In this project, we (bloomlabs) are responsible for:

1. Mapping and systematically reviewing all relevant voluntary biodiversity credit schemes.

2. Defining best practice parameters and assessment criteria tailored to European wetlands.

3. Assessing and selecting the most suitable schemes for piloting under the project.

Why

Wetlands are generally considered the most economically valuable ecosystems on Earth per unit of area. They combine an incredible amount of ecosystem services all at once: carbon sequestration, water filtration, flood buffering, biodiversity habitat, food provision, groundwater recharge, and coastal protection.

These are just the practical, economic reasons. Visiting a wetland will quickly provide a number of non-economic reasons for why we should safeguard them.

We have added a bit more information on wetlands in the report itself but we trust that most reading the report are fully aware of their value.

The Process

1. Biodiversity Credit Scheme Mapping

Before conducting extensive data collection on a number of schemes, we first had to select them.

Scheme Pre-Selection Process

Although we already were tracking over 50 different voluntary biodiversity credit schemes on Bloom, to do an extensive biodiversity credit scheme mapping we had to start from scratch. At the end of the initial stocktake we had 91 schemes. After the initial screening and a number of increasingly more extensive and structured pre-selection stages, we were left with eight that were then analyzed in much more depth.

Pre-Selected Schemes

The pre-selected eight schemes were considered to have the most potential in the European wetlands (Table 2).

Data Collection

Once schemes were pre-selected, we defined over 60 parameters across five key categories: Profile, Outcomes, Equity, Governance and Market. We then collected data on each of these schemes across these parameters. Our focus was to have as much quantitative data and verifiable qualitative data as possible. That is why many qualitative data points were coupled with direct sources from the scheme documentation.

2. Scheme Assessment and Selection

We based the scheme assessment framework on the best practices in biodiversity credit markets. Beyond our own experience, the primary sources of the best practices were scientific literature, expert interviews, broader market standards, EU policy priorities, project steering committee and, most importantly, the High-level Principles (HLPs).

HLPs were co-developed by Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA), International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB) and World Economic Forum (WEF). These principles represent a comprehensive synthesis of nature market best practices and have become foundational in the voluntary biodiversity market. That is why we made a conscious decision to minimize any further market fragmentation and design the scheme assessment framework based on these principles. Inconsistent market guidance and definitions are some of the main sources of confusion for market participants. That is why our aim was to extend the HLPs by adjusting some existing principles and including additional ones for European wetlands.

Results

Following quantitative scoring, critical criteria filtering, and in-depth qualitative analysis, we selected two biodiversity credit schemes as most suitable for piloting in European wetlands:

Verra’s SD VISta Nature Framework, selected for its institutional credibility, alignment with ecosystem condition accounting used in corporate reporting, flexible indicator framework, support for credit stacking with carbon credits, and an active project pipeline, including Europe.

Wallacea Trust, selected for its scientifically rigorous, open-source, and flexible basket of metrics methodology, high ease of use, applicability across wetland types, and suitability for agile, learning-oriented pilots despite lighter governance structures.

Both schemes rely on very similar biodiversity indicators that focus on ecosystem composition and structure. Technically, this means we can use the same indicator set for both and directly compare results within the same project.

It is important to point out that the selection says nothing about the absolute quality of any of these schemes (more in disclaimers).

Learnings

The report allowed us to better validate various hypotheses we developed over the past years. Here are a couple we found particularly interesting:

Most schemes are implicitly designed for biodiversity-rich regions outside Europe

Many leading schemes assume large, intact landscapes with limited ownership fragmentation. These conditions are more common in regions like Latin America or Africa than in Europe. This raises important questions about how existing approaches can be adapted to smaller, fragmented European contexts.

The market requires supportive frameworks

Virtually all market participants would significantly benefit from market standardization, trust building and demand generation. The EU’s Roadmap towards Nature Credits is in a unique position to become a central anchor for building trust and alignment across the market not only in Europe but globally.

Voluntary markets face structural constraints in meeting certain high-integrity requirements

Voluntary environmental markets have some structural limits in meeting some high-integrity criteria. Without stable financing pathways, regulatory integration, and long-term stewardship mechanisms, durable biodiversity outcomes remain challenging.

Theoretical market principles and practical considerations are closely linked

Choosing a scheme is not just about scoring criteria - it is also about real-world feasibility. In practice, flexibility across ecosystems and monitoring, project types, and early buyer interest matters just as much as technical design.

Agricultural land and farmed landscapes remain only partially addressed

Most globally applicable schemes do not yet fully reflect the realities of agricultural land and farmed landscapes. There long-term commitments and revenue certainty are harder to secure.

Next Steps

The consortium is now working to apply these credit schemes across a number of identified project sites all across Europe. We will support the consortium but will not be leading any upcoming work. Although the project is still in the initial stage, we do see a lot of potential and are looking to apply our learnings at a bigger scale.

If you would like to learn more, discuss the report or the project with us, feel free to reach out to hello@bloomlabs.earth.

Finally, we want to thank the consortium of partners in this project:

• NABU - project lead, largest German nature conservation NGO.

• European Landowners’ Organization (ELO) - an organization that represents national membership organizations bringing together over 5 million private landowners all over Europe.

• Eurosite - European network for natural site managers and conservation practitioners.

• aeco - European peatland restoration project developer.

• Sylva - an environmental services company specialized in structuring environmental assets.

The report would not have been possible without you.

Join our webinar

On April 22, we will participate in the webinar where we will share a bit more about our work for this project.

Learn more

Disclaimers

Here is a shortlist of disclaimers that we expand on in the report:

Not a universal ranking

We did not set out to produce a universal ranking of biodiversity credit schemes. Our mandate was to identify which schemes are most suitable for testing in European wetlands at a specific point in time. We cannot and do not make claims about the absolute quality of these standards and methodologies. Meaningful evaluation today depends on context (e.g. ecosystem, geography, project developer needs, etc.).

Scoring involves judgement

While the framework is structured and evidence-based, some criteria required our qualitative interpretation. Again, the scores should be seen as decision support tools instead of definitive rankings or endorsements.

Uneven data availability across schemes

Our analysis mostly relies on publicly available information, which varies in depth and clarity across schemes. Where documentation is limited, certain parts can appear weaker simply because they are not fully disclosed.

Limited piloting scope

As a time-bound LIFE Preparatory Project, we were able to pilot only two schemes. This reflects project scope and learning priorities and not a claim that these are universally the best options.

Focus of the assessment

We placed stronger emphasis on how schemes quantify biodiversity outcomes and ensure scientific rigor than on broader governance dimensions. This reflects our project’s focus on measurable ecological performance in a European context, where many governance safeguards are already embedded in existing legal frameworks.

Rapidly evolving market

Biodiversity credit standards and methodologies continue to develop quickly. Updates introduced after our assessment cut-off date were not reflected in the analysis.

2026 starts on a slow but steady note for the Voluntary Biodiversity Market (VBM) with more than $56k in recorded sales for January, doubling the previous month’s total, led by Seatrees, Niue Ocean Wide Trust, and Ekos. The market headlines showcase a continued trend to standardize the tools, the assessments, and the outputs of the market’s projects.

This article is the first edition of the Monthly Market Overview based on our intelligence platform Bloom. It covers market activity, global trends, news, and developments from VBM across:

• Transactions

• Projects

• Organizations

• Headlines

• Reports

• Events

For more in-depth VBM insights and access to Bloom data, sign up for free on the platform.

Market

Context

VBM has sold $9.8m worth of credits. The year 2024 saw roughly $5m in sales, while 2025 saw $4m transacted, but with a constant progression from $0.3m in Q1 to $1.9m in Q4. However, two large aggregated records that consist of multiple transactions are to be noted: a $2.2m aggregate for the Niue Moana Mahu project in Q1 2024 and a $1.1m aggregate for Wilderlands’ projects in Q4 2025. Hence, quarterly trends should be treated with caution until more granular information can be collected.

January 2026

Disclaimer: This section only accounts for single transactions. Aggregates are excluded since they would highly impact the month-level granularity needed for the analysis.

January 2026 saw $56k in total sales, more than 6 times the past year’s value, with 22% less unique transactions.

Sales were 90% B2B and confirm a growing trend, as this type of purchase only represented on average 53% for the first half of 2025, and 79% for the second. The growing B2B engagement rate is a positive sign of corporate interest, but it has yet to show up in tangible dollars spent, as the average transaction value ($900 for January) has been on the downside since September 2025. It is, however, still 8 times higher than last year.

This month’s average weighted $/ha/year reaches around $2,980 due to Marereni sales. It confirms an upward trend in this indicator, reaching $1,200 for H1 2025 and $1,500 for H2 2025 on average, although a high month-on-month variance is notable. This indicator is, by design, highly impacted by projects selling large unit quantities, like Marereni.

The Marereni project sold $51k worth of credits, representing 91% of the month’s sales by value, and covering 1.7 hectares of land. The Niue Moana Mahu sold $4k worth of credits, 8% of the month’s sales by value, or 3,000 hectares of land. The Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari sold $644 worth of credits at 1% of the month’s sales by value (92 hectares). The month’s biggest transaction is B2B and reaches $27k on the Marereni project, although more detailed information has not been obtained yet. The Marereni project, developed by Seatrees and COBEC Projects in Kenya, restores mangroves using the Seatrees+ blocks for funding. The project chose a volume strategy, with cheap ($3) and small (1m²) units adapted to mangrove projects, making them easier to sell, especially to B2C buyers.

Projects

Chishui

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Chinese government are launching a $150m-funded nature credit pilot in the Chishui River Basin. The project will be built “in conjunction with an eco-compensation fund to demonstrate the case of investing in nature,” explained Xueliang Cai, Senior Water Resources Specialist at ADB. From a VBM perspective, it is the most well-funded project and thus has the potential to help scale the market alongside China’s place in it. The country, armed with a particularly efficient structure of command, a megadiverse fauna and flora, a highly capable financial system, and more than 9 billion hectares of land, has all the cards to become a global VBM leader in the coming years.

Finsilva

The to-be-launched Finsilva Pilot in Pielavesi will be the first known VBM Finnish project. The S Group, one of Finland’s largest retailers, will purchase “nature value hectares” produced by the landowner Finsilva through the restoration of 12 hectares of degraded peatland. This project is coordinated by Tapio Palvelut and LocalTapiola, with verification provided by the Finnish Supervisory Agency, and will follow a contribution-based model excluding compensation or offsetting. We have reached out to the developers to learn more about the project.

Formentera

The Formentera project from Nature&People Foundation officially started its pilot phase to plant 2,500 trees. Using the Urban Biodiversity Standard (UBS) scheme, it aims to issue more than 1 million credits over 20 years, with each credit representing 100m² of maintained green coverage. The project’s core objective is to cool the island with a temperature reduction of 1°C to 3°C in targeted areas. The Urban Biodiversity Standard and over 50 other voluntary biodiversity credit schemes are available on Bloom.

Headlines

The Landbanking Group open-sourced framework

The Landbanking Group officially open-sourced their Ecosystem Integrity Index (EII) codebase and global dataset to assess ecosystem health at a 300-meter resolution. The EII generates a standardized score from 0 (degraded) to 1 (intact) by synthesizing three pillars of ecological health: Functional Integrity, Structural Integrity, and Compositional Integrity. The goal is to provide a trustworthy proxy, a “good-enough” measurement tool, that can be used everywhere, by everyone.

The reliability and relevance of the EII will have to be assessed by the scientific community, but from a market perspective, it is a potential step forward to standardization and scale. It can provide suppliers and buyers with a shared tool to measure a baseline and the change that happened against it, and it makes projects comparable between one another with the same data types and formats. And, most importantly, the same base unit which can be used well beyond biodiversity credits.

Superorganism closes $25.9 Million fund for biodiversity startups

Superorganism, a venture firm dedicated to biodiversity, has closed its $25.9 million biodiversity-only debut fund. The fund is structured to provide seed and pre-seed capital to early-stage startups that address nature loss through technology that slows or reverses extinction.

The successfully closed fund creates a precedent in the venture space, legitimizing pure-play biodiversity funds instead of only high-level climate/impact players. We believe it is the first of many such funds.

BCA tests its High-Level Principles on the ground

The Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) has initiated a testing phase of its High-Level Principles (HLPs) Assessment Matrix v1.0 to evaluate the integrity of methodologies. As part of this pilot, WWF Tanzania assessed its Wildlife Credits, and Seatrees used the matrix to evaluate its Crediting Protocol for Marine Restoration. This learning phase is intended to inform a more robust Assessment Framework currently being co-developed with partners, including UNDP and Accounting for Nature.

Practical tools for scheme and project developers to objectively measure their alignment with high-integrity benchmarks is a crucial step forward that helps standardize the fragmented voluntary biodiversity market and increases buyer trust. BCA continues to respond to the desperate need for VBM to consolidate more.

EU Commission to support nature credits with bioeconomy strategy

European Commissioner Roswall addressed the European Parliament, outlining a bioeconomy strategy that explicitly champions nature credits and the formation of a “Bio-Based Europe Alliance” to drive €10 billion in bio-based solutions purchasing by 2030, alongside a EU buyers club for carbon credits.

The Commission’s commitment to creating an environment to “stimulate demand for market mechanisms” is exactly what VBM needs to transition from a niche philanthropic effort to a standardized asset class.

UNEP State of Finance for Nature 2026 report

The report reveals a disparity in global capital allocation with nature-negative financial flows reaching $7.3t in 2023 and outpacing investments in nature-based solutions (NbS) by a factor of 30 to 1. While NbS received $220b globally, private finance accounted for only $23 billion of that total. The last version of the report, published in 2023, already identified a $7t vs. $200b funding gap.

The report identifies high-impact sectors, specifically utilities, industrials, energy, and materials, making them ideal targets for future VBM demand as they face increasing pressure from the market to transition to nature-positive business models.

Peru progresses on national framework for biodiversity credits

The Peruvian Ministry of the Environment (MINAM) has officially approved the “Guidelines for the design and operation of biodiversity credit projects” through a Ministerial Resolution. This framework will guide the technical orientation required to implement biodiversity credits in the country.

These guidelines will provide the assurance layer that investors and local communities need to participate, something that VBM currently lacks. The Peruvian Sierra del Divisor project, developed by Fronterra, and one of the largest VBM projects in the world, might be the perfect testing ground.

Trinidad and Tobago to launch biodiversity credit framework

The Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) of Trinidad and Tobago, supported by funding from the British High Commission, has started the development of a national certification framework for coastal and marine biodiversity credits. It will establish a structured, investment-ready environment with an initial focus on sandy beach and dune habitats, with future integration planned for coral reefs and mangroves.

Beyond creating the first-ever regulatory national biodiversity credit scheme designed directly for coastal and marine ecosystems, Trinidad and Tobago’s push can boost the local and regional voluntary scene. The UK’s Biodiversity Net Gain is one illustration of this effect.

Suggested reads

Biodiversity and carbon credits in practice

“Biodiversity and carbon are joined at every level: ecological, financial and political. That inevitably links the voluntary biodiversity market (VBM) and the voluntary carbon market (VCM) together. And although the post Global Biodiversity Framework biodiversity credit excitement faded, the biodiversity <> carbon topic is just as relevant. As reality sets in and market develops, we are moving from theory to practical implementation. It is time to go beyond a heavily simplified biodiversity credits vs carbon credits analysis and attempt to better define their overlap between these markets.”

Five rules for scientifically credible nature markets

“Here we synthesize international research from the history of nature markets and summarize five rules that are necessary precursors for achieving their environmental aims. We propose a checklist for investors, policymakers and civil society to assess whether nature markets are likely to be delivering scientifically credible outcomes. We score the world’s largest nature markets against these rules and show that all face integrity risks. Lastly, we outline critical evidence-based actions that can be taken to push nature markets towards greater integrity.”

This paper is an essential contribution that provides a rigorous, science-based and evidence-based stress test for nature markets. Everyone praises positive outcomes, but this kind of analysis is what the industry needs to objectively assess them.

Mercer’s Nature Market Research

“To provide investors and wider market participants with an analysis of current market signals and investment opportunities, we undertook a Nature Market Research study between January 2024 and July 2025. Gathering responses from 70 managers covering 89 private market nature strategies (closed and fundraising), this paper draws on the research findings.”

This report provides extensive insights into investment funds’ approach to financing nature. Which land types, which activity types, and which credit types are being targeted by the organizations that will likely shape the future of demand-side VBM.

Upcoming from us

We are working with key market participants to build the conditions for VBM to scale by providing extensive market intelligence. Our current focus is on understanding the demand side and the levers to unlock it.

Market Study on Scaling Biodiversity Markets

This study, commissioned by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and conducted together with CDC Biodiversité and the Mission économie de la biodiversité initiative, with the participation of bloomlabs, explores the demand for voluntary biodiversity certificates among French corporates and financial stakeholders, with the aim of informing EU-wide market design and policy recommendations.

The Nature of Demand

This white paper is a strategic collaboration between IAPB, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and bloomlabs to publish a data-backed segmentation of buyer archetypes based on actual biodiversity credit purchases made. The aim is to unpack why companies buy biodiversity credits and what else could be done to position VBM as an attractive option to make nature-positive contributions. If you have purchased or are thinking of purchasing biodiversity credits, please reach out to hello@bloomlabs.earth. We would love to hear from you.

2026 Nature Markets Survey

Jointly produced with Pollination Foundation, this survey will collect signals on market size, pricing, credit design, demand drivers, and rights-based participation to support a market snapshot covering the biennium 2024-2025. If you are a project developer or credit scheme administrator and have still not heard from either Pollination Foundation or us, please reach out to hello@bloomlabs.earth as well. We would very much appreciate hearing your experience.

Biodiversity Credits in European Wetlands

We are part of the EU LIFE project funded by the European Commission, “LIFE Biodiv CrEW: Testing Biodiversity Credits in European Wetlands”. There we are exploring how biodiversity credits can be developed and transacted in European peatlands and wetlands. Our consortium members are engaging with companies that want to learn, test, and help shape this emerging market, including options for early participation. To learn more or get involved, feel free to contact Marc Maleika from Sylva at marc@sylva.earth.

Upcoming events

The Business of Conservation Conference 2026

The African Leadership University with International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) will create a physical space in Nairobi, Kenya where potential biodiversity credit buyers and offtakers can have in-depth discussions with the leading African biodiversity credit suppliers. The market definitely needs more of these initiatives. The event is expected to draw 450 participants. If you’re interested in sponsoring the event or have any other questions, reach out to Paul Steele.

Biodiversity and carbon are joint at every level: ecological, financial and political. That inevitably links the voluntary biodiversity market (VBM) and the voluntary carbon market (VCM) together. And although the post Global Biodiversity Framework biodiversity credit excitement faded, the biodiversity <> carbon topic is just as relevant. As reality sets in and market develops, we are moving from theory to practical implementation. It is time to go beyond a heavily simplified biodiversity credits vs carbon credits analysis and attempt to better define their overlap between these markets.

Let’s dive in.

How biodiversity and carbon credits work together now

There are multiple ways to think about it. Here is the way we do:

1. Stacking (same land, separate assets)

Issuing carbon and biodiversity credits separately from the same project is the most common way in which VBM and VCM connect. Such credits can then be sold to multiple buyers.

Benefits

Scale

Stacking biodiversity outcomes with carbon helps to use the existing carbon market infrastructure and reach scale faster than developing a separate biodiversity market.

Flexibility and higher revenue per unit of land

In theory, selling specific ecosystem services to specific buyers should lead to higher revenue per unit of land. If a developer can sell carbon outcomes to buyer X at $50/ha and biodiversity outcomes to buyer Y at $25/ha instead of selling a single or bundled credit for $60/ha to buyer Z, the seller would do it given that the transaction costs do not exceed $15/ha.

Better outcomes

The logic is that the explicit measurement of different ecosystem services leads to a more holistic land management focused on ecological integrity instead of optimizing for isolated outcomes.

Improved accounting of ecosystem services

The explicit measurement of different ecosystem services is expected to lead to better accounting for them.

Drawbacks

Additional complexity

The complexity is introduced at two levels: market and monitoring.

At the market level, outcome fragmentation, where different ecosystem services from the same land are sold to separate buyers who make separate claims, complicates environmental accounting. That makes mistakes and misuse, such as double counting, easier. Strict and well-defined credit usage criteria might prevent these risks but it would probably come with heavy additional transaction costs. So while stacking might lead to improved ecosystem service accounting through direct measurements, selling these services to different buyers might more than cancel this benefit out.

At the monitoring level, ecosystem unbundling is complex. Biodiversity science cannot yet support all of its use cases. We still struggle to reliably model how different ecosystem services interact, respond to interventions or change over time. These systems are non-linear, context-dependent and heavily influenced by variables we cannot fully measure or control. This uncertainty increases outcome delivery risk, especially when markets expect clear, quantifiable and isolated biodiversity metrics.

Additionality concerns

It can be difficult to prove that certain biodiversity outcomes have only been achieved because of the additional revenue from biodiversity credits and that carbon-only finance would not have achieved similar outcomes. The easiest cases to prove additionality are when additional interventions are required (e.g. native species reintroduction or invasive species removal) to achieve more significant biodiversity outcomes.

Additional costs

MRV and certification costs.

2. Bundling (same land, single asset)

In this case, carbon credits remain the only issued asset. Biodiversity remains a part of a carbon credit in two ways:

1. Explicit bundling (quantified biodiversity gains)

Here biodiversity outcomes are defined, measured or even unitized separately from carbon.

Benefits

Scale

Identical logic to stacking.

Higher revenue per unit of land

Although project developers cannot sell carbon and biodiversity outcomes to different buyers, they are able to prove to respective credit standards that carbon and biodiversity bundling (and the resulting higher revenue per unit of land) would allow them to achieve additional biodiversity outcomes.

Better outcomes

Identical logic to stacking.

Drawbacks

Less flexibility

Unlike stacking, explicit bundling does not offer the flexibility of selling different credits to different buyers.

Additional complexity

Similar to stacking, explicit bundling introduces more complexity. It mostly lies in biodiversity monitoring (and not the market level) since biodiversity outcomes need to be additionally measured.

Additionality concerns

Any combination of environmental credits represents additionality concerns. However, they are less significant for explicit bundling since separate environmental assets are not issued.

Additional costs

MRV and certification costs.

2. Implicit bundling (implied biodiversity benefits)

Here, biodiversity is not quantitatively measured. It is the co-benefit approach, popularized by the CCB (Climate, Community and Biodiversity) Standards, managed by Verra - a key standard both in VCM and VBM. More recently, the approach has been reinforced by Equitable Earth (formerly ERS). This modern carbon standard has directly embedded biodiversity into their methodologies and plan to measure it quantitatively as soon as there is more consensus on biodiversity metrics and measurement costs go down.

Although there is no official definition of what a voluntary biodiversity market is yet, biodiversity-focused finance from implicit bundling is usually not considered as part of it.

Benefits

Ease of implementation

Compared to quantifying biodiversity, following a qualitative theory of change or certain guardrails to ensure no biodiversity loss in carbon projects is easier. That is why in recent years, the CCB co-benefit label has become the default for nature-based carbon projects to signal high quality.

Better outcomes

Identical logic as above with natural limits of not measuring all these outcomes.

Drawbacks

No quantified outcomes

Undefined outcomes cannot achieve their true value.

Over-reliance on carbon credits

Under the co-benefit scenario, biodiversity gain is completely dependent on carbon credits. This excludes landscapes that are not eligible for carbon credits.

Additional costs

MRV and certification costs.

Stapling and nesting

Beyond stacking and bundling, two more methods of combining biodiversity and carbon are being developed: credit stapling and nesting.

Credit stapling is the sale of different types of environmental credits (e.g. carbon and biodiversity) from different projects to the same buyer.

Credit nesting is the hierarchical nesting of environmental claims from higher-order to lower-order. The highest-order claim focuses on ecosystem integrity and targets holistic ecosystem recovery. It is followed by the community/habitat claim focused on enhancements within specific communities or habitats. It contributes to biodiversity without necessarily impacting full ecosystem resilience. Finally, the lowest-order claim is species-specific and targets specific biodiversity gains in target species without necessarily focusing on the ecosystem-level impact. CreditNature, the creator of the concept, has written more about it here.

Both methods are promising and stapling already has been successfully tested (see more below). They fall out of scope this time.

Present state

As of 18 December 2025, here is the overlap between VCM and VBM in numbers, powered by Bloom, our market intelligence platform:

Organizations

From 1,106 VBM organizations, 359 explicitly operate in VCM. A significant portion of the remaining organizations such as consultants, policymakers or NGOs are also linked to VCM. Hence, we estimate that at least 50% originate in carbon markets.

Once you serve a single environmental market, entering adjacent ones is a natural next step, especially for credit schemes, project developers and consultants.

Schemes

While most credit schemes do not yet state their credit stacking and bundling policies, some early trends are visible.

Out of 59 schemes covered, 21 explicitly support stacking. Out of them, 9 also support bundling and the rest either provide no information or do not support it. 11 schemes support bundling. Out of them, 9 also support stacking and the rest provide no information.

Projects

42 projects support stacking with only 15 of them also supporting bundling. 16 projects support bundling with 15 of them supporting stacking as well. 23 biodiversity credit projects explicitly do not support stacking and 52 do not support bundling. The remaining (74 out of 146) projects do not report their stacking and bundling policies.

Projects that support stacking cover roughly 866,790ha while projects that support bundling cover about 320,350ha - respectively about 16% and 6% of the total area covered across all projects. The average project size when carbon stacking and bundling is used is around 20,640ha and 20,000ha, respectively, similar to the average nature-based carbon project size.

The projects that support stacking are dominated by 5 project developers: InCarbon, rePLANET, Savimbo, ERA Brazil and BCP (BioCarbon Partners). Together, they manage about 804,450ha, making up 92.8% of the total area for stackable projects.

The projects that support bundling are once again led by rePLANET. They alone make up more than 76% of the total area for bundling-friendly projects with 246,000ha. The remaining 4 project developers cover the rest of the market.

As we can see, the stacking and bundling-friendly supply is still very thin and is controlled by rePLANET.

It is also important to note that stacking and bundling can be either freely combined with any 3rd party carbon standard or permitted only with the respective carbon standard under the same organization (e.g. Plan Vivo’s PV Nature allows stacking only with their own PV Climate and Verra’s SD VISta Nature Framework allows stacking only with their own VCS Program). Wallacea Trust, Cercarbono and CreditNature are notable credit schemes that allow combining biodiversity credits with any other carbon standard.

Transactions

So far, 5 suppliers lead biodiversity credit transactions connected to carbon:

• Wilderlands. They have partnered with carbon project developer Tasman Environmental Markets (TEM) to sell their credits to the same buyer. TEM’s carbon project is in Papua New Guinea while Wilderlands’ biodiversity project is in Australia. Such a transaction is the above-mentioned credit stapling.

• Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari. The NGO used Ekos’ BioCredita Programme to sell biodiversity credits stapled with carbon credits - another example of credit stapling.

• Savimbo. Their biodiversity credit sales are often bundled with carbon credits, water credits and tree planting.

• Nat5. They have facilitated a biodiversity, water, and carbon credit pre-purchase by a Mexican investment firm. The exact amount earmarked for biodiversity is unclear but the bulk or all of it should go there.

• InvestConservation®. Their biodiversity unit is directly tied to carbon sequestration.

Additionally, rePLANET reported to have secured an investment for most of their bundled and stacked carbon and biodiversity credit projects mentioned earlier.

And finally, Ponterra has recently made news by securing a first-of-a-kind $270,000 biodiversity-credit backed loan for their carbon restoration project. It is an innovative transaction that is not a traditional credit sale and deserves further analysis in the future.

It is difficult to estimate the total size of these transactions (since many are bundled into a single price) but it is unlikely to be above 20% of total VBM sales of ~$10-15 million.

Why is stacking more popular than explicit bundling in VBM?

True stacking is non-existent in most of the largest nature markets, such as the US-based compliance wetland and stream market or the species mitigation market. One key exception is England’s Biodiversity Net Gain. It is also widely accepted to be the riskiest way to combine ecosystem services. Yet, as mentioned, stacking (29%) is almost 3 times more common than explicit bundling (11%) in VBM. It is worth going beyond our attempt to rationalize why in the previous article.

Sales flexibility and revenue maximization

Since true stacking allows selling different ecosystem services (or credits) to different buyers, a developer could technically sell each ecosystem service to the most interested buyer and earn higher revenue per unit of land compared to bundled credits. In most cases, bundled credits are purchased because of a single ecosystem service/credit in the bundle. The rest are “co-benefits”, bound to be valued less.

Important note: we have not seen strong evidence of stacking leading to higher revenues in other nature markets yet.

Narrow buyer mandates

Most buyers procure credits one credit type at a time, in line with their sustainability strategies and legal obligations (e.g. carbon only, biodiversity net gain/offsets only, nutrient only, etc.). That is why they prefer to buy the specific credit they are required to report on and not a package that includes other ecosystem services. Biodiversity is gaining importance in corporate reporting but biodiversity credits are not part of any such corporate reporting mandates yet. Hence, they remain an afterthought.

That is why so many hope that the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) and Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) do to biodiversity markets what the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) are doing to carbon markets. That would create, ideally together with corresponding regulations, a defined reason for corporates to buy biodiversity credits.

Price discovery and product differentiation

Separate biodiversity and carbon credits make it easier to benchmark prices, compare standards and run tenders. In contrast, bundled products are harder to value and compare because the contribution of each service to the price is often unclear. rePLANET and their bundled credit pricing struggles is a great example.

In other words: stacking matches regulation, corporate accounting and procurement practices better than bundling. Different markets are built for different outcomes and prefer to be considered separately, even if the outcomes are from the same land.

The big question is whether biodiversity and carbon credits will be sold to separate buyers. If that is the case, then stacking really makes sense.

So far, it is too early to tell but we do see a couple of important variables for the “different buyer” scenario to materialize:

• Different claims. Carbon credits support offsetting claims while biodiversity credits support contribution claims. It can lead to different credit purchases or might even reinforce one another.

• The overlap between emitters and companies responsible for biodiversity loss. It is significant but not complete.

• Disclosure pressures and regulations. SBTN and TNFD mirror SBTi and TCFD but are still early and do not consolidate into a single framework. The same is true for regulations. The result: no single process to procure both carbon and biodiversity credits.

• Buyer’s ability to accept multi-credit complexity. So far, we see a push toward simplicity, not complexity.

The shadow voluntary biodiversity market

We often say that the “shadow” VBM is significantly bigger than the standalone market, which, according to our data at Bloom, likely stands at $10-15 million in total sales. The shadow VBM is the total financial value attributed to biodiversity in other voluntary nature market transactions besides VBM itself, primarily VCM. In effect, it is a combination of implicit and explicit bundling.

To prove that, let’s look at a couple of data points:

Case study 1: rePLANET

Carbon and biodiversity credit project developer rePLANET specializes in explicit bundling and stacking. rePLANET is closely linked to the popular “basket of metrics” Wallacea Trust biodiversity credit methodology since the company’s CEO, Dr. Tim Coles, is also the founder of the research non-profit group Operation Wallacea, the organization behind Wallacea Trust. rePLANET likely has the biggest project pipeline in the market of at least 11 projects that span almost 250,000 hectares and are forecasted to generate ~3.04 million credits and 10.6 million biodiversity units of gain over the next 20-30 years.

Surprisingly, the units of biodiversity gain and not credits are most important to rePLANET. They are quantified exactly the same way as credits using the Wallacea Trust methodology. However, they are not issued as separate assets and hence are not required to follow the established credit issuance practices, such as keeping a ~20% permanence reversal buffer. Instead, they are simply bundled with carbon credits - either completely or up to a certain point (e.g. 50% uplift). Any uplift beyond 50% can be issued as separate biodiversity credits, which becomes stacking.

Although rePLANET has not announced any official transactions of these bundled and stacked projects yet, it claims to have received funding for multiple such projects and real interest from key carbon investors and buyers. According to rePLANET, these unitized biodiversity gains is one of the key reasons why their carbon projects gain attention (next to their 60%+ benefit sharing policy) and achieve the “biodiversity premium” in credit pricing. The company estimates that such units of biodiversity gain are much larger than VBM.

Case study 2: biometrio.earth

biometrio.earth is a biodiversity MRV company that combines remote sensing, acoustic and imaging data. Their team has exceptional biodiversity MRV expertise, having managed the monitoring of Mexico’s Aichi Targets across the whole country.

Their key market now? VCM. Not VBM. They have identified the need for carbon project developers to quantify biodiversity gains in their project area even if they are not required to do so, going beyond the qualitative (e.g. CCB) labels. Chirping birds or a shy tapir passing by is a source of beautiful promotional material both for project developers and credit buyers. And although not unitized, it is also a quantitative proof of biodiversity outcomes.

The increasing importance of co-benefits in carbon

AlliedOffsets and Sylvera have recently illustrated the importance of carbon credit co-benefits (or implicit bundling) in numbers. Using AlliedOffsets’ data and Sylvera’s project ratings, they identified two key drivers of price premiums: quality (i.e. their own ratings) and co-benefits (i.e. social, biodiversity and community value beyond only carbon). For example, ARR (Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation) credits with co-benefit score of 4 average a price of $40.18, while a co-benefit score of 1 is at $15.49.

Such carbon credit transactions with co-benefits are becoming more common as well:

In 2023, the share of VCM transactions from projects with co-benefit certifications grew to 28%, up from 22% in 2022, fetching an average price premium of 37%. Nature-based carbon reduction and removal projects that have potential for environmental and biodiversity co-benefits display a similar market trend. This is particularly true for afforestation, reforestation and revegetation (ARR), and improved forest management (IFM) projects. Between 2022 and 2023, prices for ARR and IFM credits rose 31% and 11%, respectively. - Optimizing for Biodiversity in the Voluntary Carbon Market | JPMorganChase and Carbon Direct

Final verdict

According to Ecosystem Marketplace, the cumulative voluntary carbon market from 2021 to 2024 is estimated at around $5.3 billion and Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) carbon credit category comprises at least $750 million of it in 2023 and 2024 alone. On top of that, the nature-based carbon offtake agreements are rapidly growing, valued at at least $450 million in 2024. If these offtakes materialize and biodiversity represents even 5% of the total value, that already makes it about two times larger than the standalone VBM.

Competition between the two

The markets compete across the following axes:

1. Project design

Projects must usually balance maximizing carbon gains with maximizing biodiversity benefits, introducing trade-offs. Maximizing carbon sequestration can lead to non-native high-density monocultures (often dominated by eucalypt, pine and acacia species) which usually hurts biodiversity in the long-run.

On the other hand, maximizing biodiversity is likely to result in near optimal carbon outcomes. The challenge? These carbon outcomes usually occur outside carbon crediting periods (up to 40 years) and are less predictable.

Because native-species and mosaic approaches often have less predictable carbon curves and may generate fewer credits within project crediting periods, they can be less attractive to carbon-focused investors and developers compared to plantations with commercial species. - Optimizing for Biodiversity in the Voluntary Carbon Market | JPMorganChase and Carbon Direct

What is good for carbon is not always good for biodiversity. The opposite is usually true given a long enough timeframe.

2. Demand

So far, it seems that the buyer overlap between the two markets will be significant.

As mentioned earlier, buyers usually procure credits one credit type at a time. And while carbon credit procurement exists, biodiversity credit procurement does not. That incentivizes carbon credit buyers to address the rising pressure to focus on biodiversity by shooting two birds with one stone - buying carbon credits with biodiversity co-benefits. On top of that, the recent carbon market scrutiny pulls every other voluntary environmental market, including VBM, back by concentrating carbon sellers and buyers on “fixing carbon first”.

3. Supply

While VCM is limited to natural carbon sinks, VBM applies to virtually every natural and productive ecosystem. This results in both markets targeting overlapping ecosystems like forests or wetlands. There project developers often must choose between prioritizing carbon or biodiversity outcomes. This can introduce additionality challenges if the same actions generate similar carbon and biodiversity outcomes.

Biggest risk for biodiversity credits

Since both VCM and VBM is a buyer’s market, the key risk for VBM is big buyers settling for carbon credits based on qualitative co-benefits without even considering standalone biodiversity credits in their procurement process. In other words: implicit bundling.

Is there a silver lining?

Can different carbon and biodiversity outcome time horizons be combined? One solution is to align time horizons by extending carbon crediting periods. Going beyond already multi-generational commitments can be difficult though. Another solution is to adjust project interventions:

In addition, projects that mimic natural succession—with fast-growing species dominating the early years of the project and a more diverse selection of slower-growing species planted underneath—have the potential to provide rapid carbon accumulation initially while facilitating the transition to a more biodiverse state as the project matures. Some ARR and uneven-aged-stand IFM projects already have a precedent of mimicking natural succession and integrating Indigenous knowledge to support local communities while promoting biodiversity. Over time, species-rich forests and ecosystems generally store more carbon than less diverse environments due to more efficient and complementary use of resources. - Optimizing for Biodiversity in the Voluntary Carbon Market | JPMorganChase and Carbon Direct

Should VBM even exist?

So far, the case for standalone biodiversity credits can seem weak. Carbon credits are more established, more fungible, tradable, have a clearer business case and, most importantly, often already address biodiversity indirectly. A new credit type introduces more fragmentation in an already divided market, which will inevitably increase transaction costs and add a heavier load on the buyers.

One simple fact we have been alluding to justifies the existence of voluntary biodiversity credits though: many ecosystems do not sequester or store enough carbon to be financed by carbon credits alone. Not all ecosystems are carbon sinks. Inland freshwater ecosystems (i.e. rivers, streams and lakes), coral reefs, fire-prone savannas and grasslands are some such examples. In fact, even the ecosystems that are seemingly perfect for carbon credits (e.g. peatlands) often cannot be financed with carbon credits alone if they are not large enough or do not avoid enough carbon emissions. And of course, carbon is never the only ecosystem service that matters and is forced to act as a proxy for so many others (e.g. water, biodiversity, pollination, etc.) under the current funding system. One thing is certain: we should better understand which ecosystems fit which market better and what exactly the overlap is.

Beyond different supply, biodiversity credit projects are more local, support different claims, are less tradable and can target ecosystem services that buyers rely on, such as water, more directly. That leads to even stronger project finance dynamics than in carbon markets, where a single buyer is often responsible for funding a significant part of the project. It also leads to different demand drivers from VCM: supply chain risk management and, to an extent, insetting instead of general claims. Importantly, these demand drivers are more internal to the “buyer“ and do not have to be based on tradable market instruments - something we plan to explore more in the future. No biodiversity credit methodology has been designed specifically for these use cases so far but we expect that to change.

The role of policy

Biodiversity credit mechanisms are progressing not only in the non-jurisdictional voluntary markets. A growing number of countries are exploring utilizing them either at a voluntary or compliance level. The recent report by the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB) analyzes 19 government-led nature credit frameworks with more in the pipeline. Since natural resources are often public goods, most market participants are pinning their hopes on governments to build these markets by incentivizing demand, setting rules or even buying credits themselves.

EU Nature Credits Roadmap

The recently announced 2-year roadmap is arguably the most important nature market policy development in 2025. The Commission is well aware of the need to align the roadmap with their EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) Regulation.

First of all, CRCF already uses implicit bundling with biodiversity by requiring carbon farming activities to “generate co-benefits for biodiversity and ecosystem services”.

Their argument for standalone nature credits is also similar: some ecosystems cannot be funded via carbon alone and that is where nature credits come in.

Nature credits can also cover a broader scope, as they can apply to interventions and areas non-linked or with limited additional carbon sequestration potential but high biodiversity value, such as supporting pollinators or restoring dry ecosystems.

While the Commission claims not to have plans beyond 2027, they are being asked for the same things every other government that runs nature credit markets is asked: clear rules and clear demand. It will be interesting to see how the EU will allocate resources between carbon and nature credits as some organizations push for the carbon credits to be the primary mechanism with nature credits complementing it.

Historically, compliance nature markets and carbon markets were separate. Now, the gap is closing with the EU and Australia being great examples.

Future scenarios

We see four scenarios of how biodiversity and carbon markets will interact.

1. VBM becomes largely separate

VCM continues to further integrate biodiversity but the non-overlapping ecosystems, different use cases and claims push VBM to become a standalone market.

2. Bundling: biodiversity remains qualitatively and quantitatively embedded in VCM

The implicit and explicit bundling scenario. As mentioned earlier, implicit bundling arguably the biggest risk for the voluntary biodiversity market.

We have quoted the recent brilliant paper on biodiversity in VCM by JPMorganChase (biggest bank in the US) and Carbon Direct (one of the most respected carbon management firms) extensively so far. There, the authors explicitly refused to analyze voluntary biodiversity credits, “opine on the issuance of stacked carbon and biodiversity credits for a unique project” or “address the validity of biodiversity credits as fungible units for nature-positive claims or mitigation”. The paper also said that “the market (VCM) lacks a clear signal from buyers that quantifiable and meaningful biodiversity outcomes are a priority on par with carbon. This is compounded by a lack of clarity on what constitutes a high-quality project in terms of both biodiversity and carbon.”.

We see two ways to interpret that:

1. Demand side VCM participants want to focus on one market at a time, following the “let’s fix carbon first” logic.

2. Demand side VCM participants are skeptical about biodiversity credits altogether.

3. Stacking: separate biodiversity credits exist but are mostly stacked to carbon

The current trend grows and project developers issue both credit types from the same land. Although separate, biodiversity credits remain tied to carbon markets.

4. A standalone non-credit biodiversity market is established

A non-credit biodiversity market takes hold to become a “risk-free” way to measurably contribute to biodiversity. Non-credit biodiversity certifications such as The Global Biodiversity Standard (TGBS) or Accounting for Nature (AfN), together Wallacea Trust, become the standard methods to prove biodiversity outcomes for any conservation project, whether based on credits or not. A meaningful number of quantified biodiversity projects are already privately funded without credits. For example, 3Bee is piloting over 100 such biodiversity projects in Europe.

Which scenario is the likeliest?

These scenarios are not mutually exclusive. Actually, we see all four becoming much larger. The question is not necessarily which scenario will happen but in which order they will play out. Here is one possible sequence:

1. Bundling and stacking grows

   Functional VCM rails and the growing future demand of high-quality carbon credits provide more certainty than the standalone voluntary biodiversity market. In this phase, the shadow VBM becomes proportionally even larger with explicit unitized bundling and stacking taking over the currently dominant implicit bundling. Bundled and stacked biodiversity credits become the quality assurance layer for carbon credits.

2. Project-based biodiversity credit finance is validated

   More VBM-specific demand drivers such as supply chain risk management and insetting together with contribution claims become more common. Some key large projects are funded and sold, setting a precedent for more projects, often co-developed with buyers. Corporate biodiversity credits become a more common industry term.

3. Standalone VBM takes shape

   Crediting standards consolidate, claims and units become clearer, the market receives (inter)national policy support, TNFD and SBTN integrate with biodiversity credits.

This sequence is coupled with a consistent growth of non-credit biodiversity projects driven by philanthropy, marketing and supply chain management.

Beyond the initial competition, we believe VCM will become the gateway drug to standalone VBM, roughly following the “biodiversity co-benefit story → separate biodiversity KPIs with monitoring → carbon credits bundled and stacked with biodiversity credits → standalone biodiversity credits” logic as the market matures, supporting policy develops and reporting pressures grow.

A big step in validating true standalone voluntary biodiversity credit demand will be the credit issuance of established carbon standards like Verra and Plan Vivo who will join Cercarbono, the only ICROA-certified standard to have issued credits so far. Since all support stacking, this will also be an important test of how attractive combining these credits with nature-based carbon is to buyers.

Key themes

The biodiversity <> carbon space is still early and lacks evidence for a confident numbers-based analysis. Having said that, we see a couple of key themes:

Nature markets must stick together

Ecosystem Marketplace reports that $347.2 million worth of nature-based (AFOLU) carbon credits were traded in 2024. Internally, we have just verified over $10 million in total voluntary biodiversity credit sales over the past 3 years. AI startups regularly raise more money in a single round than both of these numbers put together. In the grand scheme of things, VCM and VBM are two drops in the ocean. Nature markets must stick together, even if there is some competition between the same supply and, more importantly, demand.

Biodiversity credits = quality assurance layer for carbon credits

Nature-based carbon credits with quantified biodiversity outcomes is increasingly seen as proof that these projects did not optimize for carbon sequestration at the expense of biodiversity. The natural next step is moving from “quantified” to “unitized” biodiversity outcomes. This is where stacking and explicit bundling come in.

Standalone voluntary biodiversity market is a big opportunity

Not only is standalone VBM justified, it is also an opportunity to value nature more. We believe it can become a key lever in establishing the natural capital/nature as infrastructure framing that will lead to much larger investments in conservation, both market-based and not. CreditNature, Oxygen Conservation and The Landbanking Group with many others are some of the early pioneers in this movement.

Having said that, unless we find a way to include all ecosystem services into a single coveted “nature” credit, VCM will likely remain the leading voluntary environmental market, followed by VBM. Biodiversity is obviously more directly commercially important than carbon emissions but it does not easily lend itself to becoming a liquid tradable market. That means that other, less tradable nature finance instruments will have to grow fast as well.

End scale is in policy

As mentioned earlier, public good management is usually the job of the government. That is why for both biodiversity and carbon, compliance and government-led voluntary markets is the way to funnel most resources to nature. There is a reason why compliance biodiversity offset markets are estimated at $11.7 billion. There is also a reason why many in VCM expect the Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement to be a key driver for VCM’s growth.

We should put more emphasis on demand

It is no secret that the voluntary biodiversity credit demand is below the lofty expectations set in 2022 and 2023. Buyers need not only a clear why (among other things) but also a how. That is why it is important to run more strategic pilots together with the end buyers (e.g. similar to a project we are part of together with Volkswagen Financial Services). Policymakers such as the EU have a crucial part to play here.

How do we not overcomplicate things?

Although the value of VBM is clear, so are its downsides of market fragmentation. Are we heading toward a future where every single ecosystem service is explicitly monetized and traded? Will it be just carbon, biodiversity and water? Or will we reach the previously mentioned true nature credits?

This is important for every market participant: project developers, service providers and, of course, buyers. This is even more important for the local communities who are exploring how to use these mechanisms to conserve their lands.

We do not know the answer but believe that creating credits for every ecosystem service is counterproductive. Those services that justify a standalone market should be as aligned as possible, both on the voluntary and compliance side.

In other words:

• Landowners should have only one form to fill out to see if any of these mechanisms can fund conservation.

• Project developers should be able to easily sell their conservation outcomes into different nature markets.

• Buyers should have clear guidance on how different credits interact and “when to buy what and why”.

Again, policymakers will play a key role in determining what that will look like.

We would like to thank all the suppliers who have shared their project and transaction data with us and have become our data partners. This analysis would not have been possible without you.

Recommended reading

• “Theory and Practice of ‘Stacking’ and ‘Bundling’ Ecosystem Goods and Services: A Resource Paper” by Forest Trends

• “Beetles in a Pay Stack: Stacking and Bundling in Biodiversity Credit Markets” by Julia McCarthy (Scotland’s Rural College) and Ryan Sarsfield (EPIC)

• Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace. 2025. State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2025. Washington DC: Forest Trends Association

• Optimizing for Biodiversity in the Voluntary Carbon Market | JPMorganChase and Carbon Direct

• AlliedOffsets. “2024 End of Year Report: VCM 2024 Review and Emerging Trends for 2025ˮ

• United Nations Environment Programme (2023). State of Finance for Nature: The Big Nature Turnaround – Repurposing $7 trillion to combat nature loss

Our Projects database closes the last major gap in Bloom. We knew who was involved in the market, which schemes were used, the transactions that occurred, and which metrics prevailed. Now, finally, we connect everything with the most extensive aggregation of project data for the voluntary biodiversity credit market.

Disclaimer

This is not, at least yet, an exhaustive list of all the projects in the space. We aim for maximum data accuracy, but we cannot guarantee that 100% of the data points are correct. As we seek objectivity, we do not maintain preferential relationships with any organization mentioned.

Our Projects data is sourced from public registries, direct data collection from developers, data partnership agreements, and curated research. We aggregate, verify, and standardize our data points through a human-led, multi-layered quality assurance process. We have not used any web scraping tool or AI extraction system.

If you spot any errors or missing data, please send us a request via our data submission hub.

tl;dr

• The biodiversity credit market is shifting from experimentation to early consolidation, with activity concentrating around a few mature countries, schemes, and developers: 10 countries host nearly 90% of all projects area and 89% of all credits issued.

• Restoration projects dominate by project count (71% of the market), while preservation projects cover the largest land area. Both are essential for a credible, scalable market.

• The cost per hectare per year of a given credit sits at around $3,100. Removing two extreme values gives a more realistic average at $980.

• A handful of players drive the market. rePLANET (project count), FRONTERRA (project size) and Wilderlands (credits issued) are leading the developer pack.

• Strong early concentration in large-scale initiatives is emerging: the 10 largest projects cover 75% of the total hectares.

• Projects under the top 10 schemes make up 95% of the total project size in the market, confirming that market activity is currently centralized.

• Average credit prices hover at around $230. Weighing by credit volume makes this average fall to $27, a more realistic value when answering “how much does a credit costs in today’s market?”.

• More than 25% of projects reported stacking biodiversity with carbon.

Now, let’s jump in.

This analysis is powered by Bloom, our market intelligence platform. Visit it here.

Global overview

Our database aggregates 134 projects as of October 29th, 2025. There have been 7 times as many projects starting in 2025 as in 2019 - a steady increase, mainly due to the 2022 kickstart of the GBF agreement. GreenCollar’s 7 projects in Australia are responsible for the 2021 spike, thanks to the country’s early mover position in nature markets. A third of all identified projects have been launched in 2025.

The total hectares under management amount to more than 2.5 million, while 15 million credits have been - or are planned to be - issued. By status, nearly 22% of projects have issued - or are in the process of issuing - credits, about 31% are officially approved by the credit scheme and eligible for issuance, 31% are under the validation process by the credit scheme, and 16% are still at the concept stage.

The market is experiencing a shift from a rapid surge of different initiatives to more stable consolidation. The growth in new project developers operating in or exploring the voluntary biodiversity market (VBM) is a good proxy for reflecting this trend. Most market stakeholders, including credit schemes, project developers, and service providers, have entered the market during the 2020-2024 growth phase. This phase can be partially attributed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreement, signed by 196 nations in December 2022, with 23 targets, including protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030.

Geography

By project count, 5 countries host 51% of the total (Mexico, Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Colombia). Regionally, South America, North America, Oceania and Europe host more than 82% of projects, but are quite evenly split between them, all hosting 18 to 23%. While not an official geographical region, Latin America (or LATAM) hosts more than 40% of worldwide projects, mainly thanks to Mexico joining the South American pack. Africa follows with nearly 13% of projects, and Asia lags with just about 4.5%.

The surprisingly low VBM activity in Asia is difficult to explain. Here might be some reasons for it:

• The region is still focused on economic hyper-growth, at least much more than the rest of the world: annual GDP growth hits nearly 5% for Asia, while most advanced economies hover at around 1.5%. Hence, nature protection could be pushed aside for its lack of direct profitability.

• Southeast Asia alone has been estimated to hold 30% of the global potential for carbon offsets from NbS by 2050. Developers would then - quite logically - prefer an established and relatively stable market to a nascent one. Carbon might actually be a blocker for biodiversity in this region.

• The region’s nature market policy is fragmented or indirect. The EU has the Nature Credits Roadmap, Oceania has Australia’s Nature Repair Market, and nearly all Latin American countries are developing state-level compliance schemes (Colombia, Chile, Brazil…). Asia, however, has not launched any similar endeavors.

Project size reshuffles the leaderboard:

• Mexico, the top country by project count (20; 15% of total) falls to the 4th position by project size (102k ha; 4% of total) due to its 5,600 ha average, significantly below the global average (19,000 ha).

• Ecuador, ranked 12th by project count (4; 3% of total), now holds the 7th position by project size (89k ha; 3.5% of total) thanks to its 22,244 ha average, above the global value.

• Peru takes the 1st position thanks to its unique and immense project Sierra del Divisor, by far the largest project in the dataset with more than 1.3m ha. More on that later.

• Europe claims 20% by count and only 3% by size due to its 3,000 ha average project size, the smallest region-level value. Land ownership and use are highly fragmented, and opportunity costs are higher than in regions like Africa, so continuous large projects are harder to put together.

• South America still sits as the top region by both count and size, with respectively 24% and 71% of the total share, thanks to favorable regulations, high land availability and low operational costs. LATAM pushes it even further: 40% of all projects and 77% by size, for the same reasons as South America.

As credits are mostly issued on a per-surface basis, the project size indicator matters greatly in this analysis. This is why we will, from now on, always take it into account. From this perspective, the market concentration is clear: the top 10 countries worldwide host nearly 90% of all projects’ hectares. Nearly 90% of all credits issued also come from the top 10 countries.

Australia, Brazil, and Mexico stand out from the crowd with a cumulative 36% projects by count and 17% by size. The trio dominates credit issuance with nearly 60% of the worldwide volume - Australia alone accounts for 35% thanks to Wilderlands (more on that later). These countries have immense land surfaces, rich biodiversity hotspots, favorable jurisdictional capacities, and experience from carbon markets. Australia has already launched its national voluntary market (the Nature Repair Market), and Brazil’s regional governments are heading the same direction: the state of Paraná launched a public call for its biodiversity market with BRDE Bank committing to buy credits (source, p.13).

However, the real size winner is not in this trio. The Sierra del Divisor project, located in Peru and developed by FRONTERRA, is the largest project of our dataset by a magnitude of 10. Financed by Restore, a French asset manager funding biodiversity restoration and conservation projects, it has already gathered more than $1.2m in investments from diverse corporates, including French luxury brands. The project is currently registered under a national scheme (MERESE, and Restore is in discussions with different international standards to allow complementary registration.

Size and Activity

This section will cover activity terminologies created by the Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA):

• Uplift is the improvement in biodiversity (restoration).

• Avoided Loss is the prevention of decline in biodiversity (preservation).

• Maintenance is the conservation of intact biodiversity (preservation with more flexible additionality criteria).

Since we consider work in productive landscapes as an important activity subcategory in VBM, we have added Sustainable Use to categorize the improvement of productive landscape management resulting in uplift or avoided loss, and signal the difference from natural landscapes.

Projects are categorized by their primary intervention: Uplift, Avoided Loss, Sustainable Use, and Maintenance. Nearly half of them combine multiple activities. Uplift is by far the most represented (mentioned in 71% of projects), followed by Maintenance (40%), Avoided Loss (25%), and Sustainable Use (25%).

This restoration (Uplift) bias is not new. Restoration projects are more tangible and easier to measure, setting the perfect ground for a market where additionality becomes less of a concern and where buyer interest increases even at higher prices. Because restoration projects are much more expensive to develop (on a per hectare per year basis), they tend to be smaller (avg. 4,800 ha) than preservation projects (avg. 9,000 ha for Avoided Loss and 19,200 ha for Maintenance). As a result, Uplift only affects 30% of all covered hectares.

Biodiversity credit projects today are relatively comparable to nature-based projects in the voluntary carbon market (averaging 23,000 ha). While the top 10 projects cover 75% of the total hectares, and the top 20 claim 86%, almost a third cover less than 100ha each. The average project size of 19,200 ha contrasts with the 1,000 ha median: 9 projects exceed the 50k ha threshold, pulling the values up. More than 40% of all projects sit in the 100-10k ha zone, with a spike in the 1k-2.5k ha and the 5k-25k ha zones.

Under the 1k ha threshold, 32% of projects are pilots, compared to 19% in the whole dataset. The average pilot size is 6,200 ha, and their median sits at 100 ha (respectively 1,000 ha and 75 ha when removing the 2 extreme values). The average non-pilot size is 22,300 ha, and their median sits at 1,500 ha.

In the end, large landscape projects require capital, regulatory clarity, and community buy‑in - conditions that can be tricky to meet.

Are you a project developer? Explore our data partnerships where you can access parts of our premium platform in exchange for sharing your project, pricing and transaction data. Please contact us here.

Pricing

Disclaimer: Project pricing data is scarce. The findings presented below are limited to the priced projects in our dataset (28 out of 134).

The market is heterogeneous: the average credit price sits at around $230, with a $2 - $2,700 range and a $27 median. This is to be expected given its early stage: different conservation outcomes measured, area size, credit length, and geography are some of the key parameters explaining these variations.

The single most meaningful pricing metric is the cost per hectare per year of a given credit. It sits at around $3,100 today, ranging between $0.4 and $27,000. For a more realistic value, we can remove the three extreme items* from the list, getting a $980/ha/year final average value. Given that this market is a buyer’s market - where developers price their credits on a cost+ basis instead of a “true” biodiversity valuation - it provides context on how much it costs to implement the field actions.

*The Majete project in Africa pricing its credits at $2,700 for 1km2 protected during 1 year (high pricing and low time length), the BioVers project in Germany priced at $58 for 1m2 for 40 years (high pricing for a small credit size), and the Brönninghausen project in Germany pricing $4.2 for 0.2 ha for 50 years (low pricing for a regular credit size).

We also learn that a distinct relation exists between this cost and the size of its project: the higher the cost, the smaller the project, and vice versa.

Two distinct phases can be identified:

• From 1 to 10k ha, unit costs collapse as fixed costs are diluted over more hectares in a classic economies of scale fashion. The 1k ha threshold seems to be the minimum size for non-pilot endeavors: large enough to compensate for the fixed costs of credit validation and issuance, but small enough to contain operational costs and limit financing needs.

• From 10k ha onwards, the operating floor is hit between $60 and $100. Fixed costs are fully amortized and only variable costs that don’t shrink with size are left (field staff, landholder payments, restoration work, biodiversity monitoring, etc...).

The per hectare per year pricing averages also vary wildly between regions: while North America ($100) and South America ($429) both stand around the hundred mark, Oceania prices at $1,436, and both Europe ($7,250) and Africa ($15,000) go well beyond. These numbers should not be taken as is, for North America and Europe are heavily impacted by a single project each (respectively Darién and BioVers), and Africa is dominated by the extreme values of Majete.

Taking the projects identified with only one activity, we obtain a weighted average credit price of $40 for Uplift (4 projects) $15 for Maintenance (5 projects), and $11 for Avoided Loss (5 projects). Even though data is still limited, the Uplift premium is explicit. Active restoration commands nearly 3× higher prices than preservation. The perceived additionality and storytelling strength (buyers seem to value measurable ecological gains over baseline protection) generate stronger marketing and impact claims, hence better returns.

Developers

In the - very - concentrated developer market, 3 of them stand out: rePLANET accounts for the most identified projects (13 projects), FRONTERRA manages the largest surface size with more than 52% of the global share (Sierra del Divisor project, 1.3m ha), while Wilderlands is dominating credit issuance with more than 35% of the share, mainly thanks to their biodiversity credit specialization, early mover advantage and small credit size (1m2). By cross-referencing with our Transactions dataset, we also see that Wilderlands has sold more than $966k in voluntary biodiversity credits, representing more than 12.5% of all recorded sales.

The 15 top developers manage more than 50% of the projects. Among them, the trio of rePLANET, Life Terra Foundation, and GreenCollar accounts for nearly 25%. Wilderlands, Terrasos, Native, Toha Network, Savimbo, and Ponterra also join the top 15. The top 15 also manage 94% of the total hectares. Under this perspective, new developers enter the top 15, such as Wild is Life, Blue Marine Foundation, ERA Brazil, or Bluebell Index. Finally, the credit issuance perspective gives little space for true competition at the moment: the top 7 developers issue more than 90% of the credits in the market with players like Caiman, Ekos or Seatrees.

Some players, such as Wilderlands and Terrasos, combine the roles of scheme and developer. They design methodologies and use them to develop their projects and generate their credits. It allows faster market entry and greater control over implementation, but it also lacks the authority of established standards (especially the ICROA-certified ones). As a result, these hybrids are driving early sales and experimentation, yet it remains uncertain whether the broader market (particularly large corporate buyers) will adopt their credits in the long run.

Schemes

The Scheme category is an umbrella term for different biodiversity credit systems (standards, frameworks, methodologies, programs). Standards and frameworks create extensive sets of rules on how to develop biodiversity credit projects, while Methodologies mostly cover specific subsets of these rules (especially for biodiversity quantification and credit calculation). More on that in our Voluntary Biodiversity Market analysis.

The schemes scene is, like the developers’ one, highly concentrated. Of the 35 schemes associated with current projects, the top 10 make up for 71% of the project count, 44% of the total hectares, and 96% of the credits issued.

Four schemes stand out from our database: Verra | SD VISta Nature Framework, Plan Vivo | PV Nature, Accounting for Nature | NaturePlus®, and Wallacea Trust. Together, they hold more than 37% of the projects and nearly 31% of the total project size in the market. However, they only account for 20% of the total credits issued, a space once again dominated by Wilderlands with its 35% market share, while covering less than 0.1% of the total hectares and 3% of the total project count. Except for the Wallacea Trust, which entered the market in 2022, their long development process explains this paradox by preventing fast market adoption. But they might turn the tables once they start issuing credits.

A global trend emerges, as non-ICROA-certified schemes like Nat5 (number 1 by project count with 19%) scale rapidly. Their lighter certification procedures allow for faster deployment compared to initiatives pursuing third-party recognition and alignment. This speed advantage helps early entrants capture market share, but might not secure long-term commitments from large corporates.

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Links to carbon

Let’s talk about the stacking and bundling of biodiversity and carbon credits. Credit stacking is the addition of different environmental credit outcomes on top of each other from the same piece of land. It allows these credits to be sold as separate outcomes to separate buyers. On the other hand, credit bundling is the combination of environmental credit outcomes from the same piece of land into the same credit. Its core difference from credit stacking is that the resulting credits cannot be sold separately. These two practices are among the best indicators to judge the connectedness of nature markets.

Both stacking and bundling value different ecosystem services originating from the same plot of land to achieve higher revenues per unit and, as a result, increase the land’s total value. Combining biodiversity with carbon helps VBM scale faster by using the existing carbon market infrastructure instead of developing a separate market.

Of the 134 projects identified, 27% reported stacking with carbon. This represents roughly 16% of the total hectares covered worldwide. Only 9% of projects engage with carbon bundling, but cover 12% in total size. The average project size when carbon stacking is used sits at around 11,500 ha, far from the 22,200 ha carbon bundling average.

Even though bundling generates fewer additionality concerns and measurement complexity than stacking, it is still a lot less popular amongst developers, with only 4 of them using it. The sales flexibility is one of the reasons: in a tense market where every sale counts and capital is hard to come by, the value of a given land plot must be maximized to its fullest. If a developer can extract 50% more value by selling a carbon credit and a biodiversity credit separately, even though it would require more effort than bundling them, they will do it.

We also see continued significant interest from carbon project developers regarding VBM:

• “We are involved in the carbon markets. Biodiversity is something that we would be open to explore for the foreseeable future as a longer-term opportunity.” German project developer, October 2025.

• “For the moment, we only develop NBS carbon projects, but we have internal discussions on how we could integrate the biodiversity space once it has matured.” French project developer, October 2025.

• “We plan to enter the biodiversity credit market with Verra.” American project developer, October 2025.

• “We think that we can actually bring value to our customers by creating nature credits.” Israeli project developer, October 2025.

These quotes have been anonymized to respect the developers’ strategic decisions.

Case study - Alleena

First of all, we would like to thank Wilderlands for having submitted their data to our platform.

Snapshot

• Developer / Scheme: Wilderlands

• Location: Riverina, New South Wales

• Activity: Avoided loss (protecting intact habitat)

• Status: Credits issued

• Site size: 497 ha

• Unit: 1m² per credit (0.0001 ha/credit)

• Credits: 4,015,828

• List price: $1.97/credit

• Crediting period: 20 years

Interest

The Alleena project, developed by the Australian developer and scheme Wilderlands, provides landscape-scale connectivity to support species movement and dispersal, as well as vital habitat for a range of threatened woodland birds.

Wilderlands is positioning its Biological Diversity Units (BDUs) as a way to get more business for buyers. The credits are used to increase product demand (e.g., by increasing ticket sales to Adelaide Festival or helping sell limited edition products of al.ive body) and help meet regulatory requirements in the real estate sector.

Wilderlands’ market traction, nearing $1m in sales, proves their agility in looking for new demand sources. They can be considered as early experimenters and provide the market with valuable lessons.

Leveraging Bloom

Using our market intelligence platform, you can:

• Calculate the cost per hectare per year from our premium data: $985. Use it to benchmark against other projects in the region.

• See the full pricing context: Pull the project-level pricing, credit size and credit length across comparable projects to gather the full picture.

• Quantify exposure: Use Premium’s fields to model ha-years purchased (not just credits), so finance teams can compare biodiversity purchases with conservation or carbon options.

• Track the developer: Cross-reference the Wilderlands organization profile - other projects, alliances, and recent activity - to assess delivery risk. For example, knowing that Wilderlands has reached nearly $1m in sales is a significant indicator of its reliability.

Conclusions

Is this a market?

The voluntary biodiversity credit market is entering a new phase. After more than two years of fragmented experimentation, we’re now seeing early signs of consolidation in geography, methodology, and developer landscapes. The post-GBF momentum has translated into the beginning of scale, with 134 projects covering over 2.5 million hectares, yet market concentration is emerging fast. This is good news: structure is forming.

Project activity-wise, restoration leads the market by total appearances while preservation still holds the largest land footprint. The two play different yet complementary roles. One provides an easier proof of additionality and generates buyer appeal, the other anchors large-scale ecological stability. The market will need both for credible and scalable growth.

Pricing data is still noisy, but patterns are starting to emerge. The average credit price sits at around $230, though per hectare per year costs at $980 provide a clearer signal. Restoration activities command a consistent premium over preservation, confirming that buyers seek “tangibility”. Benchmarking using standardized metrics will be key to meaningful price discovery.

A handful of schemes and developers dominate issuance and value, typical of emerging markets. Fast-moving, non-certified schemes may lead adoption, but established ICROA-certified standards might ultimately set the long-term requirements, quality standards and, most importantly, attract consistent corporate demand.

Biodiversity and carbon are converging. More than one in four projects now stack both assets, while bundling is gaining traction (around 10% of projects). This trend shows the market’s pragmatic turn: biodiversity is progressively integrated into broader nature portfolios as a complementary asset.

Bottom line: this market is steadily maturing.

A viable path onwards?

At the end of the day, what matters most is whether the biodiversity credit project achieves real, verifiable, and additional ecological outcomes. But to make a market work, it also has to fulfill the needs of the buyers. And since buyer-side questions are still mostly unanswered, it becomes crucial to strategically co-develop the early biodiversity credit pilots with them.

As a result, corporate biodiversity credits (CBCs) are becoming a more established concept, where projects are designed with corporates from the start. Developers de-risk their operations with commitments to purchase from companies that, in return, can shape the projects to their needs (supply-chain protection, reporting purposes, specific nature strategy goal alignment, or even direct integration into their products).

And we can already see how beneficial this approach is. Through our participation in the EU LIFE program to pilot biodiversity credits in wetland conservation, alongside NABU, Eurosite, Aeco, ELO, and Sylva, we are witnessing how starting with an identified and engaged buyer (in this case, VFWS) can help make the project more valuable to every stakeholder.

Where do we go from here?

This deep dive is just a snapshot. Our database will evolve as new projects appear and existing ones mature. And as more data becomes available, we will be able to provide deeper insights.

One thing is certain: clarity, comparability, and credible data are becoming the main currencies of trust. That’s exactly what we’re building with Bloom, a single source of truth for nature finance.

If you’re developing a biodiversity project or know of one that should be listed, please contact us here. And if you want to explore the data yourself, visit app.bloomlabs.earth and dive into our dashboards, made with love by Tassilo, curated with care by Simas and Martin.

See you on the next deep dive.

The bloomlabs team.

The day I was alluding to a couple of months ago has come. I’m proud to announce Bloom - the world’s first market intelligence platform for biodiversity credits.

The idea I had in mind for years has finally become a reality, with the help of Martin and Tassilo - the best partners I could have ever asked for.

Bloom 🌸

The platform is built on the largest database of structured voluntary biodiversity credit data. In particular, it’s composed of 5 datasets:

Schemes

The first dataset I’ve started 2+ years ago. It became the go-to place to review the voluntary biodiversity credit scheme landscape for, I believe, most of the market participants. Recently, it was even cited in the European Commission’s Roadmap to Nature Credits.

Projects

Our brand new dataset with more than 120 biodiversity credit projects globally, across every project stage. It was the missing piece in our arsenal & we’re very excited to finally present it to you!

Transactions

The most extensive list of voluntary biodiversity credit transactions.

Organizations

1,000+ verified market participants across supply, demand and everything in between.

Metrics

A non-exhaustive list of biodiversity indicators and metrics used to calculate biodiversity credits. Developed in partnership with BioInt, led by Joshua Berger.

Each dataset is valuable in its own right. The real difference maker is when you put them together though.

Example

Imagine you go to the Transactions section and notice that Wilderlands has sold almost $1m worth of credits.

You then scroll down to the Transactions dataset and, after searching for “Wilderlands“, find 6 transactions. You can see each transaction, whether it’s standalone or aggregated, who purchased credits, how much and, whenever possible, why.

We can do more. You might want to check out their methodology, summarized via 50+ structured data points. There you might notice that they’re the leading Australian practice-based biodiversity credit project developer with their own methodology and, according to it, each credit is 1m2, permanently preserved.

You can dive deeper and analyze some of the metrics they use to measure their projects.

Interconnected whole

Now, such information might be common in most other markets. We’re meeting the biodiversity credit market where it is though - early, fragmented, “pre-certification”.

Who is the platform for?

Market intelligence platforms have a blessing and a curse of being at least a little useful to almost everyone in the market.

More specifically though, we have seen particular interest from these groups:

Credit schemes and project developers

The supply side. Credit schemes carefully follow market developments and want to know what other schemes do. Project developers often want help in selecting a credit scheme and also closely follow latest market developments.

Consultants

The best consultants make sure their analysis is backed by extensive and accurate data. Bloom acts as the source for most of such needs. We’ve been using it for all of our recent consulting assignments and can attest that it works :)

Investors

In our experience, investors track market trends and usually spend a lot of time on project due diligence. In Bloom, they can access 350+ relevant project developers that can be sliced and diced according to geography, project activity, size and many more variables.

We also see interest from policy makers, NGOs, research institutions and buyers.

Rule of thumb: if you’re reading this newsletter, chances are Bloom is meant for you :)

Pricing

I started work in this space with an open source ethos. bloomlabs will maintain it. That’s why we’ll keep the free version as valuable as possible with ~75% of all data being freely accessible.

Organizations that want additional key data (e.g. scheme analysis or pricing and project-level insights) or plan to directly use our data commercially can choose a paid plan that works best for them.

What’s next?

1. Processing your feedback

We’ll listen to reality (i.e. you) before continuing with our grand plans.

2. Starting a regular newsletter

We’ll soon start publishing the newsletter every 2 weeks, powered by this data engine of ours.

3. Improving the platform

We can make the data more interconnected. We can surface real-time market insights. We can further automate our data collection, aggregation and processing process. And so much more..

As I shared earlier, voluntary biodiversity market is just the start. We’re on to something with the tech we’re building for generating real-time AI insights based on exclusive structured market data.

Take a look!

Try out Bloom

If you don’t see yourself or your market activity (especially transactions!) in the platform, submit it via our data submission hub!

If you want to access the premium version of the platform, reach out to us or ping me personally at simas@bloomlabs.earth

Thank you all once again for being part of this journey to scale nature finance.

This year I haven’t been as active with the newsletter as before. I had my reasons. Let me share them (and more) below.

The one-man band era is over

Aggregating market data, consuming everything there is on the topic, analyzing it and finally churning out digestible snapshots of the market was fun. It scratched my geeky itch. It gave me a direct feedback loop of “do X and you will be useful to people“. But it could only scale so much. And I do want to scale.

Throughout all this time, two problems kept popping up:

1. Lack of market data.

   There is no extensive, well-structured and up-to-date view of what’s happening in the voluntary biodiversity market. As promising as they are, there are only fragments.

2. Market education.

   I.e. lack of accessible analysis of that data. Again, there are some amazing resources. They aren’t as comprehensive as they could be, though. One-off market snapshots aren’t enough.

To my surprise, these problems were not getting solved fast enough. Not even close. Some parts (e.g. philosophical clashes between market-based mechanism supporters and critics) are bound to stay. But we can have much more clarity about market facts.

I’ve also noticed that there is a method to making sense of biodiversity credits. My deep dives followed a structure to provide data and insights to the market players. We’ve spent the past months validating that. And we did. We can do much more. And with much less, thanks to some beautiful tech.

What’s changing

Bloom Labs → bloomlabs

A symbolic gesture to mark a new direction for the company. Check it out.

One-man band → team

Martin is joining the team. He’s a force of nature and a co-founder anyone would be lucky to have. I’ve experienced it firsthand in the past half a year. Much of what you’ll see from bloomlabs in the future will be driven by him.

There are more updates here I’m looking to share soon..

Sporadic Substack articles & one-off datasets → product

No more making long link lists of articles and Airtable datasets. All of our work will live in a single, dynamic, AI-powered platform.

Market intelligence platform for biodiversity credits 🐝

The first version will feature all of our datasets with more to come. We’re deepening already the most extensive market database. The goal: become the one-stop shop for the voluntary biodiversity market.

Some features

• Proprietary data. Market data collected and structured from the widest range of public & private sources, built over these 2+ years.

• Deep insights. A layer of proven analysis on top of the raw market data.

• Extensiveness. The most complete biodiversity market database with all market transactions, credit schemes, metrics & market players.

• Data visualization. Custom charts, graphs, and maps. You’ll be able to slice and dice the platform any way you like.

• Dynamic updates. Instead of snapshots, you’ll get access to dynamic, up-to-date state of the market.

• AI agent. Custom-built AI companion trained on our data is in the works.

• and more..

The cool part? This isn’t just about biodiversity credits. Yes, that is our current focus. But the intelligence tech we’re building is applicable to many other markets. I hope to share more in the future 🤞

Our thesis

bloomlabs was born out of a simple thesis: deep, unique and accessible insights matter. It’s a bet that 1. people are extremely intelligent and 2. they know quality when they see it.

We’re simply doubling down on that same thesis with our market data engine. It will dramatically reduce our data collection process and increase the time for generating data-backed insights.

Our goal: 100x+ our provided value with more frequent, more timely and more valuable data & insights, starting with biodiversity credits.

Why now

Even though the space is going through the “Trough of Disillusionment“, biodiversity/nature credits have never been more important.

The decisions that will shape the market are made at this very moment. Some examples:

• European Commission’s roadmap towards Nature Credits looks to 1. analyze the market and 2. using the evidence collected, decide next steps in 2027. It has the opportunity to be (by far) the most important biodiversity market in the world. This is where bloomlabs is already playing a role by participating in one of the very few EU-funded projects to pilot biodiversity credits in the EU wetlands. We’re stocktaking all the relevant credit schemes and creating a scheme assessment & selection framework. And we’re looking for interested credit investors & buyers.

• Dozens of countries are exploring biodiversity credits, looking to add to a $11.7b+ global compliance biodiversity markets.

These decisions must be made with the best (i.e. most extensive, up-to-date and cleanest) data available. The stakes are too high.

Yes, the voluntary biodiversity market (VBM) of ~$8m in total sales is minuscule. But let’s remember that a couple of years ago there was no market at all. This space requires conviction and patience. And, maybe more importantly, VBM is the playground for national credit schemes, both voluntary and compliance. The learnings of the voluntary market are the backbone of many of the national policies.

And, last but not least, we’re seeing how biodiversity credits act as the quality assurance layer for the nature-based carbon credits. This is where the “shadow VBM“ market might be the largest.

What’s next

Beta tests

We’ve been doing beta tests with our early users and are finally opening the waitlist to the public. Sign up! 👋

Data submission hub

We’re also taking direct data collection from the market players more seriously. More information to come..

Newsletter launch

The newsletter isn’t going anywhere. We’re gearing up to launch a more consistent publication, built on our data engine.

Yes, you will probably hear less from me directly over time. You can be sure I’ll be involved in every post though :)

Database access

Apart from the biodiversity credit schemes database, all our public data is being reworked and is currently unavailable.

If you are an academic researcher who wants to do research with the latest market data, reach out to hello@bloomlabs.earth and we will do our best to provide you with what you need.

Special thanks to the paid subscribers

The launch of our paid product means the end of allowing folks to become paid newsletter subscribers. You financially supported my work when you didn’t have to. All of it has been open-source this whole time. I will never be able to explain what this early act of trust means to me.

Once we open the product to the public, 1. we’ll cancel your subscription and 2. will provide you with full platform access for free for 6 months.

Thank you again.

Thank you

Thank you to every single one of you once again. Your trust gave me the confidence to continue this work throughout ups and, most importantly, downs.

Now, together with some amazing folks, we’re building something bigger than us. I couldn’t be more proud of it. And I’m more fired up than ever. 🫡

p.s. I’m aware that by doubling down on biodiversity credits, I’m parting ways with the bloomlabs’ initial positioning of being “as unbiased as humanly possible”. Now, the commercial well-being of bloomlabs officially depends on the success of this space. I was fooling myself thinking that I could remain *completely* intellectually independent. Maybe I could’ve built a think tank of sorts. But that’s not in my nature.

The most important pillar of bloomlabs will remain: focus on cold hard data. We’re not in the business of only painting the picture :)

Hi folks 👋

Who are the leading biodiversity credit schemes and, especially, project developers? Where do they operate? Where are they based? How many of them are there?

These are just a few of the questions I want to shed a bit more light on today. Time to take a look at Suppliers - the often undervalued Group making these biodiversity credit projects happen. To do that, I’ll use our new Voluntary Biodiversity Market (VBM) database.

📚 Suggested resources

• Repository of all the recent analyses of the VBM database (new!)

• Real-time data dashboard (with all the charts below)

• Database structure (Group-Area-Category) explanation

• Database inclusion form

Let’s dig in.

📢 But first, a couple of messages from the friends of Bloom Labs: 📢

• The rewilding pioneer Lifescape Project is looking for a Managing Ecological Economist. Find more here!

• Speaking of hiring, Big Future recently launched. It’s a climate talent marketplace focused on Europe. Check them out!

The core Groups

As shared in earlier articles, the database is built on the Group-Area-Category structure shown below, with Group being the highest and Category the lowest level. We’ve prioritized keeping organizations in a single Group but if they’re clearly operating across multiple realms, we've made sure to reflect that.

Overview

Group

In total, we have 374 Suppliers - organizations that create biodiversity credit projects (i.e. project developers) or are closely involved in their creation (e.g. credit schemes). Among these, 49 also belong in the Enablers group - these are usually advisories or MRV providers that also develop biodiversity credit projects. Then we have 24 that are also Funders - these organizations are usually large companies or investors that are also involved in project development. And finally, we also see 21 Shapers. These are usually large conservation NGOs that also want to enter the biodiversity credit market via their own projects.

Area

If we go a little deeper into the Area level, we see the actual distribution between Credit Schemes and Project Developers.

Credit Schemes

For Credit Schemes, we have 32 “pure” credit schemes (i.e. organizations that only develop standards or methodologies and do not engage in project development). The majority of these (21) are standards.

Then we have 35 “mixed” credit schemes. They not only develop methodologies but also use them to develop their own credit projects. Savimbo, Wilderlands and Terrasos are some of the better-known mixed schemes.

In total, we have 67 credit schemes, with more being developed privately. Quite a couple for such a small market.

Project Developers

The 35 mixed Credit Schemes & Project Developers are the minority among Suppliers. 307 others focus only on developing projects. That makes sense - developing a scheme as a Project Developer is costly, time-consuming and comes with some baggage (i.e. potential conflict of interest). Most try to choose a “winning” 3rd party scheme.

Having said that, developing your own scheme can give more flexibility to meet the needs of the specific buyers - a big benefit for buyer-centric biodiversity credits. More on that in a minute.

Category

Let’s move to the most granular level. The most interesting part here is the distribution of different supported project activities.

Uplift

Uplift is the most dominant activity, with 293 out of 374 Suppliers supporting it. More specifically, uplift is supported by 84.4% of pure Credit Schemes, 62.9% of mixed Credit Schemes & Project Developers and 79.4% of pure Project Developers.

It’s a living proof of the restoration bias that the nature-based solutions space is defined by. It may not be the most efficient use of capital (high-integrity preservation and maintenance always is) but it is the least risky - project interventions are very concrete (e.g. tree planting) and outcomes are easier to observe (i.e. there was “nothing“, now there are trees).

Avoided loss

Avoided loss is the second most common activity. It is supported by 68.8% of pure Credit Schemes, 62.9% of mixed Credit Schemes & Project Developers and 53.4% of pure Project Developers.

Sustainable use

Sustainable use is the improvement of productive landscape management, such as agriculture, forestry or grazing, resulting in uplift or avoided loss.

Note: many Credit Schemes put sustainable use projects as uplift or avoided loss projects. (which technically is true). In practice, we see a big difference between productive and natural landscapes. That’s why we created a separate category.

It is supported by 53.1% of pure Credit Schemes, 22.9% of mixed Credit Schemes & Project Developers and 32.9% of pure Project Developers.

Maintenance

And finally, let’s take a look at the newest and smallest project activity - maintenance. These projects prevent medium- or long-term threats in intact areas that do not face immediate threats. They are often connected to the territories of the Indigenous Peoples. Some would describe these projects as “low additionality but high impact”.

Maintenance projects are supported by 12.5% of pure Credit Schemes (i.e. Cercarbono, International Carbon Registry, Terrascape & Verra), 11.2% of mixed Credit Schemes & Project Developers and only a single pure Project Developer (Healthy Forests Foundation). Obviously, more developers are open to maintenance projects but few make it publicly clear.

Geography

The Western dominance in Supply is even more pronounced than in the full database. Only Brazil and Colombia cracked the top 10, with more than 50% of Suppliers being based in UK, US, France, Germany & Australia alone. It’s easier to find Western organizations and that has definitely played a part in our data collection. Still, the trend is clear.

Similar to other voluntary biodiversity market participants, most Suppliers operate globally (i.e. in more than one continent).

Again, that is not a surprise. Smaller Project Developers, the most populous group, look to achieve scale by reusing similar playbooks across continents. Larger ones (especially the main conservation NGOs) operate globally by default. Suppliers that are also Funders (i.e. corporates or investors) are usually large enough to operate globally while Suppliers that are also Enablers (e.g. advisories, MRV providers) do not have permanent on-the-ground operations, making them very flexible geographically as well.

Main characteristics

Tech

The majority of Suppliers do not have a specific tech focus. Obviously, they use all sorts of different tech but are not defined by a single type. For others, remote sensing, blockchain & AI were the most popular technologies used at 8.4%, 6.5% and 5.8% respectively.

Focus

For focus areas, carbon and nature-based solutions (NBS) dominate at 24.7% and 24.5% respectively. It’s a great illustration of the deep overlap between biodiversity and carbon markets. In reality, even more organizations have ties to carbon markets or come from them.

In this case, we decided to separate the carbon and nature-based solutions tags. Every organization in carbon is also in nature-based solutions. The opposite is not always the case. Nature-based solutions is a broader category.

Social

Similar to tech, most Suppliers do not have a primary social mandate. Almost every organization in the voluntary biodiversity market is focused on social impact, of course. Most just aren’t necessarily defined by a single topic. Those organizations that are, focus on local communities, Indigenous rights, cultural heritage and human rights at 28.9%, 8.2%, 1.9% and 0.2% respectively.

Industry connections

Similar to the whole market, almost 42% of all Suppliers are part of the Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA). BCA has become by far the biggest convening body of the market. Other popular alliances are International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB), Nature Tech Collective (NTC), Capitals Coalition and Organization for Biodiversity Certificates (OBC).

Parting thoughts

The data confirms many of the common talking points: the early market oversupply, questionable demand (proven by not only the limited interest of the corporates but also their curiosity to sell biodiversity credits and not buy them), Western dominance and the carbon & biodiversity overlap.

Here’s one new(ish) talking point:

Corporate biodiversity credits: are they the future?

It’s clear how difficult it is to build an effective (i.e. fair, efficient and additional) biodiversity market when 1. there is still no (at least semi) binding agreement on what exactly a biodiversity credit is, 2. biodiversity credit regulations are still rare and fragmented 3. biodiversity is fundamentally local and 4. contributions only offer indirect commercial gains (i.e. brand value). That’s a treasure trove of excuses for corporate buyers not to act.

A year in, I’m even more convinced of the buyer-centric approach. Increasingly more people refer to it as corporate biodiversity credits. Under this approach, projects are designed together with corporates from the start. They might commit to purchase these credits for supply chain risk or reporting purposes. They might decide to integrate them into their products (i.e. each container of milk is bundled with the restoration of 10cm2 of grasslands, independently verified and accessible via a QR code). They might even try to sell them for profit to non-consumers (although I don’t know who would buy them other than governments or other polluting corporates under more pressure).

What’s important is that now they 1. understand biodiversity credits, 2. have more flexibility to use them how they want and 3. have reasonable quality assurance on their “nature positive“ activities.

What’s next for Bloom Labs

Biodiversity markets (and the whole nature finance space, to be honest) is riddled with challenges. Seeing how compartmentalized everyone’s knowledge is does not cease to amaze me. Literally no one knows, or can know, everything in this space. A central market intelligence hub is a must. The space deserves a single source of truth of what is happening, at a granular level.

We’re building just that and are currently conducting in-depth user interviews. If you’d be interested in using something like our current Airtables times 100, reach out to hello@bloomlabs.earth.

If you’re short on time, we’d then like to ask to fill a 3-minute product discovery survey below:

👉 Product discovery survey 👈

And if you’re a software engineer who wants to help build this nature finance intelligence hub, give me a shout.

Thanks all!

Last week we launched the most comprehensive Voluntary Biodiversity Market (VBM) database out there with over 1,000 carefully described and categorized organizations. To access it, just become a free subscriber of Bloom Labs. You’ll find the database link in the welcome email.

Today, we’ll share some more high-level analysis of that data. Here’s the real-time data dashboard that I’ll dive into now (works best in desktop!).

Later on, we’ll dig into specific market segments of Suppliers, Shapers, Funders and Enablers.

This is also an experiment in more frequent (but narrower) posts. Tell me what you think about it!

📚 Suggested resources

• Launch of the Voluntary Biodiversity Market (VBM) database

• Database structure explanation

• Real-time data dashboard

👉 Full article 👈

2024 to 2025: what changed?

Frankly, there haven’t been many structural changes.

The COP16 deliverables (e.g. the high integrity framework for biodiversity credit markets, partnership announcements and some sales) helped but didn’t change the picture. Credit sales reached new annual highs but we still can’t call VBM a market - just some one-off transactions.

Voluntary biodiversity and carbon markets are just as deeply interlinked as before. And although there are attempts to separate the two altogether, I don’t see any signs of that happening just yet.

More organizations have explicitly entered the market, doubling from ~500 to more than a 1,000 with a similar split across each group. And since we launched the database last week, we’ve received over 25 submissions to be included in the database - there are clearly even more market players.

Overview

The majority of players are service providers - organizations that want to sell or help others sell biodiversity credits. Enablers comprise 36.8% (421 organizations) while Suppliers make up 32.7% (374). It makes sense- organizations that expect to make money are the most active early on. The barriers to entry for them are quite low, especially if they decide not to use any of the more established (hence expensive) standards (e.g. Plan Vivo or Verra).

The number of best-practice setters (i.e. Shapers) is inherently limited and the buyers (i.e. Funders) tend to flock the scene only once they see a clear return on investment. Here’s one positive sign though: the proportion of Funders have increased the most compared to other Groups this year.

The market is global almost by design. Even at such an early stage, we see organizations from 74 countries and 6 continents participate. UK, US and continental Europe lead the way with Australia, Brazil and Colombia following behind.

Given that the majority of the remaining biodiversity is in the Global South, I wish we saw more local organizations in the market. I’m sure we’ve missed many that are more difficult to find but it’s undeniable that most of the influential organizations reside in Europe and the US. If we (the Global North) are serious about systemically valuing nature and rewarding their stewards, we have to give up a lot of control to the local organizations on the ground. As good as the wishes might be, the current situation still perpetuates inequality.

By far the majority of organizations operate globally (i.e. across more than one continent). That’s easier for service providers that do not operate on the ground. However, many Project Developers are active across countries and continents as well. Although biodiversity credits are more local than carbon credits, we see companies reusing similar playbooks across continents.

The core Groups

As shared in the article last week, the database is built on the Group-Area-Category structure (shown below), with Group being the highest and Category the lowest level. We’ve prioritized keeping organizations in a single Group but if they’re clearly operating across multiple realms, we've made sure to reflect that.

Let’s look into each:

Suppliers

Suppliers are organizations that create biodiversity credit projects (i.e. project developers) or set the rules for their creation (e.g. credit schemes).

Unsurprisingly, Project Developers is the largest category, outnumbering Credit Schemes 5 to 1. We also see that ~20% of the organizations do not only specialize as Suppliers. Quite some advisories, MRV providers and marketplaces help develop projects or do so themselves. We also have some Investors (usually natural capital asset managers) and Purchasers (usually corporates that directly depend on nature) who are exploring or developing biodiversity credit projects themselves. If corporates find value in developing their own projects instead of “pre-ordering” or buying them over-the-counter, it will be a crucial moment for the market. And finally, we see some Shapers directly participate in the market as well. These are usually large conservation NGOs that run a big portfolio of projects on the ground and are exploring repackaging some of them into biodiversity credit projects.

Shapers

Shapers are organizations that focus on shaping the voluntary biodiversity market with influential reports, public resources and commentary, instead of participating in market transactions. They are usually non-profits (e.g. IAPB, BCA, WEF or NatureFinance) with some for-profit advisory exceptions (e.g. Pollination, McKinsey or CDC Biodiversité). Most are alliances, associations, initiatives, collectives and research institutions.

Since it is a voluntary market, non-governmental organizations focused on ensuring the integrity and best practices of the market (coined as Integrity) dominate the Shaper Group with 150 players. However, there are some governmental entities involved in the market as well. Natural England & Defra in the UK, DCCEEW & the Clean Energy Regulator in Australia and the European Commission with its related counterparts in the EU are the most influential ones, both in their own jurisdictions and outside.

Funders

Funders are organizations that purchase biodiversity credits or invest in biodiversity credit projects or companies that serve the market. It’s a diverse group representing private, public and blended finance at different levels.

The split between Purchasers and Investors is pretty even, with Investors being the slight majority. Ideally, Purchasers would be the more dominant group. Voluntary biodiversity market is built on the expectation that more corporate Purchasers will come to foot the bill. They are the backbone of a functioning market. Investors, just like in any market, only have something to invest in if there are end buyers. Having said that, it’s good to see 50+ companies that have purchased biodiversity credits (or have explicitly expressed interest in the market), the majority of them being corporates.

The organizations that are both Funders and Project Developers are usually natural capital asset managers and large forestry/pulp & paper companies. It is difficult to tell if they are looking to buy credits or sell them.

Enablers

Enablers are organizations that serve the market. They are usually for-profit companies providing technology, advisory or media services.

It’s a pretty even split between measurement, reporting & verification (MRV) providers and consultants, trailed by market structure, reporting and popularization providers.

A significant part of MRV providers offer industry-agnostic tech. It can be used not only for monitoring biodiversity for credit projects but also for environmental impact assessments, carbon markets or fulfilling compliance obligations (e.g. EUDR). That’s why there are so many of them. We’ve been especially careful not to include additional hundreds of remote sensing providers who could also serve the biodiversity market. We’ve only added the ones who’ve shown explicit interest in the market.

Advisories (or consultants) is another popular category. In early markets, they are usually the first to offer custom services. VBM is not an exception. Building a scalable product is usually much more difficult (and can be much less in demand).

Market structure is the most diverse class in the database. They are the grease that keeps the wheels of the market turning. I’ll dig into them in another issue.

We then have the corporate reporting (or nature accounting) providers that help companies 1. report on nature via the new frameworks like TNFD or (the watered down) CSRD and 2. truly integrate nature into corporate decision making. It’s a split between usually large advisories and software startups.

The last one is popularization. These are the media companies that explicitly cover the voluntary biodiversity market or organize related events.

Main characteristics

Let’s move on to the main characteristics that the VBM organizations can be defined by.

Tech

From the tech perspective, it’s a diverse split with AI and remote sensing leading the way among the 276 tagged organizations. AI is becoming ubiquitous, especially in remote sensing, acoustics and imaging. It’s just so handy in habitat or species classification. A significant chunk also uses blockchain in data management. It’s especially useful when handling information one can’t easily verify (which is environmental markets in a nutshell). The remaining technologies are divided at 3-8% each.

Focus

Focus reflects the activities that define an organization. Out of the 906 tagged organizations, nature-based solutions (NBS) and carbon dominate, both representing a third of the database each. Every carbon player is also an NBS player, so we decided not to duplicate these tags. This is also where the biodiversity <> carbon overlap becomes so clear. Close to half of the (generally) for-profit players (i.e. Suppliers, Funders and Enablers) come from the voluntary carbon market (VCM).

The remaining significant tags (from highest to lowest) are MRV, agriculture, risk, marine, forestry and biodiversity footprinting.

Social

Social tags are crucial but the most difficult to predictably categorize. One could argue that virtually every organization values local communities or human rights. However, we decided to only use these tags for organizations that are defined by these goals. That’s why only 201 organizations were tagged.

Local community focus dominates with Indigenous rights following right after. The remaining focus points are cultural heritage and human rights.

Commercial partners

We were also curious to see which are the most relevant commercial entities for the organization (e.g. clients, partners, investors, etc.). We wanted to map out who the organizations do business with.

For Suppliers

Here the logic is pretty clear: Project Developers target credit Purchasers and Investors while Credit Schemes (and some Investors who dabble in Project Development themselves) target Project Developers.

For Shapers

Since the majority of Shapers are non-profits, this assessment is not very relevant to them. The only exceptions are some conservation NGOs, research institutions and a couple of advisories that are also involved in project development - these usually also target Purchasers and Investors.

For Funders

The Funders have the most diverse set of commercial partners.

Non-financial institution Purchasers seem to mostly focus on the credit purchase (hence a significant N/A column). Most aren’t looking for ways to make a direct profit. The remaining Purchasers focus on Project Developers, other Purchasers and Investors. This last group is dominated by banks and insurers that could either invest in projects/credits, be the end buyer or develop their own credit projects.

The Investors are mostly comprised of asset managers, banks & insurers and venture capital firms. Asset managers work with similar partners as banks & insurers but usually have a stronger focus on developing their own biodiversity credit projects. Venture capital firms invest in tech-enabled companies that usually reside in the Enablers and Suppliers categories.

For Enablers

Enablers serve the market usually via advisory and tech solutions. That’s why Project Development, Purchase & Investment are once again the dominant areas, followed by Compliance & Credit Schemes.

Industry connections

And here we see the most popular industry alliances in VBM. Unsurprisingly, Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) dominates, followed by Nature Tech Collective (NTC), Capitals Coalition and International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB).

Company data

Organization size

Small companies are by far the most common in the market with over 68% of them being below 50 employees. The company count steadily decreases until it reaches the 500-employee mark. Then we see an uptick. In other words, the market is mostly comprised of very small and very large organizations.

Founding year

The voluntary biodiversity market is brand new and the data shows it. More than half of the organizations were founded in the last 9 years, 38% of them being started in the 2019-2023 window. We might have seen a slump in 2024 but I wouldn’t rule out the younger companies being less visible and us missing them. We’re also seeing a healthy company turnover: 5-10% of the organizations in the 2024 database went out of business.

Parting thoughts

Here are a couple of themes that define the voluntary biodiversity market:

• We are still at the market stage where there are more discussions, confusion and research than action. It often is a required stage. However, the result of it is that only two types of organizations are “eating” now: consultants and NGOs.

• VBM is developing quickly. New yearly market entrants, increasing credit sales and the proportion of freshly founded companies illustrate that well.

• The biodiversity <> carbon overlap is undeniable. Most for-profit players come from the voluntary carbon market (VCM) and have all the incentives to see both markets thrive. If VBM ever becomes more independent from VCM, it is not now.

• The market is oversupplied and under-demanded - a natural dislocation in early markets. Although improving, this cannot continue forever. Most Suppliers are suffering and investing in the future of this market.

• It will be very interesting to see *how* corporates operate in this market. Will it be by purchasing 3rd party credits over-the-counter? Will it be by pre-ordering 3rd party credits (i.e. made to order)? Or will it be by developing credit projects for themselves? If so, will they use these credits themselves or try to sell them? These decisions will shape the market.

It is possible to make sense of VBM

VBM is confusing (and often confused). But it is possible to understand it better and act on it (and do so in hours/days not weeks/months).

Imagine a single platform where you could find every stakeholder that matters to you. Where you could track the latest market developments. Where you could access timely market analysis. Where you could understand different types of credits and source projects. Where you could see credit pricing. Where you could integrate your biodiversity market activities with your work in the voluntary carbon market.

We want to build that. And for that, we need your help. If you are interested in an even more powerful VBM market intelligence product, please fill in this 3-minute survey:

👉 Product discovery survey 👈

Thank you to everyone who filled it in so far! It’s been incredibly valuable - we’re planning the next steps directly based on your feedback.

Cheers!

Last year, I published a database of 450+ voluntary biodiversity market organizations. Many folks told me that it became the go-to place to understand who does what in the market. I too found myself using the database all the time.

Over the past year, VBM has matured a little. Way more organizations have entered the space. We’re seeing more transactions with some major credit schemes inching closer to credit issuance. It deserves a market intelligence layer.

We at Bloom Labs are in the perfect position to build that layer for nature markets, starting with the voluntary side.

That’s why I’m stoked to present version 2 of the database, with 1,000+ organizations in it. It’s not a project anymore. It’s a product.

The ethos of Bloom Labs has always been give-first. That’s why this database is free. All you need to do is subscribe to our newsletter. You'll then get the Airtable link in the welcome email. For the existing subscribers, you’ll find the link in the original newsletter in your inbox.

We are also looking to build premium features for the power users. See more below.

If you don’t see your or someone else’s organization, just fill in this form.

This is a part 1 of a multi part series. Here, I’ll walk you through the database design. Later, I’ll start sharing some data analysis.

Disclaimers

I’ll skip the majority of disclaimers since I shared them last year. Instead, I’ll focus on these:

Many crucial stakeholders are structurally invisible

Once again, most of the essential groups such as Indigenous Peoples, local communities or smallholders are left invisible by the database format. We tried adding as many organizations representing them as we could. They rarely operate under a logo or have the opportunity to engage with the market though. This is a reminder that they serve as the (often voiceless) backbone of any industry related to natural resource stewardship and must be prioritized.

The database is Western-centric

We are inevitably biased towards Western sources of market developments. As much as we tried, I’m convinced that we left out many relevant market players from countries like Japan or India. If you know where we could find more of them, please let us know.

Database design

Scope

We’ve included the organizations according to three criteria:

1. Organization operates in the VBM

   Or, more specifically, it does one or more of the following:

   • Participates in credit creation (i.e. develops credit schemes or projects).

   • Shapes the market by public opinions, research and reports (e.g. industry forums, conservation NGOs or academics).

   • Funds the market, either by investing in projects, companies or purchasing credits.

   • Provides services to the market (e.g. biodiversity monitoring, demand facilitation, nature accounting, consulting or media coverage).

2. Organization is actively exploring VBM

   According to us, “exploring” can be defined by:

   • Participation in industry forums such as Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) or The International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB), events, reports and social media.

   • Engaging with Bloom Labs or me. If you reach out, invite me to connect or follow the work of Bloom Labs in any way, I’ve assumed that you are exploring the market.

3. Organization operates very close to VBM

   Many, if not most, nature-based carbon players are actively exploring the biodiversity market. We’ve selected the most obvious organizations. Some other international organizations (e.g. UN Biodiversity) are too important not to be included either.

Group-Area-Category

The database has been built on the Group-Area-Category structure, with Group being the highest and Category the lowest level.

You can find the full structure and definitions of all Groups, Areas and Categories here.

The definitions above are quite self-explanatory. Here’s the only other thing you should know: the order of tags for Group-Area-Category is not random. We’ve listed them in the order of importance. For example, South Pole is marked as both a Supplier (as a Project Developer) and an Enabler (as an Advisory). However, the Supplier comes first since it’s the company’s primary activity and is the most relevant to VBM.

Other data fields

Description

Every description is custom-made. No fluff, all content. It should help you quickly understand what the organization actually does and, most importantly, how it relates to the market.

Tags

There are three types of tags.

“Focus” is for activity characteristics that usually define the organization (e.g. “agriculture”, “carbon” or “Biodiversity Net Gain”). “Tech” is for technologies that the organization uses. And “Social” is for the most relevant social themes behind each organization. We decided to be especially picky with “Tech” and “Social” tags to maximize signal and minimize noise. For example, many organizations use software and even more are focused on positive impact on communities. But unless the organization is defined by these concepts, it wasn’t tagged.

Connections

That’s where the most relevant industry connections of each organization are. Usually consists of industry alliances that the organization is part of and its most important strategic partners.

Commercial Partners

Most relevant commercial groups for the organization (e.g. clients, partners, investors, etc.). That’s where you can see who the organization “does business with”. They are categorized according to the Area data field I mentioned earlier.

Organization URLs

The website and LinkedIn URLs for an easy way to get more information.

Company-specific information

The founding date, number of employees and LinkedIn follower count to give a quick idea of how new and large the organization is.

What is so special about this database?

A couple of things:

Scope

Every organization has been selected and categorized in the context of VBM. Each one has a role to play. Even if it’s an NGO that publishes conservation-related reports, it primarily acts as a Project Developer if it’s interested in reshaping some of their on-the-ground initiatives into biodiversity credit projects.

And every single organization has been validated by a human. You can trust that it’s not just a list of similar-sounding organizations.

Usability

It is built for surgical use. You can filter through 17 different data fields to find virtually any organization that meets your requirements.

Extensiveness

It is the most comprehensive list of organizations in this market.

Uniqueness

Many data points inside are unique and built by humans (hello 👋). As good as AI is becoming, it’s simply impossible to automatically scrape a lot of this data online. Or rather, it is but fixing inaccuracies would probably take just as long as doing it yourself. Trust us, we tried :) Quick and clear descriptions together with industry Connections field alone can be a powerful research tool.

The database is designed for daily use. Whether you’re looking to just keep up with the market in hours instead of days/weeks or do deeper research for strategic decisions or investments, this is the product for you.

Advice on how to use it

This list is most valuable when you use it, not just look at it.

Filtering is the most valuable feature there is. With it, you can slice and dice the database however you like. Do you want to find all the MRV providers that 1. specialize in aggregating multi-modal biodiversity data 2. support acoustics and 3. are based in Germany? They’re a couple of clicks away (for the curious ones, it’s biometrio.earth, fold ecosystemics and Hula Earth 🙂).

If you combine it with other features (especially grouping, sorting, hiding/showing columns and keyword search), you’ll see the utility of the database compound.

A more powerful version is possible. Do you want it?

Coming from startups, I kept hearing “validate your product first”, “build in public”, “focus on distribution before product”. And still, here I am, realizing that I haven’t done enough of that myself. Although my focus at Bloom Labs has always been on providing deep, unique and accessible market intelligence, I didn’t do enough product discovery. I didn’t speak with enough people who use my work and didn’t collect enough feedback to build something companies would be willing to pay for. That is about to change.

A more powerful version of the database is possible.

Here are just a couple of features we are working on or are considering:

• Proprietary Bloom Labs scores that assess the organization’s market influence and momentum.

• Regular database updates. Monthly, weekly or daily instead of annually (at best).

• Ability to export and visualize data.

• More comprehensive linking of Connections, providing a near-complete list of the most important partners for each organization.

• Intelligence sources that link you to specific resources to learn more about each organization.

• More extensive classification. Think ecosystem types & subtypes (e.g. terrestrial, coastal, freshwater, etc.), project types (e.g. IFM, ARR, REDD+, etc.), credit standards each project developer uses (e.g. Verra, Plan Vivo, etc.) and more.

• And of course, a custom data platform.

The question is, would it be valuable enough that you would pay for it? And if so, how much?

As I said, we are building the market intelligence layer for nature markets. Here’s what we currently have in the voluntary space:

• Biodiversity Credit Schemes: the most extensive list of analyzed VBM credit schemes.

• Biodiversity Credit Metrics: the most extensive list of indicators & metrics behind these schemes.

• Voluntary Biodiversity Credit Transactions: a list of virtually all public VBM transactions.

These resources have proven useful already. But they can work together, be real-time and become much more valuable. With your help, they can become the way to check the market pulse. They can also scale to other nature markets.

Parting thoughts

This is a compilation of 2 years of work. It’s also the first resource built with more scale in mind. Big thanks to Martin for pushing me in this direction. You’ve been a great sparring partner (& an even better designer) :).

Have fun!

It’s been a while since I shared any hard data with you. My bad - bigger and better things take more time. Being hopelessly optimistic with timelines doesn’t help either. Just ask my collaborators (hey Joshua 🙃).

I do have a goodie for you though - a database of all public voluntary biodiversity credit transactions I could collect. Most of these are business-to-business (B2B) but I aggregated some business-to-consumer (B2C) ones as well.

This is a subscriber-only special. To access the database, you have to first subscribe to the newsletter. You'll then get the Airtable link in the welcome email. For the existing subscribers, you’ll find the link in the original newsletter in your inbox.

And if you don’t see your transaction in the database (or it is inaccurate), just fill in this form (or ping me personally if you need to share additional context). And thank you to all the credit schemes and project developers who trusted me with their sales numbers. I take that seriously.

Let’s dig in.

Disclaimers

As always, a couple of disclaimers:

• This analysis will be based on data from three sources:

  1. publicly available (shared above),

  2. privately shared,

  3. conservative estimates.

  Throughout, I’ll be traversing through all three. Confusing but necessary - this is a sensitive topic. The public-only numbers are obviously lower than reality. That’s also why you won’t see every transaction in the public database. It is the majority though.

• The definition of a biodiversity/nature credit is still undefined in practice. I’ll use a relatively wide interpretation of it (or at least wider than Pollination). As an indirect result of that, many purchases aren’t “pure” biodiversity credit purchases. They might be stapled to carbon credits or include other ecosystem services in the project area.

• Not every transaction listed is a purchase. A couple of them are also pilot investments, pre-purchases or commitments to purchase. Most of them probably aren’t that large though.

• Not everything here is accurate. Easily accessible market data is not the luxury we have. I’m sure I missed some B2C sales since not everyone shares them publicly.

• The sales numbers in the original article have been slightly adjusted with the most recent credit sales data.

Analysis

Sales totals and leaders

No matter how you cut it, B2B sales dominate. They do stand on a couple of large public sales though:

• Niue’s ~NZD 4.5 million credit sales, with 80%+ of it coming from organizations, not individuals.

• The Landbanking Group’s three 6-figure sales.

• Air New Zealand’s MAHI token purchase for NZD 1 million.

• Wilderlands’ 70,000 credits sold in 5 weeks, probably worth anywhere from $140k to $490k.

These four alone make up 90%+(!!!) of the total sales. Oceanians are running the game early on - just take a look below.

Area

The total area protected or restored is ~1,727,750ha, or ~17,278km2. Without the Niue Ocean Wide Trust, it’s ~27,750ha. And the remaining area is mostly composed of The Landbanking Group’s year-long conservation agreements (20,200ha).

In other words, the current voluntary biodiversity market’s area-based impact is a drop in the ocean, given our global goals.

Geography

The majority of buyers purchased credits from the projects in their main country of operations. The exceptions came from European and North American companies, some of whom also supported South American projects. No surprises here, given how important locality is for biodiversity credit buyers.

Indigenous-led leads

Niue Ocean Wide Trust, Toha Network and Savimbo are some of the early market leaders (with EarthAcre seemingly doing just as well). And they’re all Indigenous-led. It’s a signal of confidence that the right thing is being rewarded.

Buyers

The Western buyers dominate with only 3 out of 23 public B2B transactions led by non-Western countries (Mexico, Colombia and Brazil). Most seem to be test purchases.

There are no obvious buyer industry trends. Industries range from manufacturing, healthcare, banking or luxury goods to tech, personal care or even NGOs.

Even though 19 out of known B2B 23 transactions are led by for-profit players, contribution-based/philanthropic motivations are the dominant demand drivers.

SME buyers lead the pack

Small/medium businesses are the buyers ~80% of the time.

That makes sense. There’s less bureaucracy required to get internal approval to buy. Buyers don’t need (or have to hide behind) a company-wide nature strategy. Often, they are founder-led and buy simply because they believe it’s the right thing to do. For now, still a very philanthropic marketing-y approach. Of course, the purchase amounts are usually more modest as well.

Some corporates engage but often indirectly

We also have 9 documented corporate (250+ employees) transactions. Not all of them are direct though. For example, the Sun Institute Environment and Sustainability, purchaser of The Landbanking Group’s VNUs, was established by the Deutsche Post Foundation in 2014 (which in itself is a separate entity from the $40b+ giant). Another example: Microsoft’s recent funding for a local non-profit to buy some biodiversity credits near one of their data centers in Sweden. And the last one: Air New Zealand. They purchased Toha Network’s MAHI tokens via its Climate and Nature Fund. The whole transaction itself was unique, with access to data being a big buying motivation (for their corporate disclosures). MAHI tokens aren’t your traditional biodiversity credits either.

Corporate purchases can be difficult to approve. Purchasing indirectly can skip some of these bureaucratic hurdles.

Preservation dominates

70%+ of the projects are for preservation. The remaining: restoration, sustainable use or a combination of these with preservation. No big surprise here - the preservation credits usually take the least time to issue and are the cheapest conservation projects to start.

Unspecified claims

Most buyers don’t yet make any claims using their purchased credits. Those who do, usually make contribution claims. Few buyers connect their own product sales with credit sales (e.g. “each festival ticket you buy will preserve 1m2 of Australian native habitat forever”). Only one pre-purchaser (Mexican investment firm LGL Investments) specified profit as the main reason to purchase.

Either way, the claims that can be made aren’t well-defined yet. That’s why most buyers will probably avoid risking their brand with any bold claims, taught by the carbon controversies. The market needs a widely accepted biodiversity claims guidance.

Here’s an interesting fact though - no one used voluntary biodiversity credits for offsetting yet. Zero. Voluntary credit accounting is still so unclear and unstandardized that no buyer has yet taken a risk to make any compensatory claims. I’m very curious how the credit schemes that do support some level of offsetting will do this year (e.g. 3Bee, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, Bluebell Index or LIFE Institute).

Why aren’t there more transactions?

The million-dollar question. One can easily name 10+ reasons. I’ll focus on a couple of the most important ones in my experience:

1. Lack of standardization & credibility

The voluntary biodiversity market (VBM) is both early and (at least a little) more complex than any other environmental market. Not a great combination if one expects big voluntary buyers to line up fast.

The high-level market principles are just forming right now, with many disagreements remaining. We still don’t have any real monitoring-related guidance (although ecosystem condition is becoming the dominant high-level framework). We still don’t have any agreed upon biodiversity units, nor might we ever have them. We still don’t have unified claims guidance (although schemes like NaturePlus™ or CreditNature have thought about it deeply). We still don’t really know how well the biodiversity credit metrics will play with the upcoming nature accounting (mainly CSRD & TNFD) reports. We still have a patchy and divided stance on the crucial technicalities like additionality, durability, tradability or benefit sharing. On top of that, new biodiversity credit schemes with their own unique rules are still being baked, although at a slower place.

With all that, I’m aware that this young market needs some breathing room with less standardization (i.e. restrictions) for at least a little bit. There are still some things we don’t understand. And we can’t put rules on things we don’t understand.

The perpetual affliction

One must also admit that the market’s voluntary nature will always be a problem in standardizing the market and convincing the buyers. The space might need a “benevolent dictator” to actually move things forward. It could be a big buyer or, ironically, a big government. Either way, only someone with enough influence could pull this off and handle the inevitable criticism.

2. Unclear business case

For-profits prioritize (short-term) profit. That’s the way it is for now.

Unlike voluntary carbon credits, the biodiversity ones are currently limited to contributions as the primary demand driver. Offsetting is not yet in the picture (although it’s probably a must if the voluntary market is to reach any meaningful scale). Not yet having corporate nature targets doesn’t help either. There’s progress on all target-setting fronts though: corporate, national and international.

We could also look into the financial benefits of improving ecosystems that businesses and governments rely on. What we do know is that 1. they exist 2. most aren’t yet properly quantifiable nor predictable 3. they take time. I believe the third is the deal-breaker for most for-profits. Why care about returns in 10-50 years if you are rewarded annually? Either way, nature is closer to real economies than carbon. That’s why I hope that the increasing pressure on ecosystems and technological improvements will lead to ways of valuing nature better.

Public goods and private money can be a horrible combination. The natural response of investors is to privatize the public goods. That’s the surest way to get their return. That cannot always happen though - some goods are meant to be public. Fresh water, clean air, healthy soils, biodiversity, you name it.

3. Early market sales take time

This might sound like a cop-out answer for some but we should remember one of the first lessons in sales - the bigger the sale, the more time it takes. And quite a couple of schemes believe they are close to finalizing larger transactions. They and the schemes that may have even sold already may not be incentivized to share much for competitive reasons. Now, keeping that private for long only makes sense if the buyer hasn’t done their due diligence on other schemes and might start comparing their current vendor with 50+ other choices. They might even decide that they might have overpaid. Early markets allow for price discrimination.

And finally, credit validation, verification and issuance takes time. Years, to be exact. Most projects started in 2023 aren’t yet eligible for credit issuance, especially the very popular restoration ones. That’s why most of the credits sold aren’t yet certified.

Pioneer buyers

So, the market is risky and doesn’t promise immediate returns. Easy reasons for corporates to justify not buying. Just like every early market, VBM requires pioneer buyers. These won’t be the organizations buying only for direct profit (philanthropies, you can still step up!). For the market to reach any meaningful scale though, companies will need to start seeing profit sooner or later. Ideally directly (reduced nature risk/insetting, speculation) but also indirectly (increased brand value).

More musings

B2B vs B2C sales

At least publicly, B2B sales make up ~80% of the total. In my opinion, similar to carbon, B2C sales might increase but will never be meaningful. The current ~20% might be the highest proportion of total sales it will ever have. Only relying on people’s good hearts (and them understanding biodiversity credits) is a strategy built on hope. Plus, it’s not always easy to even buy these credits as an individual.

The risks

I’m seeing two worrying trends right now:

The endless risk of greenwashing

The classic criticism against environmental credits is that corporate credit buyers might use these purchases to greenwash and/or stall the real regulations.

Well, the previously mentioned biodiversity credit buyer, SUN Institute Environment & Sustainability, was established by the Deutsche Post Foundation which itself was established by the Deutsche Post DHL Group. The CFO of the latter called for a stop to work on sector-specific CSRD’s European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) - bad for nature. It’s a reach to connect these but it’s an example of what we should avoid.

Another example: last year, Air New Zealand dropped their 2030 emissions target and pulled out of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi).

Private funding replacing public funding?

The biodiversity credit project that Microsoft has recently supported looks like a direct response to the project’s loss of public funding. Private nature finance must increase but it cannot replace its public counterpart. Public nature funding is the most reliable long-term solution for much of the non-commercial conservation. There’s no way around it. Of course, the multi-decadal weakening of the public sector in the West and the current geopolitical situation might force many conservationists to rely on the private sector instead, at least for now.

Although these are just single data points, we shouldn’t ignore them.

The start of something

As unique as the voluntary biodiversity market is, it follows the same old market cycles. A bunch of ecstatic hopefulness followed by just as cynical hopelessness, on repeat. A great testing ground for the compliance markets which will inevitably be (and already are, for decades) much larger.

One thing is certain though, these markets reflect a different way of thinking about nature, whether good or bad (hopefully good!). This “nature + market” tool isn’t going away any time soon either. We’re at the start of a megatrend: increasing pressure on ecosystems, increasing costs of ignoring nature and increasing economies combined with limited natural resources are leading us to a breaking point. I’m done trying to predict when. But acknowledging that and working to do something for nature is what matters in my opinion. Either way, this megatrend will make sure our economies don’t ignore nature for much longer. Exciting times.

Related reads

• Weekly OPIS Biodiversity Market Reports. Quick and valuable pieces that feature project-level pricing for some biodiversity credit schemes. Top-notch stuff.

• Pollination’s report on voluntary biodiversity credit markets. Pollination folks never disappoint. There they also shared a realistic market size estimate in 2024.

Let’s start with something light - an overview of biodiversity markets.

At a similar time last year, I did a market review and was even naive enough to make some predictions. New year, old me. I decided to repeat this humbling exercise :)

Let’s get to it.

p.s. Just like last year, a reminder that I’m a skeptical optimist - the review is bound to sound gloomier than what I actually feel.

Review of last year’s predictions

For my own good, I’ll try to get through these fast..

“First major public corporate biodiversity credit transaction takes place” ❌

We saw some large corporates purchase biodiversity credits (e.g. Air New Zealand for ~$600,000 or ISA Interconexión Eléctrica for an undisclosed sum). The problem - they were either mixed with other ecosystem services (i.e. carbon) or probably not big enough.

“Biodiversity unit is (somewhat) standardized” 🟡

Some progress happened but less than I hoped.

Some notable events:

• Cercarbono & International Carbon Registry adopted Savimbo’s biodiversity unit.

• Nature Positive Initiative (NPI) launched the state of nature metrics framework meant to standardize nature metrics.

• Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)’s metric/unit is being adopted by the private voluntary market players (e.g. Earthly, Ecogains’ CLIMB metric or Ramboll's Global Biodiversity Metric).

• Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) published their definition of a biodiversity credit.

• And finally, ecosystem condition and extent became even more dominant as a nature measurement system (this will continue).

In the short run, the lack of standardization (and as a result - additional ability to differentiate from other schemes) will benefit some players. In the long run, a fragmented biodiversity unit will hurt most. I don’t see that changing this year.

“Fair and just Indigenous Peoples’ (IPs) & local communities’ (LCs) involvement increases but they remain underrepresented” ✅

An easy guess but that’s what happened.

The high integrity framework for biodiversity credit markets led by the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB), together with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and BCA is a good summary of the year’s developments. Neither side (i.e. strongest IP & LC proponents and strongest market-first proponents) was fully satisfied with the framework. That’s a pretty good sign that we reached even ground.

We’ve also seen intensified legal talks about the Rights of Nature, which is a step in the right direction. The same trend will continue - we have a long way to go.

“IP and/or LC-first schemes gain more prominence” 🟡

Tough to assess. The IP-led schemes remained a minority, mainly represented by Savimbo, EarthAcre and Niue Ocean Wide Trust. They are all well-respected though. And more IP-led methodologies are being developed in the background.

“Biodiversity credit schemes start consolidating” ❌

Not yet. We’ve seen an example of what I believe is inevitable with the strategic partnership of CreditNature and ValueNature though.

I think the consolidation will accelerate this year. We might even start topping out at ~100 voluntary biodiversity credit schemes (currently at ~70 with many more being built in stealth). Over time, probably much more than 100 methodologies will exist but most of them will live inside the already existing credit standards instead of as complete standalone products. I.e. it will follow the voluntary carbon market (VCM) arc.

“A truly globally applicable biodiversity credit scheme doesn’t (yet) exist” ✅

Here I was referring to the Indigenous (usually in the Global South) and industrialized (usually in the Global North) societies. I’d say that we still don’t have a global credit scheme fully applicable to both.

“Offsetting conversations are finally put to rest in the voluntary markets; contributory approach dominates” ❌❌❌

My biggest miss of the year. At this point, I stopped believing that the contributions vs offsetting discussions would ever fully die down. I do think we’ll start seeing more offsetting-focused schemes though.

“Voluntary biodiversity market experiences a first real low” ✅

Some might disagree (the space remained loud, we had COP16 with many cute announcements, etc.) but I think it did - the market is still mostly theoretical. Many nature-based solutions players paused their involvement in the voluntary biodiversity market (with many of them continuing to rely on carbon markets instead). Private discussions are also more often bleak than not.

I still believe that in the long run, biodiversity markets are inevitable (especially compliance-based). But lows are part of every market & are especially painful in the early cycles.

“Nature tech continues growing” 🟡

Although the market reports are positive, I’ve seen less sunshine among my founder friends.

Some companies are doing okay, others are in survival mode. Quite some have shut down as well. And I don’t see practically any nature tech companies thriving yet. The only for-profit companies actually doing well at this point in nature markets are, unfortunately, the consultancies.

We also haven’t seen a big increase in new nature/biodiversity-focused venture capital (VC) funds. Many are struggling to fundraise themselves.

Over time, I don’t see how nature tech is not a significant market - limited natural resources, our dependence on them and a growing global economy/population will make sure of that.

“Nature-based carbon credits rebound big time” ❌

As far as I know, the 2024 VCM data is not yet in but that didn’t really happen. Still survival mode. Let’s see if the finalization of carbon market rules (Article 6) at COP29 will make a difference this year.

“First scandal between Indigenous Peoples and the voluntary biodiversity market breaks out” ❌

I’m really happy to be wrong about this one. Either way, I believe it’s inevitable.

“Marine biodiversity markets remain theoretical” 🟡

With “marine” I was referring to ecosystems beyond the coastal areas. Not much action here (with the exception of Niue Ocean Wide Trust). Although I didn’t expect much action in the coastal space either. Thankfully, SeaTrees and now Clean Tides have proven me wrong. Are we seeing US-based companies start to dominate the coastal biodiversity credit space? 👀

So, where are we now?

First thought - we’ve seen less progress than I (& many others) expected. Either the progress is actually slow or I’m just affected by my startup-y expectations. Probably both.

We’ve been limited to ~20 small transactions, usually below $50k. We’re still at the “what is a biodiversity credit?” stage. Potential buyers and demand facilitators are still asking that. And it’s still a hard question to answer. Different people want biodiversity credits to be different things. If one group doesn’t start dominating the space, standardization will remain slow, continuing to drag the rest of the market.

The market also picked up some wins with IAPB/WEF/BCA aligning their views on high-level market rules, continued market innovation (especially on the methodology/biodiversity quantification side), some standardization progress and experimentation with building voluntary credits on top of compliance markets.

The asset and commodity question

Last year, I said that “biodiversity credits function more like assets stuck in the body of a commodity”. Although some successful commodity-focused work is happening (primarily driven by Savimbo), the asset-first vision took a stronger hold of me. There are just too many “but waits” for almost any biodiversity credit/scheme/project comparison. I’ve learned this the hard way in a credit pricing research we hope to publish soon together with Joshua Berger and Karl Burkart. As the one and only Sophus zu Ermgassen recently said, “It's not the UNIT, but the PROJECT that counts”.

And I’m saying that fully aware of the neocolonialist/anti Rights of Nature implications that an asset-first biodiversity credit vision could bring. The real estate type of market is winning. The fragmented market vision is winning.

Nature-based solutions and real-world economies

That’s my newest obsession - connecting nature-based solutions (both private market-based and public non-market) with productive landscapes. Something that many folks in this space have understood from the beginning.

Pure credit projects are great. They can be very risky though (especially biodiversity, at this point). So much can go wrong. I wonder what would happen if we integrated more of these projects into productive lands, both food and non-food? What would happen if we incentivized the biggest landowners to add biodiversity/carbon credits into their revenue mix? Even if it’s 5-10%. Natural capital investors like Foresight Sustainable Forestry Company or Climate Asset Management might lead the way in this experiment.

We might require new crediting standards and methodologies for such use cases. Obviously, the question remains - who would buy these credits?

This concept has many holes but I think it reflects an important point: nature-based solutions must be more directly connected to the economies that produce and consume things. Out of the 3 key biodiversity credit activities (1. preservation 2. restoration 3. sustainable use), we should focus on the third more. If we continue separating nature from economies, nature will continue to be ignored.

Insurance

Another example of real-world economies is insurance.

I recently (involuntarily) found myself in Miami Beach for a couple of days. There I saw many wealthy suburbs with impressive coastal villas. Throughout all that time, I couldn’t stop thinking about 1. how expensive these properties are 2. how vulnerable they are to climate/nature breakdown and 3. how much money these owners would be willing to pay to avoid property damage (or even loss). Could we plant, for example, mangroves to mitigate some of this nature risk while rolling it into an insurance product or selling biodiversity credits for it?

Until now, biodiversity credits have been far away from insurance. Actual nature risk management requires highly specific actions in highly specific locations and no generalized credit scheme can serve that. Maybe we’ll see a credit methodology directly go after nature risk in 2025? I hope so.

Compliance markets

I definitely haven’t covered the most important part of biodiversity credit markets enough in the past - the compliance schemes. They have been and will remain the most significant part of the global nature markets. Its market size is debated but stands somewhere close to $10b/year. Compare that to VBM :)

And the development of new national biodiversity credit schemes is accelerating. I’m aware of ~20 countries that are working on such frameworks. You’ll find a solid overview here on page 28. The voluntary markets will build on top of and will often be rolled into the compliance ones.

Predictions

Covering my last year’s guess didn’t leave me with much for this year. Here are a couple though:

VBM market size will officially pass $10m

The often-quoted $8m market size number from 2023 has been proven to have been an optimistic overestimate. After trying to follow every public biodiversity credit transaction, Pollination’s most recent estimate of ~$0.325-1.87m (probably on the higher side) checks out much better.

But this year, I think we’ll finally pass the $10m mark. Probably barely.

The majority of the market will consist of a couple of larger corporate purchases (~$1m+) from existing pending deals and as a result of the first CSRD & TNFD-driven corporate nature strategies. The market will remain dangerously oversupplied and underdemanded.

Stacked/bundled credit demand will continue dominating the standalone biodiversity credit demand

Although the pure voluntary market is minuscule, biodiversity is taking over in different ways. For example, more project developers are collecting biodiversity data for their carbon projects to 1. go beyond the existing requirements and hopefully achieve the biodiversity premium & 2. hopefully issue biodiversity credits in the future. I call it the “shadow biodiversity credit market”. And it’s definitely much larger than the standalone one.

VBM is still immature. VCM is not perfect but it has an existing sales pipeline that more biodiversity credit developers are plugging into. Wilderlands’ recent partnership with a carbon offset solutions provider to sell 70,000 credits is a great example. Under their current pricing, this might’ve brought them ~$140-490k in sales.

As dangerous as stacking/bundling can be from an integrity and additionality perspective, it will only grow in 2025.

There still won’t be a clear biodiversity credit use case

In other words, contribution vs offsetting claim debate won’t slow down. Which automatically means that we’ll still hear corporates ask “What is a biodiversity credit and why would I care?” in a year. Having said that, the public image/corporate social responsibility (CSR) demand driver will still dominate.

If offsetting is not included, VBM will never achieve true scale

Speaking of the claims debate, contribution-only claims cannot uphold a global voluntary multi-billion dollar market. I know that “billions” is very far away from where the market is now but if we’re not aiming for that, why are we even bothering? Nothing else will move the needle. Actually, only 100s of billions would move it.

Without offsets, at best VBM will become “philanthropy on steroids” (which might be the best outcome for voluntary biodiversity credits anyway). At worst, it’ll slowly die off and take a lot of well-meaning companies and initiatives with it.

I’m aware of the main scientific, ethical and market issues with offsetting. But I must be realistic if scale matters.

We’ll see more biodiversity credit specialization

The demand struggles is also an opportunity to innovate. One way to do so - build for very specific buyers. That’s where the “what - who - why - where” framing can come into play.

We’ll see more industry (e.g. food and ag/construction/textile), demand driver (e.g. contributions/offsetting/nature risk/etc.) and location (e.g. urban/forestry/coastal-only) specific methodologies be developed. We might even see the first baby steps to credit-based biodiversity insetting. I won’t lie, this is more of a hope than a fact.

Parting thoughts

If I had to summarize it, biodiversity credits are both crucial and overhyped.

Crucial because they have a lot of systemic potential, both positive and negative. Overhyped because they are receiving more attention than they can justify. At best, they will be a significant part of the global nature finance mix - let’s say 10-30% of the almost $1 trillion we need now, and growing fast. But I doubt it will ever reach the on-the-ground significance of governmental domestic budgets and tax policy (i.e. 50%+ contribution to the nature finance mix). Seeing how reliant these biodiversity credit markets are on sound policy (both compliance and, ironically, voluntary), we must admit that.

I get it - private/market-based mechanisms look sexy (and promise riches) while policy looks boring (and does not promise riches). If we want that to change, maybe we should try to value policy entrepreneurs more, as Eric Wilburn suggested. Markets and policy can play well together.

Either way, we must get the biodiversity markets right. Let’s see what 2025 brings :)

As promised, here’s the subscriber-only recording of our Biodiversity Credit Metric Webinar.

There, Joshua Berger from BioInt and I gave an overview of the biodiversity credit metric world. It’s basically a summary of our year-long collaboration (and a bunch of public resources created) on this topic.

If you’re curious about how biodiversity …

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Hi friends 👋

I see in grey. No, I’m not color-blind (I think?). But I’m rarely categorical in life. Usually, I’m the “it depends” guy. Same with biodiversity credits. I fell in love with them.. for about a month. Then the romance became less romance-y.

Almost two years in, I should probably give you a glimpse of what’s happening in my brain on a daily. Time to explore the main arguments that biodiversity credit supporters and critics use. My experience at COP16 and the house of bubbles I saw made me prioritize this piece.

This was more (and more fun) than I expected.

Let’s get to it.

Access the PDF version here

Biodiversity Credits: For & Against

(Click the link 👆 to read the full Deep Dive online)

The pro biodiversity credit perspective

Biodiversity credits is a significant step forward in how we value and finance nature. They enable buyers to pay for truly demonstrable, transparent and verified nature outcomes. They allow us to finally represent nature on our balance sheets and give it a real value instead of 0. Additionally, the merging of nature and financial accounting through a set of standardized nature units leads to a high integrity nature monitoring system. And with higher integrity, comes higher trust. That will finally allow us to ensure high-quality, additional, leakage-free and durable nature and social outcomes where in the past, we were in the dark. And most importantly, we will be able to do so at scale. Biodiversity credits might even be used to tackle commercial nature risks for corporates within and near their value chains.

These markets are built with people at the front and center. The primary purpose of biodiversity credits is to improve the lives of local nature stewards. That can only happen by working together with them, respecting their rights and, ideally, them (co-)leading these biodiversity credit efforts.

The systemic nature of markets makes it a high-risk and high-reward solution. That’s why biodiversity credit markets must be well-designed from the beginning, with transparency and accountability in mind. And that’s what the market is doing by establishing best practices around nature outcome verification, social equity and market governance.

Now, are markets the perfect solution to our problems? Not at all. But we need more environmental solutions and we need them yesterday. In an ideal world, unified international policy agreements and ambitious national regulations would lead nature action. However, we can’t only rely on governments to lead this global movement - the ever-changing political climate prevents that from happening. That’s why markets should be part of the solution mix to internalize the externalities on time. Biodiversity credits provide a viable way to do just that at scale and by finally involving the private sector - a stakeholder historically over-involved in nature degradation but under-involved in its conservation. Here the governments should develop and enforce clear rules and provide guarantees to involve the private sector at scale. That’s how a well-functioning society works - the government sets the rules and the private sector follows them to achieve the desired outcomes.

With that in mind, biodiversity credits cannot be a substitute for more consistent nature protection policies. Nor can it be a substitute for public and multi-lateral finance. These credits have great potential but are just a tool in a toolbox.

One might say that “financializing” nature is just a sophisticated way to legitimize nature destruction. However, life is all about incentives. And unless we provide economic incentives to conserve nature, it will not be conserved. We have to be realistic and consider how economies actually operate - every nation tries to increase the quality of life of their citizens by producing and consuming more. Whether biodiversity credits (and offsetting) exist or not, past experience shows that resources will be plundered anyway. Cities, farms and factories need land and resources to operate. The best we can do is to showcase the immediate economic value of nature and provide companies and governments with scalable high integrity incentives to preserve and restore it.

So, whether we like it or not, with ever-decreasing natural resources and ever-increasing negative impacts of nature degradation on the economies, different nature markets are bound to form anyway. And everything that can be measured, will be measured and be put into a certain unitized economic value eventually. What we should do is learn from past lessons (e.g. in carbon markets) and ensure that we actually deliver nature outcomes by building a high integrity biodiversity credit market from the start.

Sounds familiar? This is my best pro-biodiversity credits impression. Let’s move into the specific arguments and their counterarguments:

Systemic change

Argument

By helping to integrate nature into the balance sheet, biodiversity credits represent a vision where we properly value nature. We could use it as a financial asset with incentives to conserve nature in order to increase its financial value. It could also assist governments in making nature-related decisions.

Although you can manage what you can’t measure, being able to measure it helps. And we are able to measure nature outcomes with biodiversity credits. To account for nature, we must use it in financial accounting.

Counterargument

Systemic change through biodiversity credits is not realistic. The main financial incentive of every for-profit corporation is to grow. That growth happens by increasing production and consumption. Production and consumption inevitably lead to nature degradation. That’s why in practice, companies will never be incentivized to truly conserve nature. The only way to achieve progress here is through regulations.

Outcome integrity

Argument

Unitized, verified and scientifically-valid outcomes can be way higher integrity than what currently exists in the nature conservation industry. Currently, we have no widely adopted unitized nature or impact measurement frameworks to verify nature outcomes. By building a set of standardized measurement protocols and performance-based units of biodiversity gain or avoided loss, we’re ensuring that outcomes are real, additional, leakage-free and permanent.

That’s why, even if biodiversity credits aren’t fully integrated into financial accounting, they can still improve (& hence grow) outcome-based philanthropy - a space that is troubled by highly inconsistent and lower-quality impact measurement systems that inevitably lead to subpar nature outcomes.

Counterargument

There is still no proof that biodiversity credits can actually improve the nature outcome integrity in practice and at scale. The history of compliance biodiversity markets is full of non-compliance and non-delivery. However, all the excitement about the credits built on standardized metrics being able to increase outcome integrity is unhelpful in actually achieving these nature outcomes, which are highly contextual.

Private finance

Argument

Historically, the public sector has dominated nature finance. However, public money is slow, often less reliable and, with current global political circumstances, is just simply not enough. That’s why it’s unreasonable to rely only on public finance to solve the biodiversity loss crisis. The private sector must finally meaningfully contribute to the equation. Biodiversity credits represent a way to attract such private finance for multiple reasons: corporate contributions to global biodiversity goals, local negative impact compensation, nature risk mitigation and more.

Counterargument

Private finance only appears when there is money to be made. When there is a “return on investment”. Since nature is too complex to predictably model (at least for now), we are bound to end up in a speculative market bubble caused by the private sector’s profit-seeking incentives. Although not ideal, public funding and, most importantly, regulations are the two most predictable solutions to the environmental crisis.

And the “insufficient” public funds argument is built on false assumptions. Firstly, it’s a (negative) sign of the private sector’s growth in power at the expense of the public sector. And secondly, the so-called ~$700b nature finance gap could easily be bridged by redirecting just a small part of tax revenue by the largest economies in the world. Let’s remember - the global GDP is over $100t.

Scale

Argument

The unitization of nature is the ultimate form of standardization that enables the complete integration of nature accounting with financial accounting. When we consider nature in every financial decision, that’s when we can systematically move way more capital into nature conservation, finally co-led by the private sector.

Counterargument

The unitization of nature is impossible. If we still push hard enough to agree on a unit or set of units, we are bound to miss crucial aspects that regulate ecosystems and will assign a faulty value to nature. Nature is unquantifiable. And since the topic of biodiversity credits is so divisive, any meaningful scale is not likely - that will negatively affect both the early biodiversity credit suppliers and buyers.

On top of that, even if nature was (incorrectly) unitized, it wouldn’t be widely adopted. Corporates just don’t think in standardized nature units. They consider nature in financial decisions way more contextually and require a custom approach. Biodiversity credits do not offer such flexibility.

Speed

Argument

Public finance is notoriously slow. Project-based grant-making often takes up the majority of a conservation NGO’s efforts.

However, since we are under such immense time pressure to mitigate and adapt to the biodiversity loss crisis, every minute counts. That’s why we need private finance - a more nimble and efficient way to channel larger amounts of capital. More private finance also leads to technical and financial innovation that could help scale the conservation efforts.

Counterargument

Private finance is indeed faster but at what cost? Usually, it truly moves fast only when there is an attractive opportunity to make money. Many ecosystems that need to be preserved and restored do not offer such attractive opportunities.

Predictability

Argument

Biodiversity credits can be a great compensatory mechanism that brings specificity, equivalency and predictability to compensation purchases. Since credits can directly link the damage with the offset or net gain (e.g. local-to-local and like-for-like), it offers the highest quality compensation available. That offers the credit buyers the strongest monetary incentives to avoid and minimize nature degradation.

Counterargument

This use case is built on offsetting, which is an illegitimate and proven non-solution. Again, strict environmental regulation through mechanisms like taxes and public nature finance is the answer. Plus, the strongest incentives to avoid and minimize nature degradation will always come from regulations.

Innovation

Argument

The excitement behind biodiversity credits contributes to an unprecedented wave of technological and financial nature innovation. Many biodiversity monitoring startups plan to rely on biodiversity credit revenue (either by direct credit sales or by supporting credit project developers). At the same time, new financial vehicles are being built for both voluntary and compliance biodiversity markets. Voluntary biodiversity credits is also a great testing ground for new methodologies before entering the compliance markets.

Whatever the end outcome of biodiversity credits will be, it’s difficult to deny that it is leading to general-purpose innovation that will positively impact nature conservation.

Counterargument

The increased international focus on biodiversity is leading to innovation in nature conservation, not biodiversity credits. 2022’s Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) together with nature accounting frameworks such as CSRD, TNFD or SBTN are leading this innovation. Although speculation around biodiversity credits also leads to new solutions, most of them are by definition ineffective.

The anti biodiversity credit perspective

Biodiversity credits sound great on paper. Who wouldn’t want a mechanism that dramatically increases nature finance while ensuring better outcomes with more confidence? The reality is different. Biodiversity credits is a tool with a patchy history that poses a threat to true nature and social progress.

First of all, environmental crediting systems is just not a sound financial mechanism. It’s highly manipulable with difficult to prove additional outcomes. Our inability to predictably measure nature, an exceptionally strong social component in such credit projects and cost-minimizing market forces compound the structural problems of crediting systems.

Second of all, biodiversity credits can be and are used as a distraction to stall meaningful international nature policy progress. They also risk becoming another land-grabbing mechanism by not only giving a license to destroy nature but also by disempowering the Indigenous Peoples and local communities by restricting their access to land through biodiversity credit projects. Additionally, it enables companies to continue greenwashing while further plundering nature and delaying their own operational impact minimization.

And finally, setting up the biodiversity credit market infrastructure is expensive work. What percentage of the total funds would actually reach the ground and what percentage would go to the intermediaries? The environmental market history here is not promising.

By treating biodiversity as a financial asset, we risk simplifying the complex intrinsic value of ecosystems into mere economic terms. That will inevitably lead to unintended negative consequences. Many problems that biodiversity credits target are not financial - they are social. Which means we need social solutions instead.

The most likely outcome that the biodiversity credits will achieve is further satisfying corporate greed. Instead, we should focus on more effective proven mechanisms to conserve nature, led by ambitious nature policy and regulations.

And that’s the counter perspective. Again, let’s look into some core arguments and counterarguments:

Unsound financial mechanism

Argument

Environmental markets is a fundamentally flawed financial mechanism.

The system is easily gamed via counterfactual and baseline manipulation to prove that these nature outcomes would not have been achieved otherwise (i.e. prove additionality). It’s also challenging to control for leakage - the unintended displacement of negative nature impacts elsewhere as a result of such biodiversity credit projects. On top of that, most credit projects last 20 to 30 years. That is not enough to ensure long-term nature conservation. The hefty crediting system transaction costs make the mechanism even less practical.

Market forces magnify all of the problems mentioned above. For-profit project developers are incentivized to overstate expected outcomes and minimize their costs - which usually means less investment on the ground. Additionally, the potential to create a credit project disincentivizes the landowners to protect their land. Instead, they are incentivized to overstate the risk of nature degradation to prove additionality. Not only does that lead to ineffective land conservation but also to internal social conflicts.

Biodiversity credit projects also face unique project design difficulties. Unlike carbon, it is extremely difficult to design a modelable and durable biodiversity asset. Our science simply isn’t there yet and all the current credit methodologies that attempt to quantify biodiversity are overly-simplistic. And finally, there’s such a strong social component in biodiversity credit projects (so much of it is about changing the habits of local communities), making it impossible to guarantee the intended project outcomes.

Instead, we should focus on more effective nature conservation mechanisms, such as nature and climate focused corporate taxes.

Counterargument

Environmental markets are imperfect (but improving) ways to reflect real world economies and should be respected as such. No nature-focused financial mechanism has been able to perfectly achieve its outcomes. That doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, we should acknowledge the progress we’ve made in internalizing externalities and continue improving. We have examples of functioning biodiversity markets that have delivered real and additional ecological gains, such as in the United States or Colombia.

Protected land regulations and corporate taxes alone are not reliable tools to fight the biodiversity loss crisis in a world where everyone wants to improve their material life. Unlike many other systems, crediting mechanisms take into account the opportunity costs of land. It is difficult to expect to permanently protect more ecosystems without periodically re-evaluating their economic value under different land uses. Otherwise, we would end up in a world where, generally, the majority of intact ecosystems in Global South are protected and people aren’t free to develop economically while in the Global North the proportion of protected lands would be way smaller, simply because more lands are already permanently impacted.

The environmental markets are improving across all the challenges mentioned. Better science, better & more unified governance, standardization and nature technology improvements all tackle additionality, leakage, permanence and perverse private sector market-based incentives.

Distraction from policy action

Argument

If the companies responsible for biodiversity loss will use credits to indirectly lobby for less ambitious nature policies or buy them instead of (not in addition to) their own impact reduction, biodiversity credits are net negative.

Actually, we have already seen that at COP16. The EU, together with some developing countries, have successfully blocked the progress of reaching an agreement on funding for the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Instead, they were pushing the "financing from all sources" narrative which is connected to private markets (i.e. biodiversity credits).

An optimist might say that the EU sees more potential in scaling global nature finance flows through private markets. The more realistic scenario is that the EU is attempting to absolve itself from direct international biodiversity funding responsibilities. That is jeopardizing the entire GBF.

Counterargument

First of all, biodiversity credits is designed as an additional nature finance tool that does not replace ambitious policy. Here we could also apply the mitigation hierarchy to policy action. Just like avoiding and minimizing impacts is the most important part in the corporate world, so is policy leadership in international nature action.

Second of all, we don’t yet have convincing evidence that companies use environmental credits to lobby for less environmental regulation. Instead, there is evidence that companies who buy carbon credits decarbonize faster than their sector peers*. It’s reasonable to assume that the same will be the case with biodiversity credits. Designed well, environmental credit systems can act as a useful lever to increase nature finance in addition to internal impact avoidance and minimization among corporates.

Third of all, we should be realistic about what would happen without biodiversity credits. One thing is certain - the rate of nature degradation would not decrease. In fact, the default outcome of degrading nature is that the harm is ignored. Hence it’s unfair to lay a lot of the blame on companies’ inaction on private markets and environmental credits.

And finally, although in an ideal world, nature conservation would be solely led by governments, the reality is different. The government and NGO model of conserving nature has had limited success. Unless we directly involve the actors degrading nature (i.e. companies) and provide them with both positive and negative incentives to conserve it, it’s difficult to expect for biodiversity loss to stop.

*To which a critic might say “all such claims have been debunked here.“

Neocolonialism & land-grabbing

Argument

The industrialized world has a dark past of using obscure mechanisms to get control of more land. Biodiversity credits might become the newest mechanism to result in that. It does so in two ways: by giving the credit buyers a social license to further destroy nature (via offsetting) and by restricting the Indigenous Peoples and local communities from fully accessing the biodiversity credit project’s land resources.

Some might say that biodiversity credits will be used only for contributions to nature without equating them to any nature degradation. But what have we seen so far? Limited corporate demand and an increasing pressure to add offsetting as a use case for these credits, both at the voluntary and compliance markets. Most corporates understand the value of offsetting but don’t understand the value of contributory claims.

Another threat of neocolonialism is biodiversity credit secondary markets. Although the main biodiversity credit forums are formally against international offsetting and secondary markets, they claim that they cannot prevent such activities. Secondary markets will likely lead to speculative credit bubbles that usually only reward the intermediaries instead of local nature stewards.

Counterargument

Neocolonialism and land-grabbing is indeed a big risk. However, it all comes back to credit system design. This criticism is built on the worst possible and unintended consequences of biodiversity credits.

Firstly, these credits do not give a social license to pollute. If some companies end up attempting to do just that, that’s an example of misused biodiversity credits and an ineffective crediting system.

Secondly, biodiversity credit projects must never be imposed on the local populations. Project developers must reach a proper free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) before starting any project. Indigenous Peoples and local communities must always have the right to reject any biodiversity credit projects from being developed in their territories. The local nature stewards must be included in every aspect of project design and delivery and should ideally (co-)lead such projects themselves.

With regard to offsetting, not everyone in the biodiversity credit camp supports it. That is totally justifiable. But we should once again be rational about what would happen without biodiversity credit offsetting. Nature degradation would continue. If offsetting becomes established and is done right (i.e. local-to-local and like-for-like with strong governance, transparency and compliance enforcement), it will reflect (part of) the cost of destroying nature where otherwise that cost wouldn’t have existed. The end outcome would still be better than the status quo now. What matters is that mitigation hierarchy is followed. Companies who first avoid, minimize and restore nature internally before buying credits to contribute to global goals or offset their unmitigated impacts are the companies who use these credits correctly. Appropriate biodiversity credit usage should be enforced.

With regard to secondary markets, the main industry forums are against it. At the moment, biodiversity credit markets resemble projecting financing markets instead of liquid commodity markets (e.g. soy or corn). Instead, the more likely short-term outcome is multiple local markets. That minimizes the risk of intermediary profiteering through secondary markets. Secondary markets might be possible in the future once we progress on nature measurement and align on a single or set of high integrity measurement approaches. If designed well, secondary trading should lead to a more efficient, liquid and cost-effective (hence larger and more impactful) market.

Greenwashing

Argument

Biodiversity credits are likely to lead to potentially misleading corporate claims (e.g. “we’re nature positive”) while globally, the biodiversity loss crisis worsens. It’s especially problematic because there is no global and quantifiable definition of “nature positive” yet. That opens the door for companies to interpret the definition liberally and make inaccurate claims.

Counterargument

Greenwashing is a murky concept. It happens when a company claims to have fewer negative and more positive impacts on nature and society than it actually does. Biodiversity credits is just one of many methods to greenwash. Once again, if designed well, biodiversity credits should never lead to such scandals. In the corporate claims world, biodiversity credits is a tool to achieve additional, quantified and cost-effective positive nature outcomes after all negative impacts have been reduced within company value chains. In other words, if the mitigation hierarchy is followed correctly, biodiversity credits do not pose a greenwashing risk. Additionally, the quantifiable definition of “nature positive” is being developed at this very moment.

And, ideally, the governments would develop and enforce rules on biodiversity credit claims and reporting.

Low efficacy

Argument

Setting up an environmental market infrastructure is complicated and expensive, often costing the projects a quarter to a half of the total funds. Each market participant (e.g. project developer, MRV provider, marketplace, trader, broker, credit ratings agency, etc.) demands its cut. Such systems are expensive because of the attempts to address the inherent integrity holes of crediting mechanisms (e.g. additionality, permanence, leakage). And for-profit companies usually have even higher transaction costs to justify their profit-making status. Additionally, biodiversity is difficult to quantify, which will likely make it an even more expensive and less efficient market.

Counterargument

Every market infrastructure requires additional costs. Biodiversity credit markets are no different. However, these markets have the opportunity to unlock the scale of private finance not seen before. That should compensate for the low market efficacy at the early stages. We must be patient with many upfront investments and ongoing costs required to build a high-quality nature market. However, once we do, the low efficacy problem should be solved.

High integrity requires additional costs. However, high integrity leads to higher trust. And higher trust leads to higher scale. In the end, the early inefficiencies are worth it.

Lack of equity

Argument

The extreme power imbalance and higher technical sophistication of private project developers and intermediaries often lead to opaque and unfair crediting agreements that mistreat local nature stewards. The lack of transparency in many environmental markets is a feature, not a bug. The only problem is that this feature is designed to enrich the intermediaries at the expense of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Additionally, most project developers and intermediaries don’t have the ability to achieve successful conservation projects in the first place. Many biodiversity conservation projects take place in remote areas with a weak rule of law, unclear land rights, and lack of institutional capacity. The developers and intermediaries, usually from the Global North, often cannot fully understand the cultural context they operate in. That is especially true for for-profit enterprises, where capital return time frames are shorter than the time it can take to build trust.

Counterargument

Once again, this argument is built on the worst possible unintended consequences of biodiversity credits. Under high integrity markets, such abuse of power would never be possible. Quite the opposite - transparency, fairness and empowerment of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are at the core of this market. The important part is ensuring that credit schemes and projects keep up their end of the bargain.

It’s true that it can be more difficult for industrialized players to relate and culturally connect to locals in the project area. Ideally, many of these projects would be (co-)led by these communities themselves. Of course, we still have a lot of work to do here. However, the access to finance, technology and stronger institutional capacity that the industrialized project developers have can also help to ensure nature and social outcomes at scale, if wielded correctly. Again, it all goes back to credit scheme and project design. If designed well, none of these challenges should be a deal-breaker.

Financialization of nature

Argument

Putting a price on nature is wrong on multiple levels. Not only does it legitimize nature destruction, but it also dishonors the complexity and value of nature. We cannot possibly quantify its value and whatever value we come up with is bound to be too low. By putting a number on nature, we are implicitly normalizing the economic decisions that destroy it. We’re normalizing the “that’s just how it works” justification by commodifying nature.

Also, since there is no standard definition of biodiversity, we can’t put it into a unit. Other environmental markets are based on commodities - clearly defined interchangeable units. We physically cannot commodify biodiversity.

Counterargument

The fear of financializing nature is emotional and understandable. However, this point of view ignores the fact that nature has already been financialized for a long time. The financialized value of intact nature is usually around 0. The economically valuable products of nature (natural capital and ecosystem services) are highly prized and used. The problem is, they just usually aren’t paid for. That’s why most forest owners aren’t compensated for preserving their forests - the local organizations just use these ecosystem services for free. Biodiversity credits can be one way to reward such landowners. Obviously, the social cost (& value) of nature is larger than any company is prepared to pay now. But it is better than the status quo.

Additionally, many biodiversity credit initiatives are not trying to value nature. They’re just trying to value the work required to protect and restore ecosystems. That is very different from just simplifying nature into a number.

Parting thoughts

If you made it that far, congratulations. Where does it all leave us though?

But first, a late little disclaimer: most of these arguments focus on the best and worst possible scenarios. They make it seem black and white. In reality, as always, it’s a sliding scale - few people subscribe to every extreme positive or negative argument. Those who do might be in trouble. As Naval Ravikant says, “You can approximate how independent of a thinker you are by noticing how neatly your political beliefs line up with those of your party.” Same applies here.

Different visions of the world

For some, biodiversity credits is the tool that will finally allow us to properly measure and systemically value nature with fairness. For others, it’s the newest neoliberal scheme to take from the vulnerable under the guise of environmental justice.

Why are these extremes so diametrically opposed though? Both sides are full of well-intentioned earnest people. So why? I think the answer is the different visions of how life should look like. Some believe that markets should rule everything. Others believe that governments should govern all. And there are also people who believe in a happy medium. That’s why you have full-stack financialization, complete market-based scheme boycott and outcome-based philanthropy as the main competing biodiversity credit end states (I wrote a bit more about it here).

You could even divide it into pro-system and anti-system. Or pro-capitalism and anti-capitalism. Some people accept the current set of rules and build on top of it. Others, usually indirectly, want to tear the current system down. Just think about how many market-based criticisms of biodiversity credits apply to other markets.

Ironically, both extremes operate under the “how life should look like” and not the “how life is” rules. The middle is more pragmatic.

And speaking of pragmatism, here are a couple of personal beliefs that calcified over these two years:

• Unless the current system crumbles, economic growth will remain the priority of nations.

• To grow, economies must produce and consume more goods. This is crucial for the material well-being of people (unless you live in a surplus economy, where overconsumption is the default).

• Production and consumption of goods inevitably require natural resources.

• The only thing that will actually make governments move is global ecosystem collapse.

• And, maybe most importantly, people *want* to live materially better. That comes with higher consumption.

Now, there are a bunch of things we can do to minimize our environmental impacts. We can rewire and improve our systems (e.g. GDP is simply not a great human well-being tracker). But unless we acknowledge the inherent human desire to have more, no solution will stick. There are folks on both sides of biodiversity credits that acknowledge that. I hope they work together more.

On criticism

This piece made me realize how much easier it is to criticize. Poking holes is so effortless, especially in something new. Personally, I find it way easier to fall into the “everything is wrong” camp. The piece also helped me build more respect for the people “doing” stuff though. Even if it’s the wrong solution. Even if it will fail. This way of life has more hope - it’s brighter.

Speaking of hope, mine is that these very valid arguments against the biodiversity credit markets are not ignored. My hope is that they become opportunities for the markets to improve.

Acknowledgements

Although this topic has been simmering for a very long time, it wouldn’t have been as complete without many conversations with fellow industry peers and some specific knowledge sources:

• Byron Swift’s commentary on why biodiversity credits cannot work

• IAPB's (International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits) framework for high integrity biodiversity credit markets

• EPIC’s (Environmental Policy Innovation Center) paper on building a thriving biodiversity credit market

• Frederic Hache’s thinking

• Samuel Sinclair’s thinking

• Sophus zu Ermgassen’s thinking

I’m sure I’m forgetting others. Thank you all.

p.s. thank you Morrison Mast for giving me the final push to get this idea out of the back-burner (& many others who shared their thoughts on this topic).

No big unique analysis this time. Just some thoughts that stuck during my two weeks at COP16 in Cali, Colombia.

Let’s get to it.

Colombia 🫶

Okay, first of all, this might’ve been the most fun I had in two weeks. Ever. Meeting many hundreds (no joke) of internet friends and colleagues in real life cannot be put into words. I’ve waited for two years to attend a biodiversity conference. Worth it. People are SO friendly and (as far as I could tell) virtually everyone came here for the right reasons. Everyone who came to say hi - please know that I am grateful.

Second of all, Cali (and Colombia!) - you are amazing. It took you less than two weeks to have me drop my ticket back to Europe and stay here. For how long? No clue :)

But time for some observations.

Biodiversity credits

Credits, metrics & other buzzwords

You could see a very clear trend - if you add “credits” or “metrics” to the title of the event, you will predictably attract more attendees. It worked like a charm. Obviously, joke’s on me since I do a lot of credit and metric work. But even I was surprised by how these words were able to draw in the crowds. It makes me wonder though - did we miss some conversations that were just as important just because they didn’t have the hot keywords?

The religious credit wars

The conflict finally left LinkedIn and reached real life. There was way more pro biodiversity credit activity but you had big pro and anti credit events taking place at the same time. Both sides made some great points. I might explore that deeper in a future piece. One part I did miss was both of them having an honest conversation together.

Offsetting - the quiet behemoth is still here

Although publicly most biodiversity credit schemes & NGOs still don’t support offsetting, the market reality is different. Many don’t see the market reaching meaningful size if offsetting is not part of it. Obviously, what matters are biodiversity outcomes, not market size. But the tension around offsetting is not fading any time soon.

National momentum

We saw quite a couple of biodiversity credit announcements from the governments:

• Finland plans to set up a voluntary biodiversity credit framework beyond their current national offsetting regulations. They would be the first country in the EU to do so.

• Colombia plans to rely on regulated carbon & biodiversity credit markets to meet its financing targets for NBSAP. I’m not sure in what way the Colombian government will use these markets but that’s a big demand signal. I wonder if more countries will follow the lead.

• Mexican state of Colima launched the first nature market in the country, with the support of a voluntary biodiversity credit scheme.

For the pro market folks, this activity is crucial. Without a clear governmental involvement, the voluntary biodiversity credit markets will likely end up many times smaller. And likely many times less trusted by the buyers. Buyers want these governmental market guarantees.

Voluntary announcements

Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of announcements from the voluntary market:

• Terrasos announced their biggest voluntary credit sales yet. I don’t know the exact numbers but from my napkin math, it’s probably not above 5 figures. Might be totally off though.

• Schemes are officially launching: Verra, Qarlbo Biodiversity, SeaTrees & others. Verra’s was the most anticipated one. I only skimmed through it but didn’t see any surprises.

• IAPB, BCA & WEF launched their framework on high integrity biodiversity credit markets. The markets are both very new and voluntary. Not a great combo if you want folks to trust the market. Agreeing on a common set of soft rules is a good first step to gain that trust. This framework could become just that, especially if we get more clear framework implementation guidelines. If it does, it would help both buyers and sellers to (somewhat) verify what quality in this market looks like.

• South Pole entered the Colombian habitat banking space. That means direct competition with the 800lb gorilla in this market - Terrasos. South Pole is a well-resourced environmental markets veteran. I don’t think they’d enter the market if they didn’t think they had a good chance to build a strong position here. Super curious to see where this goes.

What does all of this mean for biodiversity credits?

I’m sure I missed some important announcements but the idea remains the same - a lot of action still dominated by the supply side. No large (e.g. 7-figure) voluntary corporate purchases just yet.

The voluntary side of the market is staying strong. The vision of integrating nature into our financial system is just too tempting for many market-based folks. The biggest signal for me was the country-level progress though. Both buyers and sellers are looking into governments to de-risk biodiversity credits.

General observations

COP negotiations outcomes

From what I see, “biodiversity” scored a couple wins:

• Voluntary multilateral mechanism for the sharing of benefits from the use of digital sequence information (DSI) was created.

• A new permanent body for Indigenous Peoples and local communities under the CBD’s Article 8(j) will be established.

It experienced more road bumps though:

• We made no tangible progress on monitoring our 2030 biodiversity goals.

• We didn’t reach an agreement on $20bn/year mobilization to nature by 2025 (nor $30b/year by 2030). I wonder how did we ever get to these numbers in the first place? These are peanuts.

• Disappointing National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) submissions: reportedly ~80% of countries failed to submit plans.

For a startup guy, this is a painfully slow process.

My biggest personal negotiation-related takeaway was that almost no one was talking about it. Virtually none of my private sector & NGO colleagues mentioned the negotiations. Every evening I was wondering if I was the clueless one here and everyone was privately following the negotiations or if.. no one was following it. Not sure.

Having said that, dear negotiators - you are the real MVPs. Having heard stories of how much of a physical and mental grind this two-week process is for you, I bow my head low. Win or lose, the folks outside the room have all the respect for you.

The house of bubbles

A friend called me a spider in a web a few months ago. I love spiders, so I did my best impression of one by trying to attend as many different types of events as I could: blue zone, green zone, the Bloom conference, Indigenous-led events, the GLF Investment Case Symposium - you name it. My takeaway - we’re still mostly hanging out in echo chambers. Academics with academics, tech folks with tech folks, finance folks with finance folks, NGOs with NGOs, Indigenous folks with Indigenous folks, you name it.

When I see people rejoice at how amazing it is to have these cross-sectional conversations, I get a bit confused. I’ve only seen a couple of such events but I hope there were way more.

Now, as a “biodiversity credit guy”, I saw just how easy it was to fall and stay in that credit and metric bubble. I should’ve done more to break out of it. Probably the same is true for others as well.

One bubble I did not expect was the Indigenous one. Everyone talks about how important the Indigenous Peoples are in conserving nature. The least one could then do is go up and chat to some of them when they see them, right? That’s not what I saw. The row of Indigenous stands in the Blue Zone was virtually always empty when I was passing through.

I got the chance to shake some of their hands and practice my broken Spanish. Were there cultural differences? Of course. Did I enjoy hanging out with them? Hell yes. The next day, one leader even sent me some pictures from his homeland of Cofán.

Big private sector interest

It was easy to forget we had negotiations happening next door while talking about ways to scale private money for nature and different technologies that can assist with that. And that was in the Blue Zone. What about the Green Zone? There you can completely forget about the official COP.

Where is all the media publicity about COP?

All I can see in my LinkedIn feed is COP16. But what about a non-convert?

An anecdote: my mom was digging for COP news in Lithuania. She finally found something - in a small obscure farmer’s newspaper. Now I know that many big newspapers have published a piece or two about it but it still feels awfully quiet outside my bubble. And I’m aware that much of the West (& beyond) is living in the pre-US election environment. But still. I can only imagine how quiet biodiversity COPs were before 2022.

We don't see nature enough

Here we were, ~20,000 folks talking about biodiversity 24/7 for two weeks. I wonder how many of us left the city borders to explore any of that biodiversity around us. I was lucky enough to be invited by some friends who took care of everything (hands down the best evening of the conference). What if I had to organize my own trip? Would I have done so? Honestly, I doubt it.

Either way, this was one of the rare moments where I did get to breathe in nature - the thing I’m thinking about all the time. Not doing so felt so wrong the whole time. I hope my time in Colombia will change it.🤞

Final words

These two weeks have been a mixed bag personally: unforgettable times and incredible conversations together with this consistent irritation that we’re not doing enough and a mild aftertaste of hypocrisy. I remain a skeptical optimist though.

Cheers!

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Access the PDF version here

Hi friends 👋,

Corporate nature disclosure frameworks have been in my periphery for far too long. Although they get a lot of attention, their importance still cannot be overstated. They are also shaping the biodiversity credit markets by being the biggest potential credit demand driver.

Finally, I’ve started to explore each framework in the depth that I always wanted. Time to start sharing notes.

Let’s start with arguably the most important (i.e. mandatory) one - the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). I’ll give a quick rundown (very skippable if you’re familiar with it) & then look at how CSRD might affect the thing we care most about - nature.

Let’s get to it.

CSRD: the four most popular letters in corporate sustainability

(Click the link 👆 to read the full Deep Dive online)

What is CSRD?

CSRD is an EU directive that mandates companies to disclose information on their ESG impacts to enhance corporate transparency and accountability.

Unique features

Some features that make CSRD stand out:

• Scope

  It is the broadest mandatory sustainability reporting standard in the world.

• Standardization

  It introduces the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) that companies will need to report under. The goal is to achieve consistent, comparable & comprehensive sustainability reporting.

• Reach

  It has the largest reach out of any mandatory sustainability reporting standard in the world. ~50,000 companies will now have to comply in the EU, compared to ~12,000 before.

• Assurance requirements

  It requires companies to obtain assurance (first limited, then reasonable) over their sustainability reports. It’s the first EU-wide mandatory corporate sustainability reporting framework to do so.

• Digital reporting requirement

  Companies are required to prepare sustainability reports in a digital, machine-readable format & integrate them in the EU's centralized database.

• Double materiality requirement

  Companies will now be required to report not only on:

  1. how sustainability issues affect their business (financial materiality);

  but now also on:

  2. how their activities affect society & environment (impact materiality).

Expected benefits

• Better data comparability & consistency

  It would improve & make easier the analysis of corporate ESG performance. Historically, unstructured, inaccessible & often non-digital reported data made corporate ESG performance analysis more difficult than it should’ve been.

• Enhanced transparency & trust; greenwashing prevention

  Better & more accessible corporate ESG performance should lead to more trust in what is reported and fewer unsubstantiated corporate claims.

• More informed investor decision-making

  CSRD is meant to provide investors with data to do better risk assessments & follow sustainable investment strategies. It will also help the financial market participants with their own disclosures under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

• More sustainable business practices

  The end (desired) sustainability goal: more environmentally-friendly & socially responsible corporate behavior.

• Economic growth

  The end (desired) economic goal: increasing EU's competitiveness by developing new sustainability-focused products, services & processes to increase efficiency & economic growth. In practice, probably the most influential one.

What led to CSRD?

The benefits mentioned above might sound like enough of a reason to come up with something like CSRD. But how exactly did we end up here?

Developments in the EU

Well, to the total surprise of the folks criticizing the EU for “regulating instead of innovating”, the EU has also become the global sustainability regulation leader in the past decades (something that is looking shakier these days).

It culminated in the famous European Green Deal & its overarching goals (climate neutrality by 2050, green growth & many others). To achieve them, more transparent, consistent & reliable corporate sustainability reporting was required. What followed was a set of interconnected directives & regulations to make that happen. The CSRD’s predecessor, the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and EU Taxonomy might ring a bell for some.

International developments

International political agreements also helped. 2015’s Paris Agreement for climate & 2022’s Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) for nature are the two most notable ones.

Next to that, we had voluntary corporate reporting frameworks that influenced CSRD. Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) pioneered sector-specific sustainability reporting that CSRD adopted. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), being the most widely used, most comprehensive & one of the oldest corporate sustainability reporting frameworks, influenced CSRD in many ways (e.g. double materiality, wide coverage of topics or prioritized stakeholder engagement). And finally, the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) influenced CSRD by providing a structured framework for reporting climate-related financial risks & opportunities. It helped shape CSRD's approach to climate reporting, especially in governance, strategy, risk management & metrics and targets related to climate issues. You’ll see that as we dig into ESRS in a bit.

So, CSRD is by far the most ambitious EU corporate sustainability reporting framework to date. For now, I’ll leave it to others to debate how realistic the EU’s desired goal to combine “green” & “growth” is. Either way, CSRD is a central part of it.

Timeline

The plan is to introduce CSRD gradually, starting with the largest & most structurally important EU companies. The smaller companies (SMEs) will have more time to prepare & will face simplified reporting requirements.

But here’s what matters: many large companies will already need to report according to CSRD for 2024.

The standards: ESRS

ESRS, or the European Sustainability Reporting Standards are the “what” and “how” to CSRD’s “who”. It’s the implementation muscle of the directive.

ESRS has 3 categories:

1. Cross-cutting standards

   The two mandatory standards that describe the general principles, requirements and disclosures.

   Next to some general disclosures, the second standard, ESRS 2, also establishes the structure that each material topic (i.e. “sustainability matter”) to be reported will have to follow. That structure is:

   • Governance

   • Strategy

   • Impact, risk and opportunity (IRO) management

   • Metrics and targets

2. Topical standards

   The 10 standards across the ESG categories. Companies will only need to report on them if they decide that any of them is material to them. More on that in a bit.

3. Sector-specific standards

   To be developed (in 2026) for the priority sectors.

What exactly will the companies need to disclose?

You might read every ESRS standard and still be left wondering “okay, so what exactly will the companies need to disclose?”. Thankfully, EFRAG published a detailed list of spreadsheets of all possible ESRS data points to be disclosed. All ~1,200 of them.

These are not the typical metrics you might expect. The majority of data points are categorized as either narrative (to describe biodiversity policies) or semi-narrative (e.g. yes/no or dropdowns). The rest are more traditional data types (e.g. numbers, or tables/list). Either way, these data points will finally use a unified digital format and will be stored centrally in the European Single Access Point (ESAP). That’s huge.

Even if the sustainability area is found material (e.g. ESRS E4 Biodiversity and Ecosystems), many data points are voluntary.

How to approach ESRS? An example

There is no one way to comply with ESRS. The exact process will differ for each company. And, after spending many days (okay, weeks) digging around, I still couldn’t explain the process without checking my plentiful notes.

That’s where the European financial & sustainability reporting standard developer EFRAG comes to the rescue. They’ve built a flowchart of the logic companies should use to determine their disclosures.

Let’s dig into the most important parts.

Materiality assessment

Everything in ESRS starts with a materiality assessment.

Again, no one way to do it. What matters is that the company identifies all of its sustainability-related impacts, risks & opportunities (IROs) and then selects the material (i.e. important enough) ones to itself and its stakeholders. They do so by setting custom quantitative or qualitative materiality thresholds for these IROs. For that, they consider the scale (”how deep”), scope (”how wide”), likelihood & irremediability of each.

Generally, sustainability-related dependencies & impacts (DIs) are the source of financial risks & opportunities (ROs). You address the impacts & risks to then benefit from the resulting opportunities.

Most financial opportunities are based on resource efficiency and easier access to capital & new markets. Most sustainability opportunities are based on negative impact minimization.

Disclosure Requirements (DRs) vs Data Points (DPs)

Remember the disclosure structure that ESRS 2 sets? That is governance, strategy, IRO management & metrics and targets (+ basis for preparation). Each of these categories has its set of Disclosure Requirements (e.g. “Disclosure Requirement E4-5 – Impact metrics related to biodiversity and ecosystems change” under metrics and targets). And then each DR has a set of Data Points (DPs) to disclose (e.g. one of the 20+ data points under the Disclosure Requirement E4-5 is “Disclosure of changes in ecosystem structural connectivity”).

End result

So that’s the logic: understand what is material to you and report on it (oh, and don’t forget to report on the general disclosures ESRS 2).

CSRD & nature finance

So, will CSRD help scale the private side of nature finance? Well, first, we need to remember: decreasing negative impacts is more important than increasing positive ones. A quick way to prove it: while the famous biodiversity finance gap was estimated at ~$700B/year, the last estimate of global environmentally harmful subsidies stands at $2.6T/year. And that’s just the subsidies. The vast majority of environmentally harmful activities don’t need subsidies to continue. And since negative impact minimization is by far the biggest lever we could pull, that’s the main sustainability KPI category we should look at as well. CSRD prioritizes just that.

CSRD should also lead to increased positive nature finance flows though. For proof, let’s look into a couple of standards:

ESRS E1 Climate Change

From the climate finance perspective, this standard is built around the climate transition plan. The company must disclose its emission reduction targets, explain how they are compatible with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal and, if possible, with achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

Carbon credits

And that’s where carbon credits come into play: although they can be used in the transition plan, carbon credits cannot be part of the GHG emission reduction targets. Here, only direct reductions count. Even the emission reductions or avoided emissions within the company’s value chain (i.e. direct operations + upstream & downstream activities) cannot count towards the emission reduction targets if they don’t directly come from existing emission sources. So planting a forest next to your factory won’t help to reach your targets. Only absolute emission reductions from the factory itself will. It sounds like Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) is also leaning in the same direction for nature credits as well.

Carbon credits can play a part in a couple of ways though. They might be the last 5-10% a company needs to achieve its net-zero target. Or, they could just be used as contributions to climate finance (i.e. no offsetting).

So here’s the question: will companies be incentivized to buy carbon credits if they (almost) can’t make shiny claims with them anymore? For the supporters of the contribution claims and Beyond Value Chain Mitigation (BVCM), this is the ultimate test. EU’s green claims directive might play an important part here as well.

What matters is ensuring that carbon credits don’t interfere with the reduction targets. Some say that’s the case, others say the exact opposite - companies who buy carbon credits are more likely to decarbonize faster in their industry. Frankly, I haven’t yet done the research to have a strong opinion here.

ESRS E3 Water and Marine Resources

This standard almost solely focuses on impact minimization (i.e. use less water, put less bad stuff in the water & use marine resources more sustainably).

At the policy level, companies are encouraged to protect & improve the aquatic environment. The only thing related to nature finance is the mention of “restoration and regeneration of aquatic ecosystem and water bodies.” as a potential action to be taken. And for credit folks - no, they aren’t mentioned. That should give the companies the flexibility to either restore marine ecosystems themselves, contract someone else to do it or use credits for that.

ESRS E4 Biodiversity and Ecosystems

And here goes the most important one to biodiversity credit folks.

Unsurprisingly, the core focus is once again negative impact minimization. For biodiversity, it comes in the form of the 5 main biodiversity loss drivers: land/freshwater/sea use change, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution & invasive species. The company will need to conduct a materiality assessment for all of these & more. Collectively, they are called “sustainability matters”. You can find a non-exhaustive list of these in the appendix below.

If biodiversity and ecosystems are assessed as material, the rest will revolve around the transition plan (similar to climate’s ESRS E1). Ideally, it should align with our overarching biodiversity goals from the Global Biodiversity Framework, EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, planetary boundaries (i.e. biosphere integrity & land system change) & more.

From there, we have a long list of disclosure data points. Here’s what they look like:

Biodiversity credits

Let’s look into how ESRS E4 might affect the nature finance flows coming from these corporates.

Offsets in the transition plan

If the company decides to use biodiversity offsets in its transition plan, it may explain how it does so, the scale of its usage and if it considered the mitigation hierarchy (i.e. avoid → minimize → restore → offset, in that order).

Actually, this whole standard & its transition plan is one big mitigation hierarchy to me. What matters is that offsets are used in addition to, not instead of impact minimization.

Offsets in IRO management

Here, the company may disclose how it has applied the mitigation hierarchy in its actions. It must disclose if it used biodiversity offsets in its action plans though. If it has, it must disclose:

• the aim of the offset and key performance indicators used;

• the financing effects (direct and indirect costs) of biodiversity offsets in monetary terms;

• a description of offsets including area, type, the quality criteria applied and the standards that the biodiversity offsets comply with.

It must also describe whether and how it has incorporated local and indigenous knowledge and nature-based solutions into biodiversity and ecosystems-related actions.

Metrics and targets

Let’s look into how a company’s metrics and targets might affect the money flows to nature.

• Disclosure Requirement E4-4 – Targets related to biodiversity and ecosystems

  As the title says, here the companies *must* disclose their relevant targets. Here’s what it might look like:

  

  I’m not sure if this table is meant for separate activities (e.g. raw material procurement or manufacturing process) or separate biodiversity loss drivers (e.g. total land use or pollution) though.

• Disclosure Requirement E4-5 – Impact metrics related to biodiversity and ecosystems change

  As the title suggests, the company will have to report metrics related to its material impacts on biodiversity & ecosystems. Let me cherry-pick some snippets to prove how important ecosystem condition & extent are:

  

  I don’t mean to discount the species-related disclosures. Companies can disclose targets & metrics related to invasive species, species extinction risk & single species population size and range as well. But since the vast majority of biodiversity credits are land-based, they might not be the best mechanism to use for species-related targets (at least for now). Beyond minimizing impacts on species, internal value chain projects or custom species projects might work better.

Summary

Land, land, land

In climate, the common unit of account is tons of CO2 equivalent. In biodiversity, it is hectares. Or rather “condition-adjusted area” (ecosystem condition x extent = quality hectares). The genius of using the same unit to measure both negative and positive impacts is that it dramatically simplifies accounting. And that makes it easier to act (i.e. minimize negative impacts, maximize positive impacts). We’re not there yet for nature but we’re getting closer.

May (not shall)

Unlike ESRS E1, the biodiversity standard has fewer “shalls” and more “mays”. Most importantly, the companies are not required to disclose their transition plan here. Without it, how can the companies be forced to set ambitious nature targets?

Credits vs offsets

Guess how many times “biodiversity credits” are mentioned in the ESRS E4. That’s right - 0. “Biodiversity offsets” is the preferred term here. That tells a lot. The standard doesn’t even acknowledge that biodiversity credits could be used for something other than offsetting. Will we see contribution claims mentioned in the future? Who knows.

“Start with nature risk”

I know that’s what Raviv Turner would say if asked how to scale nature finance. Relevant ecosystem services are key to attracting private finance. The problem is, most companies don’t even know how much they depend on them. If nature reporting helps uncover more of these dependencies, investing in addressing them is the practical (read: commercial) solution for companies.

Nature accounting & biodiversity credit markets

Just to remind folks, here’s the “nature accounting <> biodiversity credit markets” theory of change:

1. Companies start reporting on nature (sometimes voluntarily, usually not).

2. As a result, they finally develop a corporate nature strategy (just like they have for climate).

3. Ideally, the strategy includes some targets.

4. They prioritize decreasing negative impacts on nature (avoid → minimize → restore).

5. Some/many unmitigated impacts remain. One of the solutions is to buy biodiversity credits to 1. contribute to global biodiversity goals and/or 2. offset your remaining impacts.

Parting thoughts

Here’s the main question I was left with: what proportion of companies will consider biodiversity & ecosystems (and climate change + water & marine resources) material and what will they do about it?

ESRS E4, just like many (all?) other ESRS standards, is challenging if you take it seriously. As far as I can tell, no company is incentivized to consider biodiversity & ecosystems material if they aren’t actually serious about addressing it. Companies from some industries (e.g. food & beverage) will probably have a hard time justifying ESRS E4 as immaterial. I would expect many other industries to do just that though. Even if in the long (or even short) run, it comes at a detriment to their bottom line.

Here’s the paradox of biodiversity: virtually every company depends on it but few address it. My explanation of this paradox comes in 3 words: “long feedback loops”. Few companies depend on biodiversity directly. Most are protected by one, two (or ten?) layers of abstraction. If you’re Google, apart from your guzzling data centers and their desperate reliance on water, you might claim that your 7 products (each with 1 billion+ users) don’t rely on biodiversity. And that might be true. Your customers (or their customers) probably couldn’t claim the same.

That’s why it’s so difficult to make anyone pay for it. That’s how it goes with public goods. And that’s why ambitious and timely environmental action must be led by policy, not private sector. The private sector is of course indispensable and can play a crucial part in making policy goals happen. But it cannot self-govern the response to the global environmental crisis.

Phew. That was a lot. I’ll try to be more brief next time (keyword: try).

Have a good day!

Appendix

That’s why it’s time for a second credit calculation deep dive (you can find the first here). This time, I went (much) deeper and was lucky enough to collaborate with some of the best biodiversity footprinting folks in the game - Joshua Berger & his team at BioInt. They were the force behind a more “proper” indicator & metric standardization.

Last time I said that I wouldn’t get into formula-level calculations (I can confidently say now - not without reason 🙂). But over the past year, I realized that that’s what the market (and frankly, me) needs. So this version brings not only an updated and extended database of biodiversity credit indicators & metrics (62 → 140), but also an in-depth credit calculation analysis of some of the most well-known credit schemes, both written & visual.

This might be the highest effort piece so far. I might’ve learned the most during it as well.

Here are the end results:

• Updated biodiversity credit metrics database

• Biodiversity credit calculation Miro board

Disclaimers

Apart from the previous ones (i.e. we’re not making credit scheme “quality assessments” and there are bound to be some inaccuracies & assumptions), we got some new ones:

1. Today’s scope: voluntary biodiversity market (VBM)

   From the demand perspective, the compliance markets are fundamental. They’re just out of scope this time (take a look at what Earthly is doing though).

2. The database is non-exhaustive

   Not all information is public & quite some schemes allow for flexibility in choosing indicators & metrics for each project. It should illustrate the current state pretty well though.

3. Our work is based on publicly available information

   Virtually everything we’ve used for this deep dive is publicly available. Even though privately we might be aware of major changes for some schemes, we’ve decided not to use such information this time.

4. Indicator & metric points of aggregation differ

   Some are direct metrics, some are composed of multiple others, and some only list the meta-level ecosystem condition categories (i.e. composition, structure, function). We did our best to standardize them in the database.

Categorization context

What’s different?

This time, Joshua & his team led the main indicator & metric categorization. He’s spent over a decade in biodiversity quantification and has led the creation of the well-known (& adopted) corporate biodiversity footprinting tool Global Biodiversity Score. He’s now supporting the preparation of the Ecosystem Condition (EC) Protocol, an initiative to standardize ecosystem condition measurement across the board: corporate nature-related disclosures, target-setting frameworks and, of course, biodiversity credit markets.

Ecosystem condition is basically what it says it is - the quality of an ecosystem. You can find a more detailed definition in the appendix below. And as we’ll see in a bit, ecosystem condition plays a crucial part for biodiversity credit metrics.

As a result, for biodiversity credit metric categorization, we used the table below:

It’s based on some reputable literature:

• System of Environmental-Economic Accounting: Ecosystem Accounting (UN SEEA EA)

  The foundational system for ecosystem accounting. Most other related frameworks are built on top of it.

• Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)

  The main voluntary corporate disclosure framework for mapping out company’s nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities (DIRO). Its metric design in the LEAP approach is largely built on UN SEEA EA.

• European Commission’s The Align project

  An initiative to align corporate nature accounting (i.e. CSRD, IFRS, GRI, TNFD & SBTN) and measurement approaches in the EU. The ecosystem condition plays a crucial part there.

• GEO BON’s Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs)

  The most widely accepted system of variables that describe biodiversity. Again, highly aligned to the ecosystem condition.

Why ecosystem condition though?

In short - standardization. Multiple fields are finally converging into a common way of understanding & measuring biodiversity: from (inter)national & corporate accounting or target-setting frameworks to biodiversity credit markets.

Most biodiversity credit metrics fit into these boxes well. Some have even been designed starting from ecosystem condition (e.g. Verra or Terrascape).

Of course, we’re not forgetting about the species & other metrics unrelated to biodiversity state. Starting with EC in mind allows us to reduce confusion and put the biodiversity credit-related MRV in a broader context of biodiversity footprinting & global goals though.

We’re slowly starting to speak a common biodiversity measurement language. If we can avoid speaking gibberish here, we will.

Indicators, metrics & units

Not only are there many different definitions of an indicator, metric & unit - they also often overlap. This is our attempt to get to the most fitting definitions for biodiversity credit markets & nature accounting:

• Indicator: a quantitative/qualitative factor or variable to measure performance.

  An indicator can be measured through one or multiple metrics.

• Metric: a system of measurement used to quantify an indicator.

• Unit: a defined quantity used to express a metric.

  It’s an individual standard of measurement in any given system.

Example

Let’s imagine we’re looking to quantify the ecosystem condition in a mangrove forest.

One of the indicators of the ecosystem condition is ecosystem structure. One of the ways we can measure it is through mangrove root density (a metric). In turn, we can express this metric by counting the number of mangroves in a certain area. Such example unit could be #/m2.

Combine a few of these metrics in a certain way (a method) and you’ll have yourselves a quantified biodiversity credit.

From now on, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll mash the “indicator” term into “metric”. Just keep in mind that when we say “metric”, we often mean both.

Ingredients, recipe & dishes: the biodiversity credit cuisine 🍳

Wait, is this an article on cooking? Not this time. But it is the best metaphor we could think of to understand biodiversity credit calculation.

Here’s how you can think about it: every credit scheme has at least one metric (ingredient) that they quantify in a certain way (recipe) to derive the format (dish) & number of these biodiversity credits.

Just listing all the ingredients that the schemes use is valuable. What is even more valuable to folks is more information on the recipes and final dishes of these schemes. We all know that you can use the same ingredients to cook completely different dishes. The same is true in biodiversity credit markets. Nuance matters.

Let’s unpack this beautiful cuisine.

Ingredients are the easy part. The updated database is full of those. The recipe is a bit more difficult. There each biodiversity credit scheme follows a certain step-by-step method to calculate its credits. And since virtually every scheme is area-based, the methods usually involve multiplying the biodiversity uplift/avoided loss with ecosystem extent (i.e. the more proper way of saying “land/area size”).

Now, time for the (usually) most awaited part: the dish. It also happens to be the most complicated. We have three types of meta-dishes:

• Ecosystem condition (EC)

  First, we have the dishes that only use the ecosystem condition (EC) ingredients. The result: what the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) & The Align project calls “condition-adjusted area”. It’s directly proportional to ecosystem condition (i.e. physical reality). Hence, we can express it in physical terms (e.g. 1 biodiversity credit = 1 percentage point uplift in ecosystem condition over 1 hectare).

• Weighted ecosystem extent

  This dish is different. Since it involves non-EC & non-species ingredients (e.g. management goals/practices or, let’s say, intensity of pesticide use), you can’t express them in purely physical terms. That’s where the “weighted” part really comes in.

• Species-weighted ecosystem extent

  This dish works similarly to the EC one except that the number of issued biodiversity credit units is proportional to species metrics and not EC metrics.

In the end, one can consider these dishes (or calculation indicators) as biodiversity credit “meta” units.

Was it difficult to follow? Us too. That’s why you’ll see all of it visualized with examples in just a bit.

The ingredient landscape 🥕

So, given the new biodiversity credit metric categorization & 10 months of market progress, where are we now? For that, we’ve built an updated biodiversity credit metric (i.e. ingredient) database. Based on it, here’s what the landscape looks like:

If one scheme uses all three types of metrics, it’s in the middle. If another only uses ecosystem-level ones, it’s in the “Ecosystem” bucket. And so on.

Ecosystem condition x ecosystem extent dominates

We’re seeing more schemes (some consciously, some, probably, not) move under the ecosystem condition & extent umbrella. That makes sense - these projects are preserving or restoring biodiversity (ecosystem condition) over a specified area (ecosystem extent).

It’s also good for the broader nature finance ecosystem. The closer we can align biodiversity uplift/avoided loss measurement with (usually negative) impact measurement, the easier it’ll be for companies (or even nations) to act. We’re not saying it’s a requirement before they do act. Not at all - that’s a dangerous assumption. If there was more political will, nothing would hold the “nature positive” action back. Such alignment of measurement would just remove one more (big) excuse for inaction.

Calculation methods: recipes & dishes 🥘

The cringe cooking metaphor continues. Let’s take a look at our attempt to visualize the credit calculation of some of the schemes (chosen by relevance & publicly available info). That is, let’s check out their recipes & dishes.

For that, we’ve built a Miro board:

Quite a handful, huh? The overlap between beauty and clarity wasn’t as big as we wished this time. Let’s dive deeper:

Context

The idea behind this illustration is not only to understand how some of these schemes actually calculate their biodiversity credits. It’s also to see how they compare to each other.

Biodiversity credit unit variables

These are the building blocks of a biodiversity unit.

• Biodiversity state

  The combination of ecosystem condition, species state & value and genetic diversity. Usually, schemes cover a part of it and use many different names (ecosystem integrity, ecosystem condition, habitat quality, integrity, etc.).

• Area (or ecosystem extent)

  The size of the land or water body of the ecosystem measured. Usually is anywhere from 1m2 to 1km2.

• Time

  Temporal period that a credit is associated with. It could mean anything from a certain time period over which the uplift is achieved (e.g. 1 year) to a certain time period over which an ecosystem is preserved (e.g. 30 years).

• Significance

  Biodiversity threat level & its carrying capacity. For example, the Amazon may hold more endangered species than the Sahara. It may also support (way) more species in total. It’s usually based on established species & ecosystem datasets like the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems or Key Biodiversity Areas. The more threatened the ecosystem & the higher its absolute biodiversity potential, the more “significant” it is.

• Activity

  Mostly preservation, restoration & stewardship/maintenance (i.e. local/indigenous guardianship of intact ecosystems not (yet) under direct threat). Some also support sustainable use (i.e. farming) but it’s out of scope for today.

• Other

  Calculation metrics that don’t fall into the biodiversity state (i.e. ecosystem condition & species). Usually focused on biodiversity pressures, risk and social/management goals.

Now, not all of these variables are directly used to calculate biodiversity credits (e.g. “Value”). They are meaningful and are meant to affect the price of the credit though.

Uplift measurement system

• Absolute: a system of assessing biodiversity based on a point uplift compared to the reference.

  Example: a 2 percentage point uplift from a 10% baseline ecosystem condition (100% being the undisturbed state) is considered a 2% improvement (12%-10% = 2%).

• Relative: a system of assessing biodiversity based on a % uplift compared to the initial baseline.

  Example: a 2% uplift from a 10% baseline ecosystem condition (100% being the undisturbed state) is considered a 20% improvement (2/10 = 20%).

Indicators

• Flexible: biodiversity credit schemes that define principles for the indicators but allow project developers to choose custom indicators & metrics.

• Fixed: biodiversity credit schemes that use a pre-defined set of indicators for each project.

  Although the indicators are fixed, the schemes usually provide flexibility for credit projects to choose specific custom metrics for each indicator (e.g. they might choose to measure species richness through the Shannon-Wiener Index, Simpson's Index or any other method).

Analysis

A meta-method exists

Most schemes follow the same meta-method for credit calculation:

1. Determine biodiversity state and (if applicable) non-biodiversity variables

   Might differ for restoration & preservation/stewardship projects.

2. Multiply it by project area

3. (optional) Integrate the time variable

   Done either by multiplying by x time periods (e.g. years) or deciding the credit length (e.g. each credit represents 20 years of a certain area unit preserved).

4. (optional) Add a significance tag to it

   Can be based on neutral (e.g., A, B, C, D, E) or ranked (e.g. Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze) labels.

The formation of biodiversity credit units

Here’s the good news - we can derive a certain credit unit for most of these schemes (they’re “taggified” & bolded in the visual). Whether it’s the “% uplift/avoided loss in the median value of the basket of metrics per hectare for 20-30 years” or “number of 30-day periods of protected/restored 1 hectare at certain integrity segmented by value categories”, that’s a unit. Can we have dozens of different units in a functional high-integrity market? We’ll see. Either way, being able to explain to anyone what a single credit is in simple tangible and, ideally, easily measurable terms is the golden standard, in our eyes.

Activity matters

Although surprisingly easy to forget, activity is a crucial variable of a biodiversity unit.

It’s integrated in two ways:

1. Credit calculation

   Some schemes use different weights for restoration & preservation projects (e.g. Terrascape, GreenCollar or Terrasos) while others use different calculation formulas altogether (e.g. Plan Vivo).

2. Activity tags

   While the formula remains the same for either activity, the credits receive the activity tags they represent. It’s crucial information for buyers and is meant to fetch different prices.

Area: the foundational variable

Virtually every credit scheme is built around area (or more properly - ecosystem extent). Even most of the practice-based ones. Directly integrating it into a biodiversity unit makes the unit easier to understand as well. We might be biased but unless you’re an edge case, your biodiversity units should probably represent a specific area unit. (e.g. m2, ha or km2).

Time: the enigmatic variable

The fact that area-based biodiversity credits are the easiest ones to quantify is well established. Time is a more delicate variable.

We can look into how time is integrated in two ways:

1. Pre-defined duration

   Time isn’t part of the credit calculation but each credit has a pre-defined duration. It’s based either on credit length (e.g. 20-30 years) or verification period (usually 1-5 years).

2. Explicit credit calculation

   Here folks follow a certain version of the “outcome/activity x area x time” formula. It’s more applicable to preservation/stewardship projects (e.g. Savimbo).

Some schemes don’t mention time at all. It probably means they assume a pre-defined duration. Otherwise, they’d implicitly be guaranteeing indefinite biodiversity outcome permanence. Unless you’re Wilderlands and your business model is built around that, you probably can’t afford to make those claims.

Credit length vs durability

Biodiversity credit length and durability somewhat overlap. A credit length of 20+ years guarantees some sort of durability over that period. However, what about credits that represent a shorter time frame (e.g. up to a year)? Ensuring positive outcomes for such a short time is not as attractive without additional guarantees for some. That’s where Eric Wilburn’s subscription model might work well.

Credit vintage & speed of biodiversity gains

Biodiversity credit vintage and speed of gains matter. The likely reasons are:

1. Biodiversity credits might also suffer from the “time value of carbon” effect. We’re seeing that more recent carbon credit vintages are priced higher. The likely reason is the collective belief that the market “got its act together” as time went by. Directionally, it’s reasonable to believe that better standards, governance, MRV (read: transparency) & increasing policy-level integration will indeed increase credit quality. It’s definitely not always the case though.

2. Biodiversity loss is not only irreversible. It’s also time-sensitive. Ideally, we achieve gains as fast as possible. And do so before experiencing losses.

There’s one potential negative in prioritizing faster biodiversity gains - the incentive for project developers to game the system & achieve them, but only on paper. Something to be aware of when building market guardrails.

Biodiversity credit markets <> nature accounting: where are we?

Unlike the comparison last year, let’s move beyond metrics & look one level higher - the ecosystem condition.

Biodiversity credit markets

Not much to say here - ecosystem condition is, both explicitly & implicitly, becoming the dominant definition of healthy ecosystems that most credit schemes directly focus on. 30 out of 35 that had any data on the metrics they use, as a matter of fact.

Nature accounting

Nature accounting is a broad concept for anything that tries to integrate nature into financial decision-making. Here, we’ll specifically focus on nature-related corporate disclosure & target-setting frameworks.

Alignment around ecosystem condition is increasing

• Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)

  Under metric C5.0, TNFD mentions ecosystem condition & species extinction risk.

• Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

  CSRD’s ESRS E4 Biodiversity and ecosystems standard covers both ecosystem extent & condition under paragraph 41 of Disclosure Requirement E4-5 Impact Metrics.

• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

  GRI is one of the first and most comprehensive sustainability reporting frameworks. Their recently updated biodiversity standard explicitly covers ecosystem condition, ecosystem extent & species population/extinction risk under disclosure 101-7 “Changes to the state of biodiversity”.

• Science Based Targets Network (SBTN)

  SBTN is the first global (voluntary) corporate target-setting framework for nature. Even though it doesn’t have biodiversity-specific targets & metrics (yet), biodiversity and ecosystem condition/integrity are weaved into its Steps 1 (”Assess”) and 2 (”Prioritize”).

Most frameworks don’t specify ecosystem condition metrics to be used. There are too many & most depend on the context.

Alignment between each framework is increasing

Basically each nature accounting framework is working to align itself with others (e.g. CSRD’s EFRAG & TNFD, SBTN & TNFD or GRI & TNFD). Needless to say - that’s awesome.

The importance of aligning both

We’ve already alluded earlier that aligning the biodiversity market metrics with the nature accounting frameworks is crucial for the markets to pick up.

The biodiversity credit markets lack concrete demand from the private sector. Biodiversity is such a new topic for corporates - most won’t move until moved or until they have a nature strategy in place. With the legal risks from the carbon credit greenwashing backlash, they have a great excuse to sit on the sidelines. But once their nature strategy & targets are in place, biodiversity credit markets might be in a great position to help corporates contribute to global nature goals (and maybe even address their nature risks one day). If both nature accounting frameworks & biodiversity credit schemes speak the same language on measuring nature (i.e. ecosystem condition and its metrics), both sides would benefit from it. Corporates would also have an easier time to justify purchasing these credits.

So yes, nature accounting is shaping biodiversity credit markets. It is the leading indicator of corporate (and maybe even governmental?) action and, as a result, credit demand.

Parting thoughts

Conceptually, this is definitely the most challenging piece of work so far. You’re not supposed to get it in one go. No one is. There are so many challenges ahead. However - slowly but surely, nature measurement pieces are coming together across different fields. Ecosystem (i.e. condition & extent) and species (i.e. population size & extinction risk) are becoming the unifying concepts in practice as well. We remain skeptical optimists.

Thanks for reading 🙏

And once again:

• Updated biodiversity credit metrics database

• Biodiversity credit calculation Miro board

Appendix

What is ecosystem condition?

Disclaimer: for ecosystem condition and all other related concepts in this section, we’ve used UN SEEA EA’s definitions.

Ecosystem condition is the “quality of an ecosystem measured in terms of its abiotic and biotic characteristics”. Biotic: living; abiotic: physical/chemical.

Most relevant components

• Composition

  The “composition/diversity of ecological communities at a given location and time”. “Communities” is the keyword. Composition focuses on species assemblage and their relative abundances.

  For those who read my biodiversity credit calculation overview last year, most metrics that I categorized under “species” (e.g. species richness, species diversity, taxonomic dissimilarity) are actually ecosystem composition metrics. True “species” metrics focus solely on the individual(s) within a single species with no relation to the whole community in the ecosystem. My non-ecologist eye missed that.

• Structure

  The “aggregate properties (e.g., mass, density) of the whole ecosystem or its main biotic components (e.g., total biomass, canopy coverage, annual maximum normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI))”.

  They are important tangible puzzle pieces that help you understand the bigger picture - ecosystem condition. It might be the most difficult one to grasp because it can be so many different things.

• Function

  The “summary statistics (e.g., frequency, intensity) of the biological, chemical, and physical interactions between the main ecosystem components (e.g., primary productivity, community age, disturbance frequency)”.

  “interactions” is the keyword here. We’re looking for the activity of these ecosystems. Generally, the more active, the healthier and biodiverse.

• Landscape

  The “metrics describing mosaics of ecosystem types at coarse (landscape, seascape) spatial scales (e.g., landscape diversity, connectivity, fragmentation)".

  “scale” is the keyword here. Landscape metrics take a bird’s-eye view of the ecosystems. That is its core difference from ecosystem structure.

Further suggested reads

• Biodiversity Credit Calculation Overview

• #03 - Ecosystem condition: the indicator to watch for corporate biodiversity performance

• Exploring a subscription model for corporate action on biodiversity (and whether durability is a necessary criteria for nature credits)

This piece will be a bit different. Why? Well, June 27 will mark the official first anniversary of the Bloom Labs newsletter.

This time, my main goal will be not to provide direct value to you (next piece is incoming though!) but to reflect on what has been a hell of a journey so far and where it is going.

Hope you enjoy it and will also join me for year two. I am so excited about it.

Let’s get into it.

Access the PDF version here

1 Year Anniversary: What's Next?

How it all started

A common question I get is “How did you even end up doing this?”. It’s a fair one - I’m no environmental scientist. So, let me start here.

I grew up in Lithuania. There we have a saying that “a Lithuanian without a forest is a Lithuanian without a home”. This applied to me, big time. Still, growing up, I chose to ignore the looming environmental crisis. “Making it” in life felt more important. I always wanted to be a founder and I even had a textbook politically correct plan in mind: make it big with my first startup and then “give back” with my second.

The plan cracked when I quit my job at a startup to build my own and realized that behind the glitter of new tech, no problem excites me. I was lost for a year. Then a couple of books rewired my brain: “Less is More” by Jason Hickel and “Sacred Economics” by Charles Eisenstein. They also helped me realize something that I kind of already knew: productivity gains ≠ societal value. Now, consumption contributes to happiness. But only up to a certain point. And many folks in the industrialized world are far beyond it. I had to rethink how to build a business that wouldn’t just lead to increased production & consumption (a problem that's way harder than it initially sounded). It was the nail in the coffin that helped me decide what I’ll do with the rest of my life - serve life.

I decided to focus on one of the systemic challenges - dislocated nature-related money flows. I teamed up with multiple co-founders to build a biodiversity company. Over time, what started as a personal biodiversity credit market research ballooned into something I felt others could benefit from. That’s how I started the newsletter. It was just a way to express some of my pent-up research & thoughts. I was shocked when it resonated with folks in the space.

As I continued the newsletter work while also trying to build a biodiversity startup, I realized that to excel at either, one had to go. So, this January I decided to double down on what already worked and build a media & consulting company around my newsletter.

Where am I now?

Well..

Newsletter

I just hit 2,800 subscribers (my initial goal for 2024 was 2,000 🙂). Some of you also became paid subscribers as soon as I set up the functionality for it a few weeks back. Thank you. 🙏

Social media

Something I never expected happened - I became an active LinkedIn creator, with almost 700k annual views (seriously??).

Consulting

I finally landed enough clients to keep myself afloat.

Industry acceptance

And most importantly, many people I respect showed respect to me. I was accepted by those I admired the most. That’s something you can’t buy.

Some who come to mind are John Ellison, Anna Lerner Nesbitt, Karl Burkart, Joshua Berger, Sonja Stuchtey, Raviv Turner, Edward Pollard, Edit Kiss, Sophus zu Ermgassen, Neal Spackman, Anna Alex and literally dozens more. Thank you all.

Lessons

Most lessons are context-specific, but from my limited understanding, I’ve also taken away a couple more general ones:

Aim to write topic-defining pieces

I once heard a piece of advice that stuck with me: you can’t always be the first to cover a topic but you can try to be the last. You can always try to write topic-defining articles - pieces of work that industry folks will continue to refer to. I can’t say I do that, but this North Star fits my personality.

A trusted relationship with your audience is a superpower (& a social contract)

First of all, I’m pretty bad at it. I don’t communicate with you folks as much as I believe I should. But I know one thing - if you want to be trusted, you must sign an implicit social contract with your audience that you’ll “keep it real” no matter what. That might mean repeatedly contradicting yourself, staying critical about the industry that you’re supposedly a part of and saying no to paid gigs that might create a conflict of interest even though you’re “starving”.

Your email newsletter list is gold

Hearing it a million times is one thing. Experiencing it is something different.

I found that an organically built email list with engaged folks is priceless, especially in the long run. If I continued posting my work only on LinkedIn, I would’ve remained at the mercy of its algorithm (as good as it is, to be honest). Now, I’m seeing more consistency in the engagement & reach of my posts, no matter if it gets viral on LinkedIn or not. That’s mostly thanks to you all!

If you find your instrument, play the hell out of it

I refer to this one the most.

A few years ago, John Ellison shared a metaphor that went something along the lines of “Climate action is a symphony that you cannot control. All you can do is find your instrument, sit down and try to play to the tune of the orchestra.” After almost 2 years of full-time exploration, I found mine: it’s reading countless industry reports, articles & research papers, speaking with hundreds of experts across the field, holding conflicting ideas and synthesizing it all into something readable, immediately useful & as unbiased as humanly possible. Most people I know dread it. Me? I can’t stop doing it.

Ever since I accepted that this is my instrument (and not being a charismatic reincarnation of Steve Jobs, as most founders secretly wish), it freed me to do something others can’t directly compete with.

Plans for year 2

The plan is simple: keep doing what works, try to do it better and see which doors open. Or, in other words, get Bloom Labs closer to becoming the trust and market intelligence layer for nature finance.

More specifically:

Branch out more into nature accounting & nature tech

Without noticing, I became the “biodiversity credits guy”. The feedback loop of me doing the work & people benefitting from it was so direct that I got addicted. But I’m also super curious about so many other topics that I’ve kept a close eye on (e.g. nature tech, other nature finance instruments, carbon markets & especially nature accounting). So, to any corporate ESG managers reading this - I’d love to chat!

More (& more consistent) content

This is my public oath: this year, I’ll do my best to not go more than 3 weeks without publishing anything.

Grow the team

I’m a big fan of solopreneurship. But I want to build something beyond me. And for that, I’ll need a lot of help. That’s why I’m looking for partners to help me scale Bloom Labs, whether in content, consulting or (especially) new product discovery.

If you think you understand my playbook and want to be a part of it - ping me. I want to talk to you.

Explore market intelligence products

I believe that one of the few product categories that would still allow me to unbiasedly geek out is market intelligence.

Explore VC partnerships

I love venture & am in touch with countless awesome nature tech startups. If I could work with even more of these founders for a living, I’d seriously consider it.

That’s why I’m calling out the nature tech VCs who read my newsletter: you got the capital, I got (some) knowledge & great founders reading my work - let’s chat!

Explore newsletter monetization

Up until now, my work has been free, both from fees and advertisements. I’ve kept it that way for as long as I could. This year, I will probably explore some of the different ways I could monetize my newsletter. So advertisers, feel free to give me a shout!

Now, I’m aware I won’t be able to progress on all of these but they are the doors I’m looking into. Maybe we’ll open them together with one (or some) of you 🙂

Parting thoughts

I won’t lie, when I quit my job 2.5 years ago, I expected it to be easier. But then again, who didn’t?

All I can think of now is how grateful I am to all the kickass people doing their best in this space. It might be the friendliest industry in the world. Thank you for all that you do.

This year was the year I found my “instrument”. For those who haven’t found theirs yet, finding it is my wish to you.

That’s it. Back to more practical stuff in the next issue.