Speaker
Prof. Julia Jones from Bangor University, UK
Conservation and restoration efforts can be effective but are currently not sufficient to halt and reverse biodiversity loss at scale. Alongside traditional funding (from governments or philanthropy), conservationists are increasingly looking to nature markets (where credits representing nature outcomes are traded) to help bridge the funding gap. I will draw on our work exploring measurement challenges with both biodiversity credits and avoided deforestation carbon credits to highlight some of the key challenges with these markets. Using England’s market in biodiversity units, which supports the requirement for new developments to deliver 10% uplift in biodiversity, I will talk about quantification challenges. Using the scandal in the voluntary market in avoided deforestation carbon credits, I will talk about the challenge in detecting whether an investment has delivered the outcome relative to a credible counterfactual of no investment. I will also explain why, despite these challenges, I remain sceptically hopeful that these markets can contribute to nature recovery.