PILOTS

The Association for Coastal Ecosystem Services (ACES) is developing its first biodiversity credit project in a marine environment, the Vanga Seagrass Project, which looks to conserve seagrass meadows in Kenya. This community-led project includes a committee of local representatives to drive forward the project and manage benefit sharing. The biodiversity credits will be stapled with Vanga Blue Forest credits issued from a mangrove conservation project  in the same region. Buyers' claims will be overseen, based on Plan Vivo’s buyers’ claim guidance and ACES' standards of ethics for buyers. 

Amarenco is a renewable electricity producer that seeks to regenerate ecosystems and their biodiversity on lands where their solar power plants are located. They also support the transition to agroecology where land is actively used for agricultural production. Their program associates technical assistance to farmers and implementers (capacity building, scientific advice) as well as financial support (diversification of species, addition of habitat, specific tools). After outcomes are verified and validated by third parties, they are linked to the electricity generated by energy infrastructures, which is then sold at a premium price to buyers who receive the communication rights on this pure voluntary contribution scheme.

At the site of Cros Mouton in France, work will be undertaken to restore several types of Mediterranean species, including the Hermann turtle. These species have declined due to the degradation of the local environment following multiple wildfires since the 1950s. The goal is to create an enabling environment for these species to grow again by lowering the area's vulnerability to fires, as well as procuring more natural safe spaces for them to take refuge in case of fire and reintroducing a number of turtles. The project has been designed in collaboration with local actors and specialists and aims to last a minimum duration of 31 years. This site is part of a designated set of sites within the framework of the new SNCRR compliance regime for corporates to address their negative impacts on biodiversity in France.

Conservation International and the Tubbataha Management Office, in partnership with Friends of Tubbataha, Inc., are developing a project in the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park, located in the Sulu Sea of the Philippines. Tubbataha is home to around 70% of all coral genera found globally and is a refuge for 181 endangered species. It also provides an important habitat and nursery for the broader flora and fauna of Southeast Asia and supports community livelihoods. However, illegal fishing, marine debris, boating accidents, pollution, climatic impacts (such as storm events), and climate change are threats to it. Current funding is insufficient to maintain management actions necessary to preserve the long-term sustainability of Tubbataha. Thus, nature credits present an opportunity to sustain conservation management of Tubbataha and to help secure additional necessary finances to support long-term community livelihood activities and ranger employment from the local communities, comprising indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

Since 2023, EarthAcre has been leading the Ol Kinyei Biodiversity Project in the Ol Kinyei Conservancy, one of the oldest territories in Kenya's Maasai Mara. The region has historically seen significant land-use changes and increased fencing, which have disrupted key migratory corridors and degraded habitats, largely due to overgrazing by livestock. This project focuses on restoring these wildlife corridors and enhancing habitats through stewardship interventions. EarthAcre’s nature stewardship model provides direct payments to individual landowners for their commitment to conservation efforts, making it an economically viable option for local communities. 

The Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda (ECOTRUST) Biocredits programme is a community-designed, owned and led corridor restoration programme, based on a multi-metric model. ECOTRUST has adopted the Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS) as a community engagement strategy throughout all stages of the Biocredits project’s design and implementation. The GALS methodology was created by Oxfam as a community-led household methodology that uses participatory processes to empower women and men at different literacy levels to jointly take action against gender inequality and plan for their futures together. With this approach to community engagement, ECOTRUST supports the effective recognition and protection of Indigenous rights and customary uses aligned to conservation objectives. 

ENGIE, a gas and electricity producer, has worked to restore mangroves near its Mirfa electricity and water production site, through a public-private partnership with the Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi. The goal is to increase local ecosystem resilience against major natural hazards through Nature-based solutions by creating natural buffer zones. This will be achieved through the restoration of the degraded mangrove area, which will benefit the local fauna it supports. 

Generali, an insurance group, has partnered with its sister company, the agri-food business Gruppo Leone Alato, to develop a carbon credit compensation project that promotes the reforestation of degraded farmland in Italy. The project is being implemented on Gruppo Leone Alato owned land that is no longer suitable for farming activities. Carbon credits issued from the outcomes of the project are sold to Generali to cover its compensation needs. Where biodiversity restoration activities are undertaken, outcomes are strictly measured. They constitute a voluntary commitment, and are neither credited nor added as a co-benefit to the carbon credit. 

In 2021 Noé signed a partnership agreement with the government of the Republic of Congo for the management of the Conkouati-Douli National Park for a period of 20 years. The park extends over 800,000 hectares of the Congo basin. The goal is to protect and restore plants and forest animal species, as well as wetland and mangrove ecosystems included in the project area. The action will be implemented by NGOs and communities both in the park and surrounding buffer zones. Measured outcomes will translate in stacked biodiversity certificates / nature units and carbon credits. Noé plans to oversee the claims that can be made from the acquired credits and the intended use of interested buyers. 

Reforest’Action, a company focused on the restoration and regeneration of forest ecosystems, is partnering with the Guangxi Chongzuo Linda Forestry Company to restore public plots in the Ghizhou area in the west of China. The region was deforested and transformed into farmland, and intensive agriculture led to the deterioration of the soil and increased risk of erosion. The project aims to restore the land’s ecological properties as well as the biodiversity of the area, though the plantation of 1.5 million trees from six species native to the region from 2021 to 2024. Reforest’Action takes a holistic approach to project planning and measurement of impact, covering carbon storage as well as biodiversity and social outcomes through a combination of field monitoring, remote sensing and reporting from project implementers on predefined metrics. 

Savimbo, an Indigenous Peoples and local communities funded and run B-corporation, is implementing the Villagarzón and the Chandia Na'en projects, two biodiversity conservation projects on the border of the tropical Andean biodiversity hotspot between Colombia and Ecuador. Both are crediting projects, awaiting certification, and rely on the Interoperable Biodiversity Unit (IBU) for quantifying biodiversity. The project in Colombia stacks biodiversity credits with carbon credits from an adjacent project. Savimbo has developed guidance for buyers about claims. 

Waddapt is a service provider, combining a business-to-client approach through a marketplace connecting buyers interested in purchasing biodiversity units with on-the-ground projects co-designed with communities. Block-chain technology is used to secure proof of measurement collected through participatory science protocols on predefined metrics. One of the proposed projects focuses on the protection of the black rhino in Namibia where guards are equipped with a phone application that lets them record evidence and upload it on Waddapt. All collected data is openly accessible on Waddapt’s website, and buyers have a specific dashboard dedicated to the project, funded by the units they bought, monitoring all defined metrics of the project. With this service, Waddapt aims to match biodiversity credit projects and buyers, as well as limit the costs for projects where the use of distributed ledger technology limits the need for validation and verification body interventions. 

WWF France has launched the Nature Impact conservation initiative which aims to contribute to the preservation, restoration and sustainable management of forests in France. Through this initiative, WWF incentivises contributors to implement nature commitments and pushes for transformative approaches to corporate efforts for biodiversity. WWF also oversees the reliability of claims by making sure that their content reflects the quality of projects' activities and the accuracy of impact measurement.