The world needs to plug a biodiversity finance gap worth $700 billion per year to effectively protect and restore nature, according to the United Nations. This issue is garnering more attention as sustainability efforts have evolved from reducing carbon emissions to protecting nature – moving from ‘do no harm’ to taking positive action.

A turning point was the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to which most countries agreed in 2022, defining biodiversity commitments, pushing for reporting and regulation and calling for more than $200 billion from public and private capital.

One potential solution is raising financing through biodiversity markets. But establishing biodiversity credits isn’t as simple as carbon credits: a tonne of CO2 emitted has the same impact globally, while nature and biodiversity impacts are very specific and local.

The history of the development of the carbon markets has had its own challenges, as they were fraught with significant controversies, raising concerns about the same issues developing in the biodiversity markets. In this week’s episode, Giulia explores this new space with Simas Gradeckas, founder at Bloom Labs.

The conversation touches upon the role of corporate responsibility in addressing biodiversity loss, ethical considerations surrounding projects in the Global South and putting a price on nature, the differences between compliance and voluntary markets, and the future prospects for scaling biodiversity finance.

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