This is a fully automated machine translation. The quality and accuracy of machine translation can vary from one text to another and between different language pairs. Forest Knowledge Gateway admins do not guarantee the accuracy of the translation and accept no liability for possible errors. Please refer to the original text in its original English version if there is any doubt. Some content (such as images, videos, files, HTML links and acronyms) may not be translated or may be inaccurate due to the technical limitations of the system.
Menu
bear

Funders / Investors

3. The Opportunity - Nature-based Markets

AdobeStock_181856783-2.jpeg

Nature markets, including carbon and biodiversity markets, present promising opportunities for funding ecosystem restoration across Europe.

Nature markets, including carbon and biodiversity markets, present promising opportunities for funding ecosystem restoration across Europe. Regulated carbon markets are mostly shaped by government rules. In contrast, voluntary markets for both carbon and biodiversity are growing steadily as more businesses choose to invest in them. These markets offer you the opportunity to be part of large-scale forest restoration and conservation efforts, driving positive impacts on nature and creating lasting ecological benefits.

Here, we show how existing mechanisms can attract private investment into nature conservation and highlight opportunities to scale these efforts across Europe, as well as offering insights to help you navigate biodiversity and carbon markets effectively.

AdobeStock_607504745 (1).jpeg

3.1 Voluntary Carbon Markets

Forests will be important for the EU to succeed with its ambitious target of climate neutrality by 2050. The European Commission wants forests and other land-based CO2 capture to reach 310 Mt/year by 2030, up from 225 Mt/year under a business-as-usual scenario. So-called ‘carbon-farming’ strategies, i.e. increasing CO2 storage (and partly other ecosystem services) in crops, forests and soils are key instruments here, but tend to only become viable at incremental management costs (Chiti et al., 2024).

AdobeStock_320007969 (1).jpeg

3.2 Voluntary Biodiversity Markets

The term biodiversity credits has been used since the 1990s to refer to a subset of biodiversity offsets (cf. Section 2.3) that are being traded in a marketplace. Yet a new type of demand for non-compensatory biodiversity credits has recently emerged – called for at CBD COP15 and launched at COP16: these would not directly be linked to a loss of biodiversity elsewhere but rather be bought by companies with the ambition to create nature-positive outcomes. Here an innovative voluntary, non-compensatory market segment going beyond the (often legally mandated) biodiversity offsets, has been created.