Stacking

Stacking

If what you do attracts carbon credits and biodiversty net gain (BNG) - why not? Ans: But you shouldn't be paid for the same thing twice.

Stacking is important for nature-based approaches for eg. nutrient neutrality. Otherwise grey options (WRC upgrades) are more cost-effective and we lose the co-benefits. Without stacking, land-use change will be too expensive and won't happen 

Sophus zu Ermgassen

The efficiency argument says we want as many benefits from as little land as possible to achieve as many targets as possible at min cost. But what does this mean in reality? That we squeeze as many credits as possible out of as little land as possible. 

Whereas, probably the best thing we could do for nature is bring as much land as possible into conservation management. If each land parcel could only sell into one market, the buyers of credits would need to bring much more land into conservation to meet their demand.

Stacking also brings down credit prices, as each credit can be made cheaper because it's being funded by multiple revenues streams. But this undermines the 'internalising externalities' theory of why env markets are good in the first place...

...we want the costs of damage to be internalised into the development process, not artificially suppressed because each bit of land management can now offset multiple liabilities so each individual credit is cheaper

So why is this agenda being pushed? The efficiency argument sounds like elegant economic theory, & it is. But overlooks huge implementation issues. Also, stacking allows landowners to earn more from the same management- so there's a strong incentive for them to vocally support it

If anyone has any evidence from real-world credit systems that contradicts my views here, please share!