Financing the biodiversity plan: The role of biodiversity credits - strong foundation or cautionary tale?

​Nature underpins economic stability, food security, and climate resilience, yet remains dangerously underfunded. Biodiversity credits, market-based tools that recognise and reward the protection or restoration of ecosystems, are emerging as a promising mechanism to channel finance toward nature-positive outcomes. As momentum builds globally, there is growing demand for clarity on how these instruments can work at scale, across jurisdictions, and with integrity.

​However, significant barriers remain. These include:

• ​Regulatory frameworks

• ​A lack of market infrastructure and shared methodologies

• ​Limited understanding and trust among buyers

• ​Fragmented data and weak project pipelines

​This convening provides a platform to interrogate these challenges and explore collaborative pathways forward. This session is relevant to ACS2 as it is directly aligned with Day 1’s theme on ‘Nature-based solutions.’ It also aligns with ACS2’s strategic pillars of “Showcasing African Solutions” and “Unlocking Scalable Climate Finance.”

​Objectives

1. ​Demystify biodiversity credits and assess their potential in addressing nature-related risks and unlocking capital across sectors.

2. ​Identify and address key barriers to scaling biodiversity finance, including market infrastructure, standardisation, and integrity.

3. ​Explore models for blended public-private-philanthropic collaboration to accelerate the development and uptake of biodiversity credit markets.

4. ​Discuss enabling regulatory and policy frameworks that can help embed biodiversity into financial systems and climate action.

5. ​Showcase biodiversity credits projects across the continent.