From time to time certain concepts rise to prominence in biodiversity conservation circles, and some of these follow in the footsteps of climate change analogs. One such concept is biodiversity credits. Biodiversity credits are a mechanism that allow for biodiversity conservation or restoration activities to derive a revenue stream through the production and sale of a quantifiable unit of improvement in biodiversity. Despite the technical and philosophical challenges involved in trading in biodiversity credits, or even defining a single unit, biodiversity credits are being used to offset damages to biodiversity. And given the explosion of private and public interest in biodiversity credits, they are worthy of further exploration.
Helping us to explore them is Harrison Carter, an interdisciplinary conservation scientist at the University of Oxford’s Biology Department. Harrison has studied biodiversity credits in detail and shares his personal views on this complex topic. This is a fairly technical conversation, but non-conservationists should still find it interesting, and it gets easier as it goes along. We talk about the good and the bad around biodiversity credits, starting with a broad description of the concept.
Links to resources:
- What is a unit of nature? A webpage from the University of Oxford's Department of Biology about biodiversity credits including Harrison's work
- What is a unit of nature? Measurement challenges in the emerging biodiversity credit market - 2024 paper in the peer-reviewed jouirnal, PLOS ONE
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