Biodiversity credits hold promise, yet credit-generating protocols require safeguards to realize potential

Given the existing gap in biodiversity funding, mobilizing private finance will be essential to achieving global biodiversity conservation goals, especially across lower- and middle-income countries with limited capacity and public finance. The emerging voluntary biodiversity market (VBM) holds promise to leverage private finance for biodiversity, but credit-generating protocols must be robust to prevent greenwashing and maximize effectiveness. In this study, the first to move beyond theoretical critiques and general market assessments of the VBM, we extracted details of program structure and crediting issuance from protocols for 13 relatively well-established biodiversity-crediting organizations. With these data, we evaluated protocols’ alignment with both conservation and restoration biology principles and lessons learned from the voluntary carbon market (VCM). We find that action must be taken to improve quantification of biodiversity impacts, especially incorporating patch size and connectivity in crediting and assessing projects on ecologically relevant timelines. Further, safeguards for additionality, leakage, risk, and verification from the VCM must be more robustly integrated in the VBM, and deep engagement and investment in local communities must be improved to ensure durable biodiversity-positive outcomes.