Economics of Biodiversity
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Biodiversity credits

Developing a new co-designed decision support tool for biodiversity credits and investment


skipper butterfly sitting on yellow flower with proboscis extended

Working with industrial and third sector partners, this project will support the development of the world’s first biodiversity credit standard. Analogous to carbon credits, biodiversity credits assign investable and tradeable economic value to biodiversity, for example allowing a landowner to raise finance to fund nature conservation on their land.

This project provides a rare opportunity to observe tensions and equivocality emerging between scientific goals and different stakeholders’ goals in practice. The biodiversity quantification method being proposed for the credit standard requires field sampling and significant cost for project applicants. We aim to develop tools to help select the most appropriate sites for biodiversity uplift projects as well as rigorously field-test shortlisted options for this biodiversity quantification.

Project materials from programme conference 16-17/09/2025

Biodiversity credits project poster

Work Programme 3 talk - Gamze Yakar-Pritchard and Andrew Greenman

Work Programme 4 talk - Franziska Schrodt

Supplementary report with contextual material for the above items


Conservation Ecology

Anthropogenic Pressures

Environmental Public Goods

Quantifying Biodiversity



The Biodiversity Credits project is led by Professor Richard Field at the University of Nottingham.

 

econ.biodiv@uea.ac.uk