Knowledge Exchange Fellowship to bring biodiversity science expertise to developing the first biodiversity credit standard

知识交流奖学金将生物多样性科学专业知识用于制定第一个生物多样性信用标准

• 批准号: NE/X00158X/1
• 负责人: Richard Field
• 金额: $ 19.45万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX00158X%2F1
• 关键词: Knowledge; Exchange; Fellowship; bring; biodiversity

Biodiversity is the variety of living things - a simple concept that is remarkably hard to measure. This project is to work with industrial and third sector partners to develop the first biodiversity credit standard - core social, environmental and governance requirements biodiversity projects must meet to become certified.Recent and upcoming legislation in the UK, EU and elsewhere is introducing greater requirements for organisations of many types to report on the effects of their activities on both carbon and nature. There is also rapidly increasing private-sector interest in nature conservation as part of corporate social responsibility, positive publicity and 'doing the right thing'. These trends, plus various natural capital impact assessment schemes being developed, are creating a large demand for biodiversity credits, but no biodiversity credit standard exists yet. Biodiversity credits, as with carbon credits, assign investable and tradeable economic value to biodiversity, for example allowing a landowner to raise finance (based on forecast biodiversity uplift) to fund nature conservation on her land.The Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation's 2021 Conservation Finance report shows very rapid growth in private-sector biodiversity funding: from US$2 billion in 2016 to $18 billion in 2020. Remarkably, the report concludes that the growth rate could be considerably higher, but is held back by lack of appropriate methods for quantifying biodiversity. This was my starting-point. I recently got NERC-ESRC funding to provide a synthesis of methods to quantify biodiversity for potential use in biodiversity valuation and trading. The project starts February 2022. It should produce rigorous academic underpinning to enable a sound methodology for quantifying biodiversity uplift or loss, for use by people who are not biodiversity scientists but are working with, and certifying, biodiversity credits (e.g. investors, regulators, economists).My Fellowship project is co-designed with stakeholders. It centres on a partnership between the Wallacea Trust, a conservation charity of which I am a Trustee, and Plan Vivo, a charity that certifies development projects. The two have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a biodiversity credit standard, and have already received a large amount of interest (see Beneficiaries). I am one of a 50-strong Biodiversity Uplift Methodology Working Group, meeting since mid-2021. I have now been selected as the only academic on a 10-person Plan Vivo Biodiversity Standard Working Group (BSWG), to start in 2022. Once the credit standard is operating, a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) will be formed, and I have just been asked to Chair that. A key focus is to build diversity and inclusion into all aspects of developing and implementing the standard.Once the standard is launched, I will work with my stakeholder colleagues to continuously improve it, and develop tools to supplement it. We have already produced v.1 of the Project Idea Note template, and invited 10 of the many interested organisations to use it to apply. Those first 10 project applications (from 8 countries in 5 continents; see Beneficiares) will be processed iteratively, learning from the experience to improve the credit standard and its workflows before full roll-out. The BSWG and TAC will be responsible for this work, so I will be at the centre of it.Biodiversity is difficult to measure, especially in a repeatable, auditable way. The method we are developing for the credit standard requires field sampling and significant cost for project applicants. So we aim to develop tools to filter potential project sites to a short list: a 'triage system'. This will be a key project focus in later stages, once the first objectives are achieved. I will also be working on extensions to the standard, and determining what needs further research, to ensure the longevity of the standard.

生物多样性是指生物的多样性——这是一个非常难以衡量的简单概念。该项目将与工业和第三部门合作伙伴合作，制定第一个生物多样性信用标准——生物多样性项目必须满足核心社会、环境和治理要求才能获得认证。英国、欧盟和其他地方最近和即将出台的立法对生物多样性提出了更高的要求。许多类型的组织报告其活动对碳和自然的影响。作为企业社会责任、积极宣传和“做正确的事”的一部分，私营部门对自然保护的兴趣也迅速增加。这些趋势，加上正在制定的各种自然资本影响评估计划，正在创造对生物多样性信用的大量需求，但目前尚无生物多样性信用标准。生物多样性信用与碳信用一样，为生物多样性分配可投资和可交易的经济价值，例如允许土地所有者筹集资金（基于预测的生物多样性提升）为其土地上的自然保护提供资金。保护私人投资联盟的 2021 年保护融资报告显示，私营部门生物多样性资金增长非常迅速：从 2016 年的 20 亿美元增加到 2020 年的 180 亿美元。值得注意的是，报告得出的结论是，增长率可能会高得多，但由于缺乏适当的生物多样性量化方法而受到阻碍。这是我的出发点。我最近获得了 NERC-ESRC 的资助，以提供量化生物多样性的方法综合，以用于生物多样性评估和贸易。该项目于 2022 年 2 月启动。它应提供严格的学术基础，以提供一种合理的方法来量化生物多样性的增加或丧失，供非生物多样性科学家但正在与生物多样性信用合作和认证的人们（例如投资者、监管者、经济学家）使用。 ）。我的奖学金项目是与利益相关者共同设计的。它以 Wallacea Trust 和 Plan Vivo 之间的合作为中心，Wallacea Trust 是一家保护慈善机构，我是该机构的受托人，Plan Vivo 是一家认证开发项目的慈善机构。两者签署了一份谅解备忘录，以制定生物多样性信用标准，并已收到大量利息（见受益人）。我是由 50 名成员组成的生物多样性提升方法工作组之一，该工作组自 2021 年中期开始召开会议。我现在已被选为由 10 人组成的 Plan Vivo 生物多样性标准工作组 (BSWG) 中唯一的学者，该工作组将于 2022 年启动。一旦学分标准开始运作，将成立一个技术咨询委员会 (TAC)，我已刚刚被邀请主持该会议。一个重点是在制定和实施标准的各个方面建立多样性和包容性。标准启动后，我将与利益相关者同事一起不断改进它，并开发工具来补充它。我们已经制作了 v.1 的项目创意说明模板，并邀请了众多感兴趣的组织中的 10 个组织使用它进行申请。前 10 个项目申请（来自 5 大洲 8 个国家；参见受益人）将进行迭代处理，在全面推出之前吸取经验来改进信贷标准及其工作流程。 BSWG 和 TAC 将负责这项工作，因此我将成为这项工作的中心。生物多样性很难衡量，尤其是以可重复、可审计的方式衡量。我们正在开发的信用标准方法需要现场抽样，并且项目申请人需要付出高昂的成本。因此，我们的目标是开发工具来将潜在的项目地点筛选到一个简短的列表中：“分类系统”。一旦实现第一个目标，这将是后期阶段的一个关键项目重点。我还将致力于标准的扩展，并确定需要进一步研究的内容，以确保标准的寿命。