Voluntary Carbon Market Insights & FAQs
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the voluntary carbon market – and more!
Biodiversity in the Voluntary Carbon Market
Why biodiversity and the VCM?
We cover biodiversity as a topic because a large part of VCM activity (both avoidance and removal) involves the restoration and conservation of nature. In terms of volume, the Forestry and Land Use sector has been responsible for a large part of carbon credits generated. This is expected to be the case in the future as well, especially with nature-based removal taking centre stage in the transition towards more engineered removals.
How does carbon credit projects impact nature?
There are roughly two ways in which the VCM has direct impacts on nature. First, avoidance projects tend to protect ecosystems when they are preventing carbon from being emitted through activities like deforestation. Second, removal projects can restore ecosystems by assisting the regeneration of degraded land or giving nature a helping hand in other ways, locking up carbon at the same time.
What carbon projects are good/bad for nature?
While there are many different ways of measuring impacts of projects on nature over time, there is some agreement as to what kind of projects are ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Good projects help nature recover or facilitate the protection of ecosystems that are still intact and at risk of degradation. Bad projects fail to do this, for example by planting the wrong type of tree in the wrong place.
Ecologically irresponsible activities, mainly consisting of planting invasive species in areas that cannot support them, have a large ecological opportunity cost and can do serious damage to the area covered by open ecosystems, which are not used to higher densities of trees.
Image credit: Bosques Amazónicos Campo Verde project. Example of a project planting native species and focusing on high-quality ecosystem restoration.
What biodiversity products does AlliedOffsets offer?
We offer insights into the design, biodiversity additionality, and nature potential of all projects that we have geographical boundary information for (see breakdown below). These are divided into 5 criteria, for which the individual information can be found on the ‘Biodiversity criteria’ page.
What is the AlliedOffsets Biodiversity Attention Score?
Our Biodiversity Attention Score is only based on project documentation and the methodologies they follow, which is a larger number than the projects we have shapefiles for. The breakdown can be found below.
Where do we get our data from?
We get our data from a range of sources, including public information from registries and other repositories, certification bodies, and open source geographic information. If you have any questions about the data, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.
Image credit: Vichada Afforestation, Colombia, by Climate Impact Partners. Example of a large-scale eucalyptus plantation outside its natural habitat.
How do your criteria relate to project prices?
One of the reasons that we wanted to create a biodiversity product for is that many projects with low prices have clear biodiversity benefits. This can also be seen if our biodiversity criteria are set out against indicative project prices below. These projects can be seen as ways to fund nature protection and restoration beyond carbon.
Do low scores mean projects are bad for nature?
Because of the large number and diversity in projects we showcase on our platform, we don’t track actual biodiversity impacts. That means that, although we observe indications that projects have less of a potential positive impact on nature than others, projects can have detailed plans in place to support biodiversity and monitor this. We would recommend getting in touch with project developers if you would like to know more about a project.
