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
Demystify biodiversity credits and assess their potential in addressing nature-related risks and unlocking capital across sectors.
Identify and address key barriers to scaling biodiversity finance, including market infrastructure, standardisation, and integrity.
Explore models for blended public-private-philanthropic collaboration to accelerate the development and uptake of biodiversity credit markets.
Discuss enabling regulatory and policy frameworks that can help embed biodiversity into financial systems and climate action.
Showcase biodiversity credits projects across the continent.