COMPENSAÇÕES E CRÉDITOS DE BIODIVERSIDADE: PERGUNTAS FREQUENTES

The document critiques biodiversity offsets and credits, describing them as 'false solutions' that facilitate continued environmental destruction through 'greenwashing'. It argues that these mechanisms simplify complex ecosystems into tradable units, often fail to achieve actual ecological restoration, and risk causing human rights violations, including land grabbing and forced displacement of indigenous communities. The text advocates for transformative changes and direct funding—such as redirecting harmful subsidies—over market-based commodification of nature.

• Biodiversity offsets are designed to compensate for inevitable damage to species and habitats by performing conservation or restoration elsewhere, but the document asserts that ecological restoration rarely recovers ecosystems to their original state, particularly primary forests.
• Biodiversity credits are financial certificates representing preserved or restored species and habitats, often used for offsetting or corporate image improvement; however, they are criticized for simplifying millions of species into a few units, creating an 'illusion of equivalence'.
• The primary beneficiaries of these markets are large private companies and financial intermediaries, while indigenous peoples and local communities face risks of land grabbing, forced displacement, and threats to food sovereignty.
• Market-based mechanisms are described as 'worse than nothing' because they allow destruction to continue under a false impression of effectiveness and often lead projects to skip the 'avoid' and 'minimize' steps of the mitigation hierarchy in favor of cheaper offsets.
• The document suggests that the 'biodiversity funding gap' of 700 billion dollars annually does not justify market mechanisms, noting that the UN identified 1.7 trillion dollars in annual subsidies for biodiversity-harming activities that could be redirected.
• Several technical failures plague these systems, including the lack of a common metric, the impossibility of guaranteeing long-term 'permanence', and the vulnerability of 'avoided loss' credits to fraud.
• The commodification of nature is expanding beyond carbon and biodiversity to include water pollution permits (launched in the UK in 2023) and plastic credits (with approximately 160 projects registered by the end of 2023).

APA

Hache, F., Ching, L. L., Lin, L. L., Fernández, M. I., Marien, N., Kill, J., Dellasta, H., Martínez, V. F., Cabello, J., Witchger, J., Picken, T., Prado, A. A., van der Mark, M., Lingam, T., Gilbertson, T., Gualinga, E. S., & Counsell, S. (2025). COMPENSAÇÕES E CRÉDITOS DE BIODIVERSIDADE: PERGUNTAS FREQUENTES. Friends of the Earth International. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/22-FoEI-Biodiversity-offsets-FAQ-PT-hr-online-use.pdf

Chicago

Hache, Frédéric, Lim Li Ching, Lim Li Lin, Mirna Ines Fernández, Nele Marien, Jutta Kill, Heitor Dellasta, et al. COMPENSAÇÕES E CRÉDITOS DE BIODIVERSIDADE: PERGUNTAS FREQUENTES. Friends of the Earth International, 2025. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/22-FoEI-Biodiversity-offsets-FAQ-PT-hr-online-use.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Hache |first1=Frédéric |last2=Ching |first2=Lim Li |last3=Lin |first3=Lim Li |last4=Fernández |first4=Mirna Ines |last5=Marien |first5=Nele |last6=Kill |first6=Jutta |last7=Dellasta |first7=Heitor |last8=Martínez |first8=Valentina Figuera |last9=Cabello |first9=Joanna |display-authors=etal |title=COMPENSAÇÕES E CRÉDITOS DE BIODIVERSIDADE: PERGUNTAS FREQUENTES |publisher=Friends of the Earth International |date=2025 |url=https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/22-FoEI-Biodiversity-offsets-FAQ-PT-hr-online-use.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{hache2025compensaes, author = {Hache, Frédéric and Ching, Lim Li and Lin, Lim Li and Fernández, Mirna Ines and Marien, Nele and Kill, Jutta and Dellasta, Heitor and Martínez, Valentina Figuera and Cabello, Joanna and Witchger, Joshua and Picken, Tom and Prado, Amelia Arreguin and van der Mark, Merel and Lingam, Theiva and Gilbertson, Tamra and Gualinga, Emil Sirén and Counsell, Simon}, title = {{COMPENSAÇÕES E CRÉDITOS DE BIODIVERSIDADE: PERGUNTAS FREQUENTES}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2025}, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/22-FoEI-Biodiversity-offsets-FAQ-PT-hr-online-use.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }