Biodiversity credits: A “new form of green colonization plundering agricultural land for the benefit of financialization”

Via Campesina, Confédération Paysanne, and more than 270 civil society organisations and academics oppose biodiversity credits and offsets.

The UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) will take place from 21 October to 1 November 2024 in Cali, Colombia. In the lead-up to the meeting several organisations are pushing for a global biodiversity credit market.

Three of the main initiatives have announced that they will release a report at COP16, aimed at catalysing investment in biodiversity conservation. The “High-Level Principles” report will be published by the Biodiversity Credit Alliance, the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits, and the World Economic Forum’s Financing for Nature initiative, which includes McKinsey as a “knowledge partner”.

Let’s look at these three groups of organisations:

• The Biodiversity Credit Alliance is facilitated by Sweden’s aid agency, Sida, the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the UN Environment Programme, and the UN Development Programme. Its members include African Parks, Conservation International, C-Quest Capital, Carbon Growth Partners, Cercarbono, The Crowther Lab, Forest Trends, IUCN, Moss Earth, Pollination, Rimba Raya Conservation, South Pole, The Nature Conservancy, The World Bank, Wildlife Works and hundreds of others who are keen to cash in on biodiversity.

• In June 2023, at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, the French and UK governments launched the “Global Roadmap to Harness Biodiversity Credits for the Benefit of People and Planet”. The International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits was created to lead this process. Its secretariat is staffed by government officials from the French and British environment and finance ministries.

• The World Economic Forum is a bunch of hyper-capitalists who jet into Davos every year to pretend that they care about creating solutions to the problems that capitalism created in the first place.

• And McKinsey is a consulting firm that has made billions from working for the firms created by the hyper-capitalists in Davos. Much of this work is secret. McKinsey won’t identify its clients or reveal what advice it gives them. But again and again, McKinsey has worked for the benefit of the elite — and against the rest of us and the planet.

Global standard for “nature credits”?

Meanwhile, at the DLD Nature conference in Munich recently, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said that,

“Work is already ongoing at the United Nations and in the European Commission, to define a global standard for nature credits. Because these have to be true nature credits, and no greenwashing. This is an essential first step, to scale up this rising market.”

This isn’t the first time von der Leyen has talked about “nature credits”. In December 2023, at COP28 in Dubai, von der Leyen in speech promoting “ambitious carbon markets”, she said that,

“We also need private money to flow into projects that enhance biodiversity. Zambia and Kenya, for example, have vast forests. They deserve to be rewarded for keeping them alive. That is of utmost importance. Here too, credits – let us call them nature credits – can play an important role.”

“Sounds to good to be true”

In her speech in Munich, von der Leyen makes a comparison with the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) which she describes as “an incredibly effective market for carbon”. She suggests the same thing can be done for biodiversity. “We can create a market for restoring our planet,” she says. “It almost sounds too good to be true.”

Yes, it does sound to good to be true.

Obviously, von der Leyen didn’t mention that the price of EU Allowances remained low until 2020 because of a huge surplus of allowances. This surplus was partly a result of the fact that under the scheme governments issued free allowances, and the bigger the polluter the more allowances handed out.

Since 2018, the Commission has adjusted the supply of allowances — to reduce the surplus and increase the price. But in 2024, the price has dropped once again.

The price of Certified Emissions Reductions (carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechansim) on the ETS collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, and stayed collapsed.

Obviously, von der Leyen doesn’t mention that the Big Polluters, including steel, cement, oil, and aluminium industries, have made billions from the carbon trading scheme — by trading the surplus allowances that they received for free.

In 2023, following eight months of research into the scheme, Le Monde reported that the ETS “will not go down in the European Union’s (EU) history as the most successful in its fight against global warming”.

Equally obviously, von der Leyen said nothing about the massive fraud that took place with the ETS: VAT carousels, computer hacking, theft, money laundering and fraud with carbon credits that have cost European tax payers an estimated €15 billion.

Von der Leyen has nothing to say about the fact that the EU has exported its polluting manufacturing base to China and elsewhere (which it is now belatedly attempting to address through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism).

And von der Leyen has nothing to say about the fact that the ETS includes a cap on emissions which is reduced over time. She makes no mention in her speech in Munich of any cap on biodiversity destruction, or of the option of regulating corporations to stop biodiversity destruction.

“A green washing scam!”

This week, at the European Parliament’s environment committee meeting, Carola Rakete of the Left in the European Parliament raised the issue of biodiversity credits, “because they are nothing but a green washing scam!”

Hugo Schally, the EU lead negotiator for the Global Biodiversity Framework, avoided answering Rakete’s questions by talking about the difference between biodiversity certificates and credits.

He said that,

“There is an ongoing discussion on the use of biodiversity certificates and biodiversity credits, and I think we need to clarify the distinction between the two.

“While biodiversity certificates are seen by the Commission as a very interesting instrument to allow companies to contribute to nature-positive activities, we share the concerns that have been voiced with regard to the practicability, transparency, and accountability of the development of biodiversity credits.”

That is a “non-existent distinction”, Frederic Hache of Green Finance Observatory points out. “In reality we all know that credits and certificates are the same, and that they will be used for offsetting, as stated several times by International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits co-chair Sylvie Goulard.”

Opposition to biodiversity credits and offsets

On 29 and 30 August 2024, a Peasant Summit took place in Fusagasugá, Cudinamarca, Colombia. A delegation from La Via Campesina took part in the meeting and has posted the Declaration from the Summit on its website.

It states that,

We reject the conceptual, political, environmental, and economic framework underpinning biodiversity conservation discussions that view nature as a commodity.

The Declaration notes that the “extractivist models of the agro-industrial system are the main culprits of biodiversity loss and the climate crisis”. And demands that the underlying causes of the biodiversity crisis be “addressed through effective regulations”.

The creation of “offsets” or “biodiversity credits” as solutions, promoted by billionaires and corporate financial institutions, is a mechanism that allows wealthy nations to bypass regulations and avoid addressing the root causes of biodiversity loss, shifting their responsibility and paying others to repair the damage they have caused.

The Confédération Paysanne in France has also put out a statement opposing Ursula von der Leyen’s comments about a biodiversity market for Europe, which it describes as a “dangerous and ineffective mechanism”.

The European Commission must focus its efforts on implementing strong public policies so that farmers’ income comes from the sale of their production, not from “carbon” or “biodiversity” credits, and so that their practices preserve biodiversity. . . .

We refuse to see agricultural land, in countries of the North as well as in countries of the South, transformed into speculative reserves, under the pretext of compensating for environmental destruction. In countries of the South, this could be a new form of green colonization plundering agricultural land for the benefit of financialization.

And more than 270 organisations and academics have signed on to a civil society statement opposing biodiversity offsets and credits. The statement calls on “governments, multilateral bodies, conservation organizations and other actors to stop the promotion, development and use of biodiversity offsetting and crediting schemes”.