A new biodiversity credit – Sean Weaver and Helen Hughes (edited excerpts)
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Vincent
We know biodiversity is inherently complex. Let's start with some real basics. Helen, where is Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari and what makes it such a biodiversity treasure?
Helen
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari is located about two hours south of Auckland. We are the largest fully fenced ecosanctuary in the country. We actually believe we're the largest in the world of our kind. We are home to 3,363 hectares of old-growth native. And we have within our sanctuary walls around 730 native species that we oversee, including plants, fungi, bird life and weta. We are predator-free and removing those predators, particularly browsing animals, means that you get this density of the forest floor. We've got over 3,000 kiwi on the maunga.
Vincent
Sean, give us a summary of what this credit is and how it works.
Sean
Biodiversity credits are just a way to fund biodiversity conservation. This instrument is designed to unlock a whole lot of money from the private sector, principally because there's simply not enough money in the grant funding universe to do the job that we need to do around the nation. For the Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari Biodiversity project, it's 3,363 hectares. The biodiversity credits are each 100th of a hectare, and they represent the conservation management undertaken in each portion of that hectare, for one year, priced at cost.
Vincent
Is that credit a tradable asset? Could it have a secondary market?
Sean
Yes, certainly in our system it does. We've built a blockchain registry that issues these credits - the Ekos SD registry.
Vincent
Helen, are you concerned about who might buy these credits? The system really lends itself to someone that wants to greenwash their abuse of the planet elsewhere on the globe.
Helen
As a CEO of the largest sanctuary in the world that has been having significant financial struggles over the last while, I don't know that I have the luxury, to be honest. And what I would say to you is that the people that we want to lean in are obviously people that share a value chain with us. Right now, what I want to do is test this market. I want to show that the work that Sean has put in and that the construct and the concept of this is doable.
Sean
Our programme is not an offset programme. If you're causing biodiversity evil in location A, and you want to come to Sanctuary Mountain to do biodiversity good and then launder your conscience, you can't do that in this system. It's not an offsetting system. It's essentially an upgraded version of philanthropy.
Vincent
This approach that the government's taking is not a compliance approach, is it? Are you comfortable with this experimentation approach to developing a more robust biocredit scheme?
Sean
I think without experimentation, you can't design anything that might be adaptable to current circumstances. We started building this years ago. The government only in recent times has made noises around biodiversity credits and we first traded biodiversity credits in 2014. We then did the first trade for Sanctuary Mountain in 2022. Then we've been refining the whole system ever since.
Vincent
What do you hope is going to come out of the process of these pilots? Is there actually a mechanism where the lessons and experience are going to be collated? And, you know, do you feel confident? Do you want the Ekos system to be the one that's adopted, if you like?
Sean
We're doing this regardless of government. And I think the government will have an opportunity to see which approaches work and which approaches actually do generate revenue and deliver high integrity volumes of money into looking after private land conservation targets and things like this. Among the best things a government can do is stay out of the way to some extent, or create an enabling environment whereby it has integrity guidelines that it publishes.
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