Simas Gradeckas’ Post

Using cooking to understand biodiversity credit calculation 🍳 That’s what we had to resort to when unifying our thinking about it with Joshua Berger from BioInt. I’ve already alluded to it in the original post (link in the comments 👇) but this cooking-based framing has been one of the biggest personal unlocks that helped me better understand how credits are calculated. It deserves a deeper explanation. Here’s how you can think about it: **Every credit scheme has at least one metric (ingredient 🥕) that they quantify in a certain way (recipe 📝) to derive the format (dish 🥘) & number of these biodiversity credits.** Ingredients 🥕 Indicators & metrics used to calculate biodiversity credits. We put them into the ecosystem condition (e.g. landscape connectivity), other (e.g. property management) & species (e.g. species abundance) buckets. The Venn diagram in the original post was built on that. Recipe 📝 A step-by-step method schemes use with the ingredients they have to calculate credits. Again, we often see same ingredients = different results. Most schemes then multiply the biodiversity uplift/avoided loss with ecosystem extent. Dish 🥘 The end format (unit) of a biodiversity credit. We see 3 types: 1. Condition-adjusted area The dishes that only use the ecosystem condition (EC) ingredients. It’s directly proportional to ecosystem condition (i.e. physical reality). Hence, we can express it in physical terms (e.g. 1 biodiversity credit = 1 percentage point uplift in ecosystem condition over 1 hectare). 2. Weighted ecosystem extent A dish that involves non-EC & non-species ingredients (e.g. management goals/practices or, let’s say, intensity of pesticide use). That's why we can’t express these units in purely physical terms. That’s where the “weighted” part comes in. 3. Species-weighted ecosystem extent Works similarly to the condition-adjusted area. Difference: the number of issued biodiversity credit units is proportional to species and not EC metrics. Still early days. It’s difficult to assess biodiversity credit scheme quality. Context-dependent stuff. One takeaway we did share though: condition-adjusted area credits *might* fit the corporate buyers best. They: 1. are proportional to EC 2. can be expressed in physical terms (e.g. 1 biodiversity credit = 1 percentage point uplift in EC over 1 hectare). Just like carbon. 3. are (relatively) easy to understand 4. fit into the corporate nature reporting standards best This makes it easier for corporates to justify purchasing these credits (post mitigation hierarchy) & connecting them to their nature reports, since both use ecosystem condition as a shared framework on nature measurement. Now, each credit project obviously must address the local biodiversity loss drivers & benefit the people. For that, many schemes use social “guardrail” metrics (next to solid project design). Adding them to the credit calculation mix does sever the credit's connection to physical reality though.