Systematic Nature Positive Markets

Abstract

Despite decades of global commitments, and increasingly urgent warning of environmental instability, the demand for land to support economic production is still increasing. Isolated and disorganized actions will not be enough to avert ecosystem failures. As many developers are already required to compensate for their ecological impacts through restoration, many see markets trading biodiversity credits as a financial mechanism to counteract degradation and drive investment in conservation. The challenge stems from a desire to recognize the multidimensional nature of biodiversity that contributes to ecosystem integrity without making suitable offsets intractable to supply. Instead, most regulators have opted to streamline ecological assessment, and undermine ecological rigour, in favour of promoting offset supply and economic efficiency. As a result, all evidence suggests offset trading programs have so far failed to mitigate losses, let alone support "nature positive" outcomes. To overcome this disconnect, and support more effective and equitable biodiversity markets, we propose credits be defined by the irreplaceability of a site, a metric long-established in the domain of systematic conservation planning. Irreplaceability avoids the limitations of like-for-like trading, reduces costs of offsetting to developers and society, ensures farmers willing to sell are fairly rewarded for loss of earnings, and that sites critical to achieving conservation goals are safeguarded. We developed an ecological-economic model of a biodiversity offset market to demonstrate irreplaceability guarantees no net loss of biodiversity and is the most efficient metric for guiding investment toward the recovery of Nature.