Biodiversity Credits: A Guide to Support Early Use with High Integrity

The document outlines how biodiversity credits—verifiable units of restored or preserved biodiversity—can be used by the private sector to support nature recovery. It identifies four emerging use cases: enhancing carbon credits, securing ecosystem services, contributing to global nature goals, and bundling credits with products, while noting a contested fifth use case regarding unmitigated impacts. To avoid strategic, operational, and reputational risks, the guide emphasizes the 'mitigation hierarchy' (avoid, reduce, restore, regenerate) and provides 12 procurement criteria for high-integrity credits, including the requirement for free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) from Indigenous peoples and local communities.

• The voluntary market for biodiversity credits is currently nascent but has the potential to grow to $2 billion by 2030 and $69 billion by 2050.
• The guide identifies four viable use cases for biodiversity credits: enhancing carbon credits for better nature outcomes, accessing ecosystem services as inputs, contributing to nature recovery beyond a company's own impact, and offering products bundled with nature recovery.
• A fifth use case—using credits to take responsibility for unmitigated biodiversity impacts—is currently contested and not considered viable due to a lack of necessary market infrastructure, such as a clear definition of 'nature positive' at the corporate level and standards for 'acceptable equivalence'.
• To manage strategic risk, companies should embed biodiversity credit purchases within a holistic nature strategy that follows the mitigation hierarchy: avoid, reduce, restore and regenerate.
• High-integrity biodiversity credits must meet strict social and environmental criteria, including the requirement for free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and the provision of fair and equitable benefits to Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs).
• Operational risks include the failure to procure high-quality credits that deliver real biodiversity uplift, which is complicated by the dynamic nature of ecosystems and the difficulty of isolating intervention impacts from external factors like sea surface temperature.
• Reputational risks arise from inaccurate claims; the guide recommends four principles for communication: scope (clarity of goal), boundary (level of application), accuracy (avoiding overstatement), and transparency (providing supporting data).
• The practice of 'stacking' allows a single project to issue both carbon and biodiversity credits, but companies must avoid 'double-counting' by not claiming biodiversity co-benefits on the carbon credit and carbon co-benefits on the biodiversity credit.
• If the top 500 global businesses committed 1% of corporate profits to nature targets, it could generate $43 billion annually, covering nearly one-fifth of the UN's 2025 nature-based solutions gap.

APA

World Economic Forum (2023). Biodiversity Credits: A Guide to Support Early Use with High Integrity. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Biodiversity_Credits_A_Guide_to_Support_Early_Use_with_High_Integrity_2023.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Biodiversity Credits: A Guide to Support Early Use with High Integrity. 2023. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Biodiversity_Credits_A_Guide_to_Support_Early_Use_with_High_Integrity_2023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Biodiversity Credits: A Guide to Support Early Use with High Integrity |date=December 2023 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Biodiversity_Credits_A_Guide_to_Support_Early_Use_with_High_Integrity_2023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2023biodiversity, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Biodiversity Credits: A Guide to Support Early Use with High Integrity}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2023}, month = dec, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Biodiversity_Credits_A_Guide_to_Support_Early_Use_with_High_Integrity_2023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }