A quick dive into the Suppliers of the voluntary biodiversity market (VBM), based on our new database (all links in the comments 👇).
*Some interesting facts:*
🔵 There are 374 Suppliers. It's the second most populous group behind Enablers (i.e. service providers).
🔵 Project developers dominate the pack. There are 307 pure developers, 35 developers with their own biodiversity credit schemes and 32 pure credit schemes.
🔵 Uplift is the most dominant activity. 293 out of 374 Suppliers support it. It’s a living proof of the restoration bias that the nature-based solutions space is defined by. It may not be the most efficient use of capital (high-integrity preservation and maintenance always is) but it is the least risky - project interventions are very concrete (e.g. tree planting) and outcomes are easier to observe (i.e. there was “nothing“, now there are trees).
🔵 Western organizations dominate. Only Brazil and Colombia cracked the top 10, with more than 50% of Suppliers being based in UK, US, France, Germany & Australia alone.
The data confirms many of the common talking points: the early market oversupply, questionable demand (proven by not only the limited interest of the corporates but also their curiosity to sell biodiversity credits and not buy them), Western dominance and the carbon & biodiversity overlap.
Here’s one new(ish) talking point: corporate biodiversity credits.
It’s clear how difficult it is to build an effective (i.e. fair, efficient and additional) biodiversity market when 1. there is still no (at least semi) binding agreement on what exactly a biodiversity credit is, 2. biodiversity credit regulations are still rare and fragmented 3. biodiversity is local and 4. contributions only offer indirect commercial gains (i.e. brand value). That’s a treasure trove of excuses for corporate buyers not to act.
A year in, I’m even more convinced of the buyer-centric approach. More and more people refer to it as corporate biodiversity credits. Under this approach, projects are designed together with corporates from the start. They might commit to purchase these credits for supply chain risk or reporting purposes. They might decide to integrate them into their products (i.e. each container of milk is bundled with the restoration of 10cm2 of grasslands, independently verified and accessible via a QR code). They might even try to sell them for profit to non-consumers (although I still don’t know who would buy them other than governments or other polluting corporates under more pressure).
What’s important is that now they 1. understand biodiversity credits, 2. have more flexibility to use them how they want and 3. have reasonable quality assurance on their “nature positive“ activities.
Curious to hear what you think.
