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3. The Opportunity - Nature-based Markets

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Do you want to learn more about how nature markets can help finance ecosystem restoration and create positive environmental impact? Read on to discover the growing opportunities in carbon and biodiversity markets across Europe. Nature markets, including carbon and biodiversity markets, are emerging as powerful tools for funding ecosystem restoration. While regulated carbon markets are largely shaped by government policies, voluntary carbon and biodiversity markets are expanding as businesses increasingly invest in nature-positive solutions. These markets enable participation in large-scale forest restoration and conservation efforts, generating lasting ecological benefits. Explore how existing mechanisms attract private investment into nature conservation, uncover opportunities to scale impact across Europe, and gain practical insights for navigating biodiversity and carbon markets effectively.

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.

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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).

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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.