Beyond Rhetoric: A Call for Equivalency Rules for Biodiversity Credits

Biodiversity credits will be used to counteract negative impacts and will be integrated into business trajectories of net positive impacts on biodiversity. Therefore, it is necessary to establish rules on the ecological equivalence of biodiversity credits and starting by accounting for and counteracting impacts at ecoregion level is essential.

These are the proposals made by BioInt in its recent publication on Beyond Rhetoric: A Call for Equivalency Rules for Biodiversity Credits. It also addresses the UK's recent Biodiversity Net Gain regulation, which deals with a number of key issues relevant to biodiversity credits, but does not address supply chain impacts, thus leaving open the question of ecological equivalence for biodiversity credits used in the value chain.

Biodiversity credit has enormous potential and carries very real risks to biodiversity. We hope that our opinion piece can spark a much-needed debate on eco-equivalence standards to limit those risks.