Biodiversity credits, sometimes called "nature assets", are a nascent financial instrument that allows investors and companies to offset their environmental impact by paying landowners to protect their plots from degradation. The global market was estimated to be worth less than $10m in 2024.
In Kenya, EarthAcre, a startup, has developed a payment platform that allows participants to receive multiple streams of income, including biodiversity credits and carbon credits. Its technology can measure biodiversity down to "each leaf, each blade of grass", according to co-founder Viraj Sikand. William Ruto, Kenya's president, has described carbon credits as the country's "next significant export".
Similar conservation-payment schemes are under way across Africa. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Norwegian-backed Community Fund for Forests (CFF) doles out cash to villagers in the Congo basin—the largest carbon sink on earth, bar the world's oceans—in return for a pledge to shield a portion of their land from development. The aim is to reduce reliance on slash-and-burn farming and protect the forest from encroachment by logging companies.
Funding commitments for the UN's targets to preserve biodiversity and halt deforestation are some $700bn short of the estimated annual need.
Funding commitments for the UN's targets to preserve biodiversity and halt deforestation are some $700bn short of the estimated annual need.
The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology.