High Conservation Values & Biodiversity Credits

How can we incentivize action to protect, manage and restore high conservation values? This costs time and resources. Money. It is the big crunch topic of making changing happen at the ?COP16 Colombia in Cali. In the absence of incentives or funds to make this work happen, our most unique and significant global environmental and social assets will continue to be destroyed.

HCV Network built into its 2024-2026 strategy an action to investigate the proposition that HCVs can be building blocks for developing biodiversity credits, or could even be turned into credits themselves. Biodiversity credits are a tool to enable investment in biodiversity conservation and/or enhancement, and can be broadly defined as a quantifiable unit representing a biodiversity conservation and/or enhancement claim using a scientific methodology.

Whilst the requirements of individual emerging biodiversity credit methodologies may differ, the values being identified, maintained and enhanced under the?HCV Approach in the categories of species diversity, landscape level ecosystems, ecosystem mosaics and intact forest landscapes, and rare, threatened and endangered habitats and refugia,?are precisely those which biodiversity credits are intended to recognise and pay reward for their protection and enhancement.

We’ve started a process with the HCVN members to look at this emerging market, decide how HCVs could play a part in credible methodologies, and what practical steps can be taken to usefully collaborate further in this space.? We are part of the Biodiversity Credit Alliance to help us keep abreast of developments and gain from the experience of so many others working to find conservation finance solutions. The focus HCVN has on such unique and significant global values could provide a solid foundation from which to build the components of a project eligible for biodiversity credits, in any methodology. ?

An added benefit is that the HCV Approach covers social values, which are inextricably linked to how successful and sustainable? any biodiversity credit project and its protections will be for the long term. The local values of biodiversity to indigenous peoples and local communities must not be lost sight of in the broader drive for comparability in this emerging market, as it tries to turn what are often approximate measures of biodiversity into units of currency. These local values are surfaced during an HCV Assessment, as part of determining the nature and extent of HCV categories present.

Biodiversity Credit methodologies with integrity across the board could serve as a real incentive to take action on HCVs and continue doing so, and HCVs where already identified, managed and monitored could help jump start projects into suitable methodologies. There is also an opportunity to recognise and reward producers committed to commodity certification under credible schemes where they are actively stewarding HCVs. We hope to share more news on where our direction setting is going into 2025, and to see equitable, rewarding incentives emerge for the work of protecting nature and livelihoods where most needed.

#COP16 #HCVs #Biodiversity Credits #Nature