Knowledge Exchange Fellowship to bring biodiversity science expertise to developing the first biodiversity credit standard

知识交流奖学金将生物多样性科学专业知识用于制定第一个生物多样性信用标准

• 批准号: NE/X00158X/1
• 负责人: Richard Field
• 金额: $ 19.45万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX00158X%2F1
• 关键词: Knowledge; Exchange; Fellowship; bring; biodiversity

Biodiversity is the variety of living things - a simple concept that is remarkably hard to measure. This project is to work with industrial and third sector partners to develop the first biodiversity credit standard - core social, environmental and governance requirements biodiversity projects must meet to become certified.Recent and upcoming legislation in the UK, EU and elsewhere is introducing greater requirements for organisations of many types to report on the effects of their activities on both carbon and nature. There is also rapidly increasing private-sector interest in nature conservation as part of corporate social responsibility, positive publicity and 'doing the right thing'. These trends, plus various natural capital impact assessment schemes being developed, are creating a large demand for biodiversity credits, but no biodiversity credit standard exists yet. Biodiversity credits, as with carbon credits, assign investable and tradeable economic value to biodiversity, for example allowing a landowner to raise finance (based on forecast biodiversity uplift) to fund nature conservation on her land.The Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation's 2021 Conservation Finance report shows very rapid growth in private-sector biodiversity funding: from US$2 billion in 2016 to $18 billion in 2020. Remarkably, the report concludes that the growth rate could be considerably higher, but is held back by lack of appropriate methods for quantifying biodiversity. This was my starting-point. I recently got NERC-ESRC funding to provide a synthesis of methods to quantify biodiversity for potential use in biodiversity valuation and trading. The project starts February 2022. It should produce rigorous academic underpinning to enable a sound methodology for quantifying biodiversity uplift or loss, for use by people who are not biodiversity scientists but are working with, and certifying, biodiversity credits (e.g. investors, regulators, economists).My Fellowship project is co-designed with stakeholders. It centres on a partnership between the Wallacea Trust, a conservation charity of which I am a Trustee, and Plan Vivo, a charity that certifies development projects. The two have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a biodiversity credit standard, and have already received a large amount of interest (see Beneficiaries). I am one of a 50-strong Biodiversity Uplift Methodology Working Group, meeting since mid-2021. I have now been selected as the only academic on a 10-person Plan Vivo Biodiversity Standard Working Group (BSWG), to start in 2022. Once the credit standard is operating, a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) will be formed, and I have just been asked to Chair that. A key focus is to build diversity and inclusion into all aspects of developing and implementing the standard.Once the standard is launched, I will work with my stakeholder colleagues to continuously improve it, and develop tools to supplement it. We have already produced v.1 of the Project Idea Note template, and invited 10 of the many interested organisations to use it to apply. Those first 10 project applications (from 8 countries in 5 continents; see Beneficiares) will be processed iteratively, learning from the experience to improve the credit standard and its workflows before full roll-out. The BSWG and TAC will be responsible for this work, so I will be at the centre of it.Biodiversity is difficult to measure, especially in a repeatable, auditable way. The method we are developing for the credit standard requires field sampling and significant cost for project applicants. So we aim to develop tools to filter potential project sites to a short list: a 'triage system'. This will be a key project focus in later stages, once the first objectives are achieved. I will also be working on extensions to the standard, and determining what needs further research, to ensure the longevity of the standard.

生物多样性是指生物的多样性，这是一个非常难以衡量的简单概念。该项目将与工业和第三部门合作伙伴共同制定首个生物多样性信用标准——生物多样性项目获得认证必须满足的核心社会、环境和治理要求。英国、欧盟和其他地方最近和即将出台的立法，对各种类型的组织提出了更高的要求，要求他们报告其活动对碳和自然的影响。作为企业社会责任、积极宣传和“做正确的事”的一部分，私营部门对自然保护的兴趣也在迅速增加。这些趋势，加上正在开发的各种自然资本影响评估方案，正在产生对生物多样性信用的巨大需求，但目前还没有生物多样性信用标准。与碳信用额度一样，生物多样性信用额度赋予生物多样性可投资和可交易的经济价值，例如，允许土地所有者筹集资金（基于预测的生物多样性上升），为其土地上的自然保护提供资金。私人保护投资联盟的《2021年保护融资报告》显示，私营部门对生物多样性的资助增长非常迅速：从2016年的20亿美元增至2020年的180亿美元。值得注意的是，该报告得出的结论是，增长率可能要高得多，但由于缺乏适当的量化生物多样性的方法而受到阻碍。这是我的出发点。我最近得到了NERC-ESRC的资助，为生物多样性评估和交易提供了一种量化生物多样性的综合方法。该项目将于2022年2月开工。它应该产生严谨的学术基础，使一种可靠的方法能够量化生物多样性的上升或损失，供那些不是生物多样性科学家但正在与生物多样性信用合作并对其进行认证的人使用（例如投资者、监管机构、经济学家）。我的奖学金项目是与利益相关者共同设计的。它的核心是Wallacea信托基金（一个保护慈善机构，我是其受托人）和Plan Vivo（一个为开发项目提供认证的慈善机构）之间的合作关系。这两家公司已经签署了一份开发生物多样性信用标准的谅解备忘录，并且已经获得了大量的利益（见受益人）。我是一个由50人组成的生物多样性提升方法论工作组的成员之一，该工作组于2021年年中召开会议。目前，我已被选为2022年启动的10人计划生物多样性标准工作组（BSWG）中唯一的学者。一旦信用标准开始运作，将成立一个技术咨询委员会（TAC），我刚刚被邀请担任该委员会主席。重点是在制定和实施标准的各个方面建立多样性和包容性。一旦标准发布，我将与我的利益相关者同事一起不断改进它，并开发工具来补充它。我们已经制作了项目创意笔记模板的第1版，并邀请了众多感兴趣的机构中的10个使用它来申请。首批10个项目申请（来自5大洲的8个国家；见受益人）将进行迭代处理，在全面推出之前吸取经验，改进信贷标准及其工作流程。BSWG和TAC将负责这项工作，所以我将处于中心位置。生物多样性很难衡量，尤其是以可重复、可审计的方式衡量。我们正在为信用标准开发的方法需要实地抽样，并为项目申请人提供可观的成本。因此，我们的目标是开发一种工具，将潜在的项目地点筛选到一个简短的列表：一个“分类系统”。一旦实现了最初的目标，这将是项目后期阶段的重点。我还将致力于标准的扩展，并确定需要进一步研究的内容，以确保标准的寿命。