Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I am Akshatrati today the forgotten crisis.
Speaker 1: Here on zero. We've dedicated a lot of time at
Speaker 1: covering COP twenty nine at the end of last year
Speaker 1: in Baku. We interviewed the heads of state, the CEO
Speaker 1: of Exonmobil, and even the COP thirty president, who by
Speaker 1: that time hadn't been named as such. But there was
Speaker 1: another COP last year, COP sixteen, that focused on biodiversity
Speaker 1: in Cali, Colombia, where nations came together to try to
Speaker 1: figure out how to protect natural habitats, plant, animal species
Speaker 1: and halt the destruction of nature. If the climate crisis
Speaker 1: is a monster wave, the biodiversity crisis could be a
Speaker 1: Leviathan And unlike COP twenty nine, actually COP sixteen is
Speaker 1: still not over. It ended before key agreements could be reached,
Speaker 1: and so talks are going to resume next week in Rome.
Speaker 1: I wasn't at COP sixteen, but my colleague Natasha White
Speaker 1: was high.
Speaker 2: Actually I was, indeed, and thanks for having me Today.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk a lot more about why these
Speaker 1: talks dragged on and what will happen in Rome. But
Speaker 1: Natasha tell me first, how was Cali CALLI.
Speaker 2: So it's the capital of sugar cane in Columbia. It's
Speaker 2: sort of nestled between mountains and the sea, and it's
Speaker 2: also known to be the capital of salsa salsa dance,
Speaker 2: not the salsa sauce, and it's a really vibrant town.
Speaker 2: And this came through, i think to a great extent
Speaker 2: in the way that Columbia hosted the COP. It was
Speaker 2: really framed as the People's cop and the Green Zone.
Speaker 2: So the area at these cops you have a blue
Speaker 2: zone where all the official proceedings take place and you
Speaker 2: need to have official access and it's much more managed.
Speaker 2: But then you also have a green zone where anyone
Speaker 2: can exhibit and the general public can visit. And in Cali,
Speaker 2: the green zone and the blue zone were apart, so
Speaker 2: the green zone was downtown. It was kind of in
Speaker 2: the center of the city. It had a sort of
Speaker 2: festival street festival vibe. It was open from the morning
Speaker 2: to late at night, and there were live music events.
Speaker 2: There was salsa. Unfortunately I didn't make any of it.
Speaker 2: Well that's probably no bad thing. I can't dance, but
Speaker 2: it was a really vibrant, warm place to host it,
Speaker 2: and the cop itself was kind of nestled out of
Speaker 2: town in the foothills of some hills, so you had
Speaker 2: beautiful mountain backdrop to the conference venue and yeah, beautiful
Speaker 2: nature all around.
Speaker 1: Well, you clearly got the better assignment here at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: because you also came to Baku and that place had
Speaker 1: no natural daylight, let alone all the beautiful mountains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. In Baku, we kind of walked into
Speaker 2: a tent in a stadium. There was no natural light,
Speaker 2: there was no fresh air, there was nowhere to stand
Speaker 2: outside and get some daylight. In Cali, the tents were
Speaker 2: all separated, it was hot, you know, there was water features.
Speaker 2: It was just a much more kind of humane setting
Speaker 2: for a COP. There was an explicit choice, I think,
Speaker 2: to host the COP in this city because of its nature,
Speaker 2: and you really feel it surrounds you. You know. We
Speaker 2: went out for dinner one night in the old town
Speaker 2: and we were sort of taken over by a cacophony
Speaker 2: of frogs while we were eating.
Speaker 1: Well that's loud. I mean frogs I like, but I
Speaker 1: don't like the croaking. This sounds actually quite pleasant. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like you had way more fun than we
Speaker 1: did at COP twenty nine. But biodiversity cops in general
Speaker 1: now have started to become bigger and are being given
Speaker 1: perhaps not as much importance as climate cops, but increasing importance.
Speaker 1: And what happened at COP fifteen in Montreal perhaps made
Speaker 1: that happen because it was this big moment where one
Speaker 1: nineteen nations reached an agreement to preserve thirty percent of
Speaker 1: the planet's land and seas. Having that big goal set
Speaker 1: was important. But really just to understand what is at
Speaker 1: stake with biodiversity.
Speaker 2: Well, I think if you start with the numbers, WWF
Speaker 2: does analysis which has shown that over the past five decades,
Speaker 2: over the past fifty years, the diversity of species has
Speaker 2: declined by I think around seventy five percent, which is massive.
Speaker 2: So that's the numbers. I think everybody everybody feels it,
Speaker 2: Like you know, in this country in the UK where
Speaker 2: we're both based, people commonly talk about the number of
Speaker 2: insects on their wind screens when they drive around in
Speaker 2: the summer. And even I am in my mid thirties,
Speaker 2: like when I was younger, I grew up in the countryside,
Speaker 2: it was something I remember regularly not being able to
Speaker 2: wash the windscreen well enough to see where you're going
Speaker 2: and now it's just not the case. You know, over
Speaker 2: the over the summer, we had the windows open and
Speaker 2: the lights on and normally there'd be insects buzzing around them,
Speaker 2: but there are none. So everybody recognizes this drastic loss
Speaker 2: in biodiversity, and this country, the UK, is one of
Speaker 2: the worst, but it's affecting every country in the world
Speaker 2: and that's what this Global bio Diversity Framework that was
Speaker 2: agreed in Montreal in twenty twenty two seeks to address.
Speaker 2: And so the kind of overarching goal of that, which
Speaker 2: is for twenty fifty, is for the world to be
Speaker 2: living in harmony with nature. But underneath these broad goals
Speaker 2: there's a number of i think around twenty three targets
Speaker 2: which are a lot more specific. One of them is
Speaker 2: the protect thirty percent of land and sea, well land
Speaker 2: and water actually by twenty thirty. And so countries gathered
Speaker 2: in cop this year to look at the progress that
Speaker 2: they've made since that framework.
Speaker 1: Was agrees and even at this cop in biodiversity finance
Speaker 1: was at the heart of the conversation. But what was
Speaker 1: the approach to try and raise money towards what clearly
Speaker 1: is a very important issue. Not just from a perspective
Speaker 1: of how humans should live on the planet, but also
Speaker 1: from the perspective of how do we sustain an economy
Speaker 1: where humans thrive because nature is so important to enable
Speaker 1: that to happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on the money, there's a seven hundred billion
Speaker 2: dollar per year financing gap that's been identified for tackling
Speaker 2: this problem, and that's kind of split into two buckets. One,
Speaker 2: which covers around five hundred billion, is about redirecting harmful subsidies,
Speaker 2: so the money that governments pay to make cheaper things
Speaker 2: that destroy nature, so fossil fuel production, chemical agriculture, things
Speaker 2: like this, and the goal there is to redirect those
Speaker 2: subsidies from doing harm to things that do good, so
Speaker 2: regenerative agriculture or what's spink called the bioeconomy, basically business
Speaker 2: that doesn't harm the planet. And then the other is
Speaker 2: the remaining two hundred billion is what needs to be
Speaker 2: raised in kind of new money from all sources, public
Speaker 2: and privates. And that's where we see a lot of
Speaker 2: the kind of parallels in the climate space, I think,
Speaker 2: where it's about getting more grant money from governments, more
Speaker 2: concessional finance governments, and multi natural development banks and more
Speaker 2: private sectimoney invested in again things that aren't harming nature
Speaker 2: but instead are sensitive to it.
Speaker 1: In the climate sphere, I think there is now a
Speaker 1: certain sense that has settled, and I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: widely accepted and always consistent, but the fact that cleaner
Speaker 1: energy is cheaper than fossil fuels, that investing in clean
Speaker 1: energy is actually going to not just have an impact
Speaker 1: on carbon, but so many other things that all cannar
Speaker 1: that you know, the only way progress or economic progress
Speaker 1: could happen is through extraction, through perhaps some amount of
Speaker 1: harm to the environment. Has been in some ways being
Speaker 1: broken in the climate sphere. Do you think that's been
Speaker 1: broken in the biodiversity sphere. Do you think people understand
Speaker 1: that it is actually possible to have economic activity that
Speaker 1: does not harm nature.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the challenge of bio diversity and sort
Speaker 2: of nature loss more broadly, as it's extremely cross cutting
Speaker 2: right in some areas. I would say it's even more
Speaker 2: fundamental in the bi diversity space. If you look at agriculture,
Speaker 2: I think agriculture companies are not going to make any
Speaker 2: money unless they change a business model. So in that
Speaker 2: space it makes perfect business sense to manage the land
Speaker 2: in a way that nurtures nature so that nature can
Speaker 2: go back, you know, in terms of production. In other areas,
Speaker 2: it's more challenging, I think, because the business model that
Speaker 2: we're we're used to is externalizing the negativities. You know,
Speaker 2: we dun't waste, we don't really recycle it or limit
Speaker 2: its production. And it's those business models where it's cheapest
Speaker 2: to behave in that way are the ones that really
Speaker 2: need to fundamentally change. And that's structural and it's hard,
Speaker 2: and it's not just about moving subsidies but overhauling an
Speaker 2: entire way of functioning, which is a big challenge.
Speaker 1: And so at this COP sixteen, what were the headline
Speaker 1: things on the agenda? And we know from headlines from
Speaker 1: stories you've written that largely it ended in failure. But
Speaker 1: let's just first go through what were things on the
Speaker 1: agenda and understand why it was classed as a failure.
Speaker 2: What was on the agenda at the outset, which we
Speaker 2: identified as the most important one, was a stock take.
Speaker 2: So countries have to submit national biodiversity plans for how
Speaker 2: they are going to achieve the targets and the goals.
Speaker 2: As a global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for doing
Speaker 2: so was the beginning of cop so by that measure,
Speaker 2: very few countries managed to submit their nb SAPs on time.
Speaker 2: Some gave reasons for that, which was that they really
Speaker 2: want to engage, for example, indigenous peoples and local communities
Speaker 2: and defining these kind of cross cutting strategies. That takes
Speaker 2: time and it's not easy. But nonetheless they've had two
Speaker 2: years to do it and a lot of them most
Speaker 2: of them failed, So by that measure, it wasn't a
Speaker 2: great success. The second big agenda item was a strategy,
Speaker 2: a resource mobilization strategy, so a way to raise this
Speaker 2: two hundred billion dollars per year from public and private
Speaker 2: sources to tackle nature loss. The third main agenda item
Speaker 2: was finding a way to collect and share the profits
Speaker 2: from companies that benefit from what's called digital sequence information
Speaker 2: on genetic resources. And it's extremely technical, but in essence,
Speaker 2: what it's about is pharmaceutical companies, cosmetics companies, biotech companies,
Speaker 2: all of them make money out of products that are
Speaker 2: based on nature's genetics and that used to be a
Speaker 2: physical process. But in the day and age that we
Speaker 2: live in today, obviously a lot of that has become digitized. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's difficult for the countries that are home to
Speaker 2: this diversity to benefit from it. So, for example, the
Speaker 2: venom of a lizard found in Mexico and the US
Speaker 2: inspired the blockbuster drug ozenpic for weight loss and diabetes. Well,
Speaker 2: Mexico may well not have been remunerated for the benefits
Speaker 2: that companies have accumulated thanks to it its biological genetic diversity.
Speaker 2: So the idea of this mechanism is to find a
Speaker 2: way to collect a portion of the profits or of
Speaker 2: the revenue of these big pharmaceutical biotech companies and share
Speaker 2: them with the countries from which these resources come. It's
Speaker 2: not a kind of direct trade, but the idea is
Speaker 2: there'll be a kind of levy of one percent of
Speaker 2: profits or zero point one percent of revenue that will
Speaker 2: go into a fund, and then that fund will distribute
Speaker 2: money to countries that are rich in biodiversity to help
Speaker 2: protect biodiversity. And those were the kinds of details actually
Speaker 2: that were ironed out during the cops and throughout the
Speaker 2: two weeks negotiators worked on this text, which one of
Speaker 2: you know, a veteran negotiator, described to me as the
Speaker 2: most complex item he's ever negotiated in his life. He
Speaker 2: kind of likened it to quantum physics, and you can
Speaker 2: imagine when you're talking about a voluntary mechanism to levy
Speaker 2: certain sectors globally through a United Nations mechanism to sort
Speaker 2: of centralize money and distribute it. There's a number of
Speaker 2: questions there that are extremely difficult to iron out, and
Speaker 2: some were ironed out and some weren't. But that was
Speaker 2: a big focus of an event.
Speaker 1: So usually these COP meetings come toward and end with
Speaker 1: all these countries negotiating and ideally coming to a consensus
Speaker 1: that signs off on some of the headline items in
Speaker 1: an agenda that happened at COP twenty nine with the
Speaker 1: three hundred billion dollar climate finance goal and the attempt
Speaker 1: to try and get the carbon markets through Article six
Speaker 1: to be working where countries could trade corbon credits. How
Speaker 1: did COP sixteen end.
Speaker 2: Well, it ended over a couple of days, which I
Speaker 2: think is the first point. We were reassured in the
Speaker 2: run up that it's very unusual to go over time,
Speaker 2: and it ran over time and ended somewhat abruptly after
Speaker 2: a big success of signing off on a document explaining
Speaker 2: the ways to kind of operationalize this digital sequence information
Speaker 2: fund called the Cali Fund. That was a big success,
Speaker 2: and you had a kind of sentiment that, you know,
Speaker 2: momentum was good and things were going well. And then
Speaker 2: they came to the resource mobilization strategy, and after some
Speaker 2: welcoming comments from developing countries, developed nations stood up one
Speaker 2: after the other and just said no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: at which point I think Brazil intervened to ask if
Speaker 2: there were still because we were in an early hours
Speaker 2: of Saturday at that point, and some people had started
Speaker 2: to leave to get their flights, So are there enough
Speaker 2: people in the room to make a decision. There weren't,
Speaker 2: and so the event ended abruptly and has been suspended
Speaker 2: and will be resumed next month in Rome, where they
Speaker 2: will iron out or try to iron out over two
Speaker 2: or three days, which seems rather short given the contentions
Speaker 2: the outstanding agenda items.
Speaker 1: So this is unusual and rare, but it's not unprecedented.
Speaker 1: COP meetings of this kind, not just in nature or climate,
Speaker 1: but also in other types of big un bodies tend
Speaker 1: to have this option of suspending the COP and then
Speaker 1: restarting it in another place. Was there Seene that you
Speaker 1: remember that sort of like captured how it feels because
Speaker 1: obviously they spent two weeks that all these people from
Speaker 1: different countries, they really want an outcome and then they
Speaker 1: don't have it.
Speaker 2: I think there are a few moments. One was the
Speaker 2: kind of emotive intervention from the Philippines talking about the
Speaker 2: urgency of what's being discussed when they were kind of
Speaker 2: the countries were arguing over some details of texts. You know,
Speaker 2: he mentioned that they've lost already recently a couple of
Speaker 2: species of birds to typhoons, which again speaks to the
Speaker 2: interconnectivity of climate change and nature lost issues, So that
Speaker 2: there was that emotive intervention. And then shortly after an
Speaker 2: Australian negotiator had their heads in their arms and Suzanna Mohammad,
Speaker 2: the cop president, asked in plenary Australia, are you still awake?
Speaker 2: And then you had a standing ovation when they signed
Speaker 2: off the digital sequence information on genetic resources text and
Speaker 2: then suddenly this total collapse and again the moment that
Speaker 2: stuck in my mind. After the kind of show of
Speaker 2: the whole event in Calle, you know, there was a
Speaker 2: big opening ceremony, there was real kind of energy throughout
Speaker 2: the event, the president just walked off the stage and
Speaker 2: it ended. There was no closing speech, nothing, It just
Speaker 2: collapsed and mohammed.
Speaker 1: The Environment Minister of Columbia was the president of COP sixteen. Well,
Speaker 1: she was also quite active at COP twenty nine, and
Speaker 1: it felt to me that having seen what happened at
Speaker 1: COPS sixteen, she felt this urge to make sure that
Speaker 1: that kind of failure doesn't happen again, and she partly
Speaker 1: succeeded at COP twenty nine. But you know, we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens at the resumed COP and whether whether in
Speaker 1: Rome they come up with the items that haven't been agreed.
Speaker 1: So let's take the big one, which is where develop
Speaker 1: country said no, no, no, What was that and how
Speaker 1: do you resolve that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the crux of the issue in Cali was
Speaker 2: around the creation of a new fund. So as part
Speaker 2: of the resource mobilization strategy or the way to kind
Speaker 2: of collect developed country contributions, a fund was set up
Speaker 2: called the Global BIY Diversity Framework Fund, which is housed
Speaker 2: at the Global Environment Facility, which is based in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: It was a fit launched last summer August twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: and developing countries basically see it as controlled by developed
Speaker 2: nations and they want a new fund that's overseen by
Speaker 2: the COP so the Conference of Parties so much broader
Speaker 2: representation instead, and developed countries on the other hand say
Speaker 2: that we've already got the GBFF, let's just focus on
Speaker 2: making it better. A new fund doesn't mean more money,
Speaker 2: and they disagree basically. So there was a bit of
Speaker 2: a curveball in the sense that on Friday morning, so
Speaker 2: the day that the event was meant to wrap up,
Speaker 2: this fund wasn't really on the table. It was going
Speaker 2: to be discussed at a later date. Then I believe
Speaker 2: it was in the early hours of Saturday morning a
Speaker 2: new text got tabled and the fund was back in there.
Speaker 2: So the countries didn't really have time to go through
Speaker 2: the text, and the developing countries very much welcomed it
Speaker 2: when they go to that agenda item, but when it
Speaker 2: turned over to the developed nations one after the other, Candada, Japan,
Speaker 2: the EU and others just said no, no, no, And
Speaker 2: I mean an important point to highlight is that when
Speaker 2: the GBFF was formed, it was formed as a temporary
Speaker 2: stop gap solution to twenty thirty so from twenty thirty
Speaker 2: there is a question mark over where this money is
Speaker 2: going to be collected, and what was proposed in the
Speaker 2: text was the last version of the text was that
Speaker 2: from twenty thirty a new fund overseen by the Copper
Speaker 2: set up. So I think it does speak a bit
Speaker 2: to the distrusts that was in the room, like the
Speaker 2: developing nations, I think were proposing a pragmatic solution that
Speaker 2: worked a little bit better from them in terms of representation,
Speaker 2: and it was just outright denied.
Speaker 1: What do you think private markets can do to try
Speaker 1: and address this crisis and how does it fit in
Speaker 1: with their business model which is very clearly towards making money.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the way in which it's broken down
Speaker 2: and the numbers and the text is quite a useful
Speaker 2: way of thinking about it. Five hundred billion needs to
Speaker 2: come from redirecting harmful subsidies, so you can think about
Speaker 2: that more broadly as limiting or impact on the plan
Speaker 2: and finding business models that are more well sustainable. The
Speaker 2: flip side of that is about how to raise this
Speaker 2: additional two hundred billion, and that's of course where private
Speaker 2: finances is focusing its attention. These are opportunities to make
Speaker 2: money out of the problem, and there there was these
Speaker 2: cops are not really the forum for that, but of
Speaker 2: course there's plenty of side events where the private sector
Speaker 2: can participate. And there were two products, as it were,
Speaker 2: that were really prominent, I would say in CALLI. One
Speaker 2: is biodiversity credits, so the kind of equivalent to a
Speaker 2: carbon credit, where carbon credits are about offsetting your emissions.
Speaker 2: There's a big debate in the bidiversity space about whether
Speaker 2: the buidiversity credits are about offsetting your impacts on nature
Speaker 2: or whether they're about making a positive contribution to projects
Speaker 2: that help protect it. But nonetheless these a tradeable instruments
Speaker 2: that are very controversial and was a big, big part
Speaker 2: of the proceedings there, to the extent that rooms were overflowing.
Speaker 2: I think every single day there was a side event
Speaker 2: on bio diversity credits. A number of kind of guidance
Speaker 2: principles were launched to try to make sure the market
Speaker 2: doesn't fall down the same shortcomings as the carbon markets.
Speaker 2: At the same time, businesses were putching their ways of
Speaker 2: measuring and trading nature. And the other one was debt
Speaker 2: for nature swaps, which are deals where countries can refinance
Speaker 2: their sovereign debts on better terms and allocate the savings
Speaker 2: to conservation projects. So this has been a model really
Speaker 2: spearheaded by the Nature Conservancy US nonprofit and Credit Sweese.
Speaker 2: But is now you know, witnessing a lot of competition
Speaker 2: from big global banks that ultimately can make a lot
Speaker 2: of money out of the fees that they get from
Speaker 2: structuring these extremely complex and bespoke deals. And some are
Speaker 2: also offering loans now and you know obviously making money
Speaker 2: out of the interest on those. So those are kind
Speaker 2: of the two products I would say that are really
Speaker 2: in the eyes of wool Street when it comes to
Speaker 2: this issue, and.
Speaker 1: They're both new instruments. You and I have covered carbon
Speaker 1: credits for a while now and to the extent where
Speaker 1: I actually am still very tired of covering them, but
Speaker 1: there is no way around covering them. Biodiversity credits, which
Speaker 1: you've covered also for some time. What are the pitfalls
Speaker 1: that are different from carbon?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: In carbon the pitfall is you're supposed to actually offset
Speaker 1: for a ton of carbon and you want to ideally
Speaker 1: have it one to one. So if you're extracting fossil
Speaker 1: fuel from the ground, then you want to have that
Speaker 1: carbon go back into the ground, and typically that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen in biodiversity. How do you exactly do that? If
Speaker 1: you kill a bird that is extinct, now you can't
Speaker 1: offset that by bringing that bird back to life, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this offsetting credits debate is very contentious and
Speaker 2: people feel strongly, as they do in the carbon space,
Speaker 2: about both sides of the argument. So on the one hand,
Speaker 2: if you think about it, we are going to continue
Speaker 2: destroying nature in the future. We build homes, we build infrastructure,
Speaker 2: we build minds to fuel the energy transition, and that
Speaker 2: destroys tracks of land and everything that lives on it.
Speaker 2: So there's a group of people that think that offsetting
Speaker 2: is fundamentally critical. You have to compensate for your impact,
Speaker 2: otherwise we're just going to have a downward spiral of loss. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there's a number of guardrails that can be put in place,
Speaker 2: and the people who back that generally I think promote,
Speaker 2: which is that it should be a regulated market with
Speaker 2: proper oversight. The offsetting should be done as local as
Speaker 2: possible and in as equivalent ecosystems as possible. So if
Speaker 2: you impact to wetland in Norfolk, you rebuild a Wetland
Speaker 2: and Norfolk. I think people who think about this seriously,
Speaker 2: you don't really agree that a rainforest in Brazil can
Speaker 2: be offset with savannah in Kenya. The other side is
Speaker 2: that biodiversity offsetting is fundamentally flawed and given the complexities
Speaker 2: of nature and the challenges with measuring it, and the
Speaker 2: fact that there are no single units that there are
Speaker 2: for carbon, there's no one ton of carbon dirk side
Speaker 2: or greenhouse cash equivalent emissions, that there is a nature
Speaker 2: that this is never going to work. So that's the
Speaker 2: offsetting debate, and then so out of that really has
Speaker 2: emerged the credits. They sit in what's called the mitigation
Speaker 2: hierarchy at the very end. So you know, you impact nature,
Speaker 2: you minimize your impact on nature, or you avoll your
Speaker 2: impact on nature, You minimize it, you restore it, you
Speaker 2: offset it, and then you invest in a bid diversity
Speaker 2: credit and you are nature positive, obviously ignoring the fact
Speaker 2: that you have to offset your nature to get to
Speaker 2: the zero to become positive. So it's a very kind
Speaker 2: of theoretical debate that once you then look at the
Speaker 2: by side and the people who actually are going to
Speaker 2: be spending money on these instruments, whether there'll be any
Speaker 2: demand for credits rather than offsets, and what happened to
Speaker 2: the offsetting component. If these are any credits, and it
Speaker 2: starts to kind of I think, fall apart. But there's
Speaker 2: also an international market for these emerging companies are beginning
Speaker 2: to trade them globally, so you will get a company
Speaker 2: with you know, supply chains in one area of the
Speaker 2: world or in one country, investing you know, in credits elsewhere. Obviously,
Speaker 2: I think the goal is to keep it as local
Speaker 2: as possible, but that's not how the market itself is
Speaker 2: being set up. And I think, as we've seen over
Speaker 2: and over again, once you create a market, it takes
Speaker 2: on a life of its own, and if it's outside
Speaker 2: of regulated frameworks, then anything goes basically, and that's what
Speaker 2: we've seen in the carbon market, and I think that's
Speaker 2: the big risk for the biodiversity credits market, which is
Speaker 2: why there was such a focus on it in Cali.
Speaker 1: And can you give me an example of what a
Speaker 1: biodiversity credit looks like, because some are clearly selling already.
Speaker 2: So England last year brought into force what's called Biodiversity
Speaker 2: net game, which is an offsetting mechanism. Infrastructure developers and
Speaker 2: home builders are required to compensate and find ten percent
Speaker 2: on top, so one hundred and ten percent compensates for
Speaker 2: their impacts. And that means there's a number of developers
Speaker 2: across the country now that are taking over degraded land
Speaker 2: and restoring it and creating the difference between the starting
Speaker 2: point and the restored point. They pay packages a credit
Speaker 2: and they sell it as an offset. So I went
Speaker 2: to visit. I went to visit last year a small
Speaker 2: field called Puddington Moor in Devon in the southwest of England,
Speaker 2: which was a field of pumpkins, I think or swedes.
Speaker 2: It was a swede field, so it had been run
Speaker 2: by a farmer that was supplying supermarkets. It had been
Speaker 2: just pummeled with fertilizer and over farmed really for decades.
Speaker 2: And so this young couple bought it. They took out
Speaker 2: a mortgage to buy it. They are going to restore
Speaker 2: it to the indigenous what's called calm grassland. The difference
Speaker 2: there between the starting point so the endpoint, is what
Speaker 2: creates the bio diversity credits which are sold to companies
Speaker 2: that operate within that area and need to compensate for
Speaker 2: their impacts. Another example which is going to be pitched
Speaker 2: as a credit instead of an offset. I went to
Speaker 2: visit an estate in Yorkshire where again they've got a
Speaker 2: segment of land that's been destroyed by years of intensive
Speaker 2: agriculture and they're going to restore it to what's mostly
Speaker 2: wetlands in that area. And they're marketing those credits to
Speaker 2: companies globally. So anyone who has an interest in nature,
Speaker 2: or perhaps as a part of their supply chain in
Speaker 2: the UK, or for some other reason, wants to invest
Speaker 2: in these credits, they can buy these credits and claim
Speaker 2: to have made a nature positive investment.
Speaker 1: After the break, what we can expect when COP sixteen
Speaker 1: resumes in Rome next week. And if you've been enjoying
Speaker 1: this episode, please take a moment to rate and review
Speaker 1: the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps other
Speaker 1: listeners find the show. As with all our reporting, Natasha,
Speaker 1: this seems to be a pretty messy place to be
Speaker 1: and perhaps that's why our reporting is valuable. But coming
Speaker 1: back to COP despite the sense that it is not
Speaker 1: the place that solves all problems, it does create the
Speaker 1: space for solutions. What is going to happen in Rome,
Speaker 1: and then what happens in COPS seventeen, which is supposed
Speaker 1: to be in Armenia next year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in Rome they're going to address the agenda
Speaker 2: items that were left unresolved. The big one there is
Speaker 2: the resource mobilization strategy, but they're also going to be
Speaker 2: discussing ways to monitor progress because at the moment that's
Speaker 2: not actually very clear about how they can monitor and
Speaker 2: report on progress against the Global bid Diversity Framework targets.
Speaker 2: So on the resource mobilization point, I think the fund
Speaker 2: is still very much on the table. So that would
Speaker 2: be three days of intense negotiations around that item which
Speaker 2: led to the collapse of CALI. So yeah, we'll see that,
Speaker 2: and then looking forward to COP seventeen in Armenia, the
Speaker 2: focus there is again going to be a review of
Speaker 2: progress towards the implementation of the Global bio Diversity Framework.
Speaker 1: Because all these countries that were supposed to bring a
Speaker 1: plan for biodiversity not and maybe they will between now
Speaker 1: in COPS seventeen.
Speaker 2: I think the expectation is that more countries will come
Speaker 2: out with more national bi diversity action plans and that
Speaker 2: there'll be more specific and developed there's also targets within
Speaker 2: those and what will hopefully be agreed in Rome is
Speaker 2: a way to monitor progress and that will all be
Speaker 2: taken together in Armenia next year to assess progress.
Speaker 1: More broadly, this was fun, Natasha, Natasha, There's a lot
Speaker 1: of other coverage, so you should check out her stories,
Speaker 1: which will link in the show notes. Thanks, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Zero. And now for the
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