Cercarbono, a Colombia-based certifier of carbon projects, has approved a methodology that can be used to generate voluntary biodiversity credits, an emerging finance scheme aimed at supporting biodiversity conservation. This methodology, developed by U.S.-based company Savimbo in collaboration with the Indigenous peoples and local communities in Colombia’s Amazon, is the first of its kind to be approved. “The methodology created by Savimbo is a significant advancement for our Indigenous communities,” Fernando Lezama, co-founder of Savimbo, traditional medicine doctor and Pijao tribal leader, said in a statement. “It is a simple, practical, and effective methodology developed by local people to benefit the health of the planet.” Voluntary biodiversity credits are meant to be a way for companies to voluntarily invest in those who protect or restore nature, without any expectation of offsetting their environmental damage elsewhere. Every “unit” of habitat that gets preserved using the buyer’s money earns them a voluntary biodiversity credit. However, various advocacy and Indigenous peoples organizations have concerns about the new scheme, as Mongabay has previously reported. Concerns include the lack of a demand for voluntary biodiversity credits, potential for greenwashing and problems coming up with a “value” for nature. Moreover, some Indigenous groups worry that the voluntary biodiversity credit scheme could suffer from the same issues as the carbon credit market, including unjust contracts with Indigenous communities, unscrupulous middlemen, funds that don’t ultimately reach the communities and complex science. Savimbo’s methodology counters some of these problems by monitoring a predecided indicator species that communities think is valuable…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Article by:
This story first appeared on Mongabay
South Africa Today – Environment
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
