Biodiversity credits are more problematic than carbon credits

You cannot trade what you cannot measure

Law, K. (2025). Biodiversity credits are more problematic than carbon credits. Nature Correspondence 637, 272. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00017-2

Key takeaways:

• Unlike carbon emissions which can be measured with a single metric, biodiversity measurement faces fundamental problems that make standardized credit systems impractical.

• Local context plays a critical role in biodiversity value, with species importance varying significantly by ecosystem. 

• Biodiversity losses are fundamentally different from carbon emissions because they represent irreplaceable ecosystem elements. 

• The verification process for biodiversity credits faces more severe conflicts of interest than carbon markets. Direct regulation and conservation funding may be more effective tools for biodiversity protection.