There are some projects where income from carbon credits alone is insufficient to fund the project and in these cases income from biodiversity credits is required. These projects vary from those where 100% of the financial lifting needs to be done from biodiversity credits because there is no carbon benefit (e.g. protecting marine reserves, reintroducing extant species to a Galapagos Island, regreening the Egyptian desert, restoration of a Spanish wetland) to ones where there the financial benefit is more equally divided between carbon and biodiversity (Transylvania grasslands, Cusuco cloud forest). Others though have some small carbon benefit, but the substantial income needs to come from biodiversity credits (Taransay).
All of the rePLANET projects in this category are using biodiversity credits using the Wallacea Trust methodology and with independent verification of the biodiversity claims from the Biodiversity Futures Initiative. The projects listed below enable multiple investors to invest and receive biodiversity credits (and in some cases carbon credits also) in return, as the biodiversity is sequestered or saved. The pricing of these credits for the investors is relatively low, which should allow them to be used as Beyond Value Chain investments which are helping countries to achieve their Montreal 30% restoration or protection biodiversity targets or re-sold to traders and brokers at a profit. All of the projects are designed to produce significant biodiversity benefits and are potential philanthropic investments. In a unique twist though, philanthropic funders receive biodiversity credits as a way in which their investment can be returned and re-used for other philanthropic projects.
In order to make multiple ownership easier some of the projects have been structured as Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV) for the biodiversity and carbon income streams. Shares are issued which entitle the shareholders to the same proportion of biodiversity and carbon credits as their overall shareholding. Other projects are being sold via the use of a Swiss distributed ledger system and issuance of tokens.
