The nascent biodiversity market is struggling for concordance and interoperability. Formation of a market will not be possible without the implementation of identical units for price discovery. However, these units require cross-disciplinary approaches from economics, biodiversity science, anthropology, and law.

Here, we present an interoperable, area-based biodiversity unit designed for immediate implementation based on >52 existing biodiversity credit schemas with preliminary cross-market adoption.

The temporal-spatial components of the unit are month-hectare, where one month is defined as 30 days. Each month-hectare is monitored and observed to have a measured integrity defined on a 0-to-1 scale where full integrity is all ecological niches available to, and filled by, native species. Units are categorized with a value grade corresponding to global biodiversity priorities.

Significance statement

The adoption of identical units for biodiversity measurement is a requirement for true price discovery in the emerging commercial and international reporting markets. An interoperable unit will also greatly aid the successful execution of global biodiversity accords.

Acronyms and abbreviations

GBF — Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
IP — Indigenous Peoples
IUCN — International Union for Conservation of Nature
LC — Local Communities
UNEP — United Nations Environment Programme
WWF — World Wide Fund for Nature

Key terms

Biodiversity hotspots: A biogeographic region characterized by exceptionally high levels of species richness and a significant degree of habitat loss. These areas are recognized for their extraordinary concentration of endemic species, meaning species found nowhere else globally.
Components: the elements comprise the biodiversity unit, dimensions (Area, Time, Integrity), and category (Value).
Conservation: There is a technical argument that this methodology falls under the definition of ‘preservation’ in many environmental contexts. “Conservation seeks the proper use of nature, while preservation seeks protection of nature from use." We have used the term conservation throughout for simplicity, and readability with a non-technical IP and LC audience (1)
Ecosystem integrity: An ecosystem is generally understood to have integrity when its dominant ecological characteristics (e.g., elements of composition, structure, function, and ecological processes) occur within their natural ranges of variation and extinction and can withstand and recover from most perturbations.
Ecological services: The benefits people derive from ecosystems.
Ecosystem value: The planet-wide value of an ecosystem in the context of global biodiversity loss. Often referred to as “significance” in other contexts.
Impact: We use the term impact to describe the negative effects on biodiversity from human actions. This is often referred to in different industries as ecological impacts, corporate disclosures, or environmental impact assessments. In the case of the unit, it is meant to represent real impacts on biodiversity and not simply disclosure of these impacts, which are often insufficient or partial.
Methodology: A protocol, often validated by certifiers in open review, with a standardized set of instructions to make meaning out of metrics.
Metric: This means any core measurement. Typically, it involves not only the measurement but also a set of instructions or parameters for the measurement.
Monitoring period: this is sometimes called crediting time, and most projects will have a minimum monitoring timeframe of two years. Restoration projects have longer monitoring periods than conservation projects. Monitoring period is independent of the unit time of 1 month.
Project area: Sometimes called the crediting area and might be segmented for different actions. For most sites, this will be an area greater than 1000ha. The unit does allow for crediting from smaller areas, but many biodiversity actions occur at a sq km (marine science or connectivity studies). The project area is independent of the unit area of 1 hectare.
Species: Group of individuals or natural populations that are actually or potentially interbreeding, reproductively isolated from other similar groups by their physiological properties (reducing incompatibility between parents or sterility of hybrids, or both).
Species richness: The population of different species present in a particular area or ecosystem. It is a measure of biodiversity that quantifies species diversity within a given habitat or geographical region, but it does not speak to the abundance or distribution of the species.
Unit: is a final standardized format for a metric or methodology, such as hectares, or tons, or bushels. For biodiversity, a unit has time, area, integrity dimensions, and a value "grade".

Introduction

Climate change and biodiversity loss

We urgently need an interoperable, global unit of account for biodiversity for all stakeholders to work together to preserve the ecology of Earth.

In the 21st century, Earth is experiencing species loss so abrupt it has been dubbed the ‘sixth mass extinction event’ (2). In 2022, over 196 nations agreed to take urgent action under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), to conserve at least 30% of the Earth’s surface by 2030 — focusing attention on high-risk biodiversity ecoregions to prevent catastrophic species collapse (3, 4). Yet we know from the science of project management and the history of megaprojects that this effort can only succeed if we agree on how to measure our success (5, 6).

Biodiversity accords both lag, and benefit from, lessons learned in carbon accords. While climate is tracked through global average temperature changes, carbon emissions are quantified through metric tons of CO2. As yet, biodiversity action and tracking have suffered because there is no such agreed-upon unit (7).

There is a simple solution to this problem, but the simplicity relies on a frameshift, applying a multidisciplinary approach, and eliminating ideological differences in favor of shared aims.

A rare catalyst for a wicked problem

The emerging commercial market for biodiversity credits has forced a renewed interest in achieving consensus on a biodiversity unit. Economic theory predicts that without a standardized unit of measure, market mechanisms will not achieve accurate price discovery, leading to confusion that will reduce buyer demand (8). But many people flocking to work on this problem are surprised at the need, why hasn’t the unit problem already been solved?

The answer is that the biodiversity unit is what paradox theory and policy science call a ‘wicked problem’, a problem that cannot be resolved through science or data advancements, because the real conflicts are about values, interests, and perspectives (9).

Yes, biodiversity has all the regular technical headaches for natural systems science. Complexity in measurements and data, path dependence (unlike carbon, biodiversity will always be localized to the context or ecosystem where it evolved), unknowns of species themselves, and messy ontologies (10–12). However, these problems are exacerbated by deeper conflicts between the stakeholders who need to use a biodiversity unit (Nature, notably, is not among them — merely needing to tangibly benefit from a unit’s application).

Charities dominate the current $81 billion biodiversity market, but commercial interests and innovation dominate the $180 billion emerging biodiversity credit market, competing both ideologically and for public and/or private funding for biodiversity protection and uplift (13, 14). Indigenous Peoples have 80% of the conserved biodiversity but are unified in their dislike of quantifying or commercializing Nature and as yet undecided on biodiversity markets — although they have been clear in their disdain of the way carbon markets have unfolded (15–18). Governments are committed to tracking and regulation but have an estimated $700 billion finance gap to execute on biodiversity goals, and have failed to achieve any timely or meaningful regulation on carbon (3, 19). Industry currently extracts an estimated $7.3 trillion dollars annually from natural capital and has few incentives to fund a reversal of this behavior (20). Corporations profiting from biodiversity loss are legally bound to maximize that profit, and yet claim to be paradoxically self-regulating — even possibly leading regulation through voluntary cutbacks like the Taskforce on Nature-related Disclosures (21)? It is clear that a biodiversity unit must work for all of these parties, yet none of them parties share values, interests, or perspectives. In fact, quite the reverse.

In management science, paradox theory is used to address and tame wicked problems with high tensions (22). So how do we “measure what matters” for biodiversity when we can’t agree about what matters?

Political science tells us that some of the tools to solve a wicked problem are to: 1) identify it accurately, 2) treat the problem as unique, 3) avoid science- and data-driven solutions in favor of negotiation, and 4) reduce the compounding factors of complexity, uncertainty, and disagreement (9).

The emerging market for biodiversity credits has created a rare opportunity to solve this problem by aligning stakeholders, thus reducing disagreement, because every stakeholder could potentially use a well-designed marketplace. Many parties see an opportunity to iterate on the working model of the carbon market while solving some intransigent problems with biodiversity funding and climate equity (14). Certainly, government funding for climate and forests is not currently reaching Indigenous Peoples (23), and we know that commercial innovation is better at optimizing markets (24). However, the disciplines of history, law, and political science are clear on the risks of using capitalistic structures to innovate in fields that need to be protected ethically or for minority groups (25).

Therefore, the ideal biodiversity unit will be useful in a commercial or charitable market, protect equity to the extent possible, and function immediately to capture this rare opportunity for concordance. We’ll address the requirements in turn, and then discuss a negotiated area-based unit that is achieving market traction.

Technical requirements for an area-based biodiversity unit

A unit is an abstraction that enables rapid communication about a standardized measurement. Trade is built on units — as are the physical sciences, and the rest of modern society. Identical units are a prerequisite to the formation and efficient functioning of markets.

Both carbon and biodiversity are emerging markets. We know from research on innovation that emerging or frontier markets stabilize and form according to a standardized curve of the Gartner Hype Cycle (26). In this context, carbon markets would be at the “trough of disillusionment” stage, and biodiversity markets would be at the “innovation trigger” stage. The speed with which any market achieves optimization or “productivity” is dependent on several factors, one of which is perfect competition.

The main principles of perfect competition are that products or services in the market are exchanged in terms of identical units, the market is large enough that no single participant has influence over the pricing, there are no barriers to entry or exit for market participants, and all market participants have complete information available (8). The absence of any one of the conditions for perfect competition results in price distortion and market failure, rather than optimal value and wealth creation (27).

In the ideal market, all activity is measured in terms of standardized identical units in order to avoid inefficiencies and support buyers in comparing the relationship between price and value. But the current biodiversity market more closely resembles a yard sale, with boutique purchases and individuals haggling (28). Currently, the number of proposed biodiversity ‘units’ numbers nearly as high as the number of active schemas which is currently fifty-two and increasing daily (29, 30).

Therefore, a viable unit would need to reliably work for at least the majority of these schemas, all stakeholders, and also accurately abstract path-dependent data (ecosystem-specific data) for a global context (30). In particular, it would need to function in measuring conservation, restoration (pollination, uplift, eradication of invasive or alien species), and impact (disclosures of degradation or avoided degradation) actions.

As most of these schemas explicitly or implicitly intend, in order for the biodiversity credit market to utilize similar market structures as the carbon credit market, it must also be a commodity (28). Commodities markets have rigorous regulations regarding product expiration and universal tangibility and do not accept scoring systems and calculations that do not have real-world corollaries. They could, for instance, sell one ton of live meerkats with a ‘grade’ of 4.5, but they could not sell 4.5 stars that had been awarded to live meerkats. The first is a physical dimension, the second is an intangible score whose value is arbitrarily based on the reputation of the awarding party.

This is not such a bad requirement. Human concepts mean nothing to Nature, which is nothing if not tangible. Thus, the more tangible a unit is, the more likely it is to truly measure, and account for, natural systems. Reduced abstraction also leads to reduced opportunities for gaming or manipulating a unit from its intended use.

There remains some debate around area-based units. While there are certainly biodiversity actions which fall outside of area-based activities, the vast majority of schemas can utilize an area-based structure. Certainly, one could argue that biodiversity never exists outside of an ecosystem, or habitat. Therefore, an area-based unit could cover the emerging market adequately with the stipulation that future units may emerge.

Ideally, a properly designed unit will also be aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) accounting standards International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Guidelines and a number of emerging international market controls on natural capital accounting (31, 32).

Currently, carbon commodities markets have a multi-party structure, which is rapidly replicating itself for biodiversity markets (30). A clear understanding of this structure dramatically reduces common technical confusions about the unit, which is too frequently conflated with other market functions and structures such as validation of claims, standardization of metrics and methodologies, price, sales, and origination (see Figure 1 and Discussion).

Social requirements for a well-designed unit

As discussed earlier, approaching the biodiversity unit as merely a technical problem will not lead to a solution. Climate change and Indigenous equity are two well-recognized wicked problems, in the biodiversity unit they compound with existing technical problems (9). We cannot simply solve, we must negotiate.

The biodiversity unit is not only an economic problem, but also a historical, sociological, anthropological, political, and legal one. A universally abstracted unit must cross paradigms between the industrialized, and non-industrialized worlds, and protect non-human species as entities with the inherent right to exist. Not least, it must function in accounting for Nature in regulatory, charitable, and commercial contexts during a profound transition of economic and legal models formerly built on colonialism and extraction. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2022, colonialism and inequity are primary drivers of the vulnerability of ecosystems and people to climate change, and also a chief barrier to recovery (33). This task is impossible when viewed through competing ideological lenses; unifying principles must be found.

Conventional economic theory must adapt to address markets where the majority of the supply is controlled by groups that don’t transact via conventional economic mechanisms, or where we want to adapt these mechanisms because they have historically inflicted severe harm (34).

Indigenous Peoples are both a critical stakeholder and shareholder in negotiating a proper unit for embryonic biodiversity markets. The UN and World Bank estimate they control 80% of the intact biodiversity on the planet (35). Together with local communities, they account for 30% of the intact planet and own or manage nearly half of the world’s forests and farm landscapes (36–38).

Yet they are a minority, numbering only six percent of the planet’s total population while accounting for a disproportionate 19% of its population living in extreme poverty (39). Thus, despite international rights to consultation and direct involvement in the design of markets that affect them, they are often underrepresented or excluded from market negotiations and require special protections (17, 40). Indeed, trade with IP is protected in a separate category with unique protocols under international law and local Indigenous governing structure and dimensionality that may not conform to Western systems (41).

Both IP and LC are also worth consulting for technical reasons. They have better long-term outcomes for forest management (42), protect biodiversity effectively in sovereign lands (43), and comprise essential knowledge, expertise, and impact for the preservation of species (44). Further, LC, if not directly incentivized, are the greatest risk to habitat destruction (45).

However, we must acknowledge existing markets have failed in inclusion and equity. IP and LC currently receive less than 1-2% of the funding from existing climate markets (38, 46). Our best current evidence shows that trade and market-based schemes have made little impact against deforestation, and in some cases worsened economic inequality (40, 47).

If colonialism caused climate change, we must address the two issues as linked (33). A unit that is intended to meet GBF aims must be intuitively acceptable to IP and LC, remediate or ameliorate economic inequality, and take advantage of non-industrialized technical expertise. We propose that a successful unit transcends three core paradigms: tangibility, dynamism, and anthropocentrism.

A tangible unit is not only good for commodities markets, tangibility is also better at achieving value in both industrialized and non-industrialized paradigms. We know from the disciplines of philosophy and anthropology that epistemology, axiology, and ontology vary widely between industrialized and non-industrialized cultures (48, 49). For instance, an intangible unit like a ton of carbon computed from a forest study immediately leads to a dearth of IP or LC specialists on the topic and requires intermediaries versed in this kind of epistemological knowledge (e.g. allometric equations and satellite forest modeling) (18). In contrast, a ton of goji berries might require as much depth of expertise to deliver, but both industrialized and non-industrialized world can easily conceptualize, measure, and trade it. There is no reason a biodiversity unit must be intangible (e.g. calculated score from machine learning algorithm) instead of tangible and measurable by both epistemic cultures (e.g. a hectare of intact ecosystem).

Larger area-based units also allow for dynamism. Conceptualizations of biodiversity as an object to be traded belie its dynamic qualities. In contrast, IP often have living-systems perspectives that are relational, or praxis-based. One simple way to resolve this apparent discrepancy is not to reduce units for biodiversity below that of functional units for an ecosystem.

IP perspectives also adjust for anthropocentrism. Many proposed units reward anthropocentrism by measuring biodiversity in terms of human priorities (human scoring systems, human effort, commodification of ecosystem services or land cost) (30). In contrast, IP initiatives explicitly demand that biodiversity cannot be judged around its value to humans, it must be measured from the perspective of an intrinsic right to exist (50). Further, units which prioritize uplift or threat over conservation or intactness will have profound effects on both resource allocation to Indigenous Peoples and fail to reward Nature within its own context. Thus, a well-designed unit must account for the possibility of legal rights of Nature, different paradigms of animal ownership and/or custodianship, and measure biodiversity based on outcomes for all species, not only humans.

As a final consideration, there is no doubt that area-based units transacting through commercial structures do run the risk of exacerbating existing inequities in land rights. But this problem, while important (and wicked), cannot be resolved or addressed at the level of a unit, and must be accounted for in other social and/or governance mechanisms (see Figure 1).

The unit

We present a unit negotiated and adopted multilaterally over a two-year period between Savimbo (an Indigenous-led B-corp), their Indigenous friends (greater than ninety Indigenous leaders in 25 countries, and 55 Indigenous nations), and market representatives from academia, regulatory bodies, corporate governance, project developers, certifiers, and more.

As discussed above, insurmountable scientific, social, trade, and accounting problems are resolved cleanly for biodiversity when re-contextualized to tangible dimensions and naturalized to perspectives of other species.

We propose the result as an interoperable unit, aligned with ethical considerations with/from/for/by Indigenous Peoples and the rights of Nature, and deployable for GBF targets in any context (commercial, regulatory, or philanthropic).

The key to an interoperable area-based biodiversity unit lies in the pragmatic selection of universal elements (ie, space and time) to the smallest functional units attributable to an ecosystem, and intelligent normalization of non-universal elements (ecosystem integrity and comparative ecosystem value).

Thus, this unit measures a functional ecosystem, with standard dimensions for area, time, and integrity, and a categorical value. This unit works for any ecosystem, metric, or methodology and covers conservation, restoration (pollination, eradication, or uplift), impact reporting, and avoided loss activities (see Figure 2).

This unit is restricted to area-based activities, excluding activities such as genetic conservation, legal or collective actions in favor of biodiversity, human-wildlife conflict mitigation, etc. We do not attempt to describe these with the unit presented in this paper, nor do we attempt to propose another unit to fit these types of conservation, as it is outside the scope of this paper.

The unit describes an area (1 hectare) for time (1 month = 30 days) with measured integrity (scale from 0 to 1, as determined by bespoke methodologies) categorized by its value (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze). It can be applied to any area-based biodiversity action, including conservation, restoration, impact, or avoided impact scenarios.

A complete explanation of these components follows.

Area

The standardized area of this unit is always 1 hectare. Marine biodiversity science and connectivity projects are usually expressed in larger areas such as square kilometers, but these can be easily converted to smaller units. Some schemas use meter-squared areas, but these were rejected as too small to be a minimum functional ecosystem unit.

Time

The standardized time of this unit is always 1 month. While most ecologists and some impact buyers preferred time dimensions of one year, the majority of traders and market analysis stated that maximum granularity was optimal for market adoption. After significant negotiations, it was decided that the maximum granularity achievable was one month, and bespoke users could easily issue 12 credits for a year.

Making time more granular serves two purposes, market adoption on commercial commodities markets and data integrity of scientific reporting.

At the time of unit release in 2024, public market pricing for carbon commodities units averaged ($0.45-$7/ton) (51, 52). Meantime, bespoke methodologies were averaging over-the-counter pricing of ~$30-200/ha/year for conservation, and $300-1000/ha/year for land restoration (53). Granularity was required to speed commodities market adoption and access existing traders, lowering the price to mimic current carbon pricing, units then ranged from $2.50 to $16.60/ha/mo for conservation and $25 to $83/ha/mo for restoration, closer to existing pricing for carbon (see Discussion).

Scientifically, there was no barrier to this change. Just as the area of a project can be reported in hectares, the time of a project can be reported in 30-day intervals. Shorter timescales for a unit do not affect project durations which averaged 10 to 20 years, or monitoring periods which averaged 1 to 5 years. For instance, a typical restoration project requires a twenty-year commitment, monitoring at three- to five-year periodicity. However, monthly units do allow for more accurate quantification. As shown in Figure 2, shorter units can report biodiversity fluctuations in a quantized fashion.

Integrity

Ecosystems are complex systems. Under complexity theory, an ecosystem has the properties of historicity and path dependence; being unique, it can only be compared to itself (54). However, the comparison is generalizable.

The disciplines of ecology, biology, and biodiversity science have robust tools for calculating area–based gains in integrity — what is variably known as ecological integrity/intactness or ecosystem health (55). This abstraction works for every ecosystem, and there are currently greater than 52 bespoke schemas that allow for efficient quantification of this dimension (28, 29).

The generalization problem solved, all that remains is to standardize the reporting scale. The standardized integrity scale for this biodiversity unit ranges from 0-1. Where zero integrity (0) signifies a completely degraded ecosystem, for example, nuclear waste sites, ocean dead zones, and wildfires that burn hot enough to sterilize soil. And where full integrity (+1) is defined as all ecological niches, available to, and occupied by, native species. In other words a fully available ecosystem, including fully preserved primitive areas, national parks, game parks, UNESCO World Heritage sites, primary Amazon forest, etc.

Full integrity is not directly measurable. One of the characteristics of complex systems is that they cannot be fully quantified (56). However, it is estimable by localized metrics and methodologies (i.e. desert, ocean). Conservation, eradication, pollination, restoration, and corporate impacts from all ecosystems can abstract outcomes within this scale.

Value

Value is the planet-wide benefit of preserving the ecosystem where the hectare of the unit is located.

One of the moral debates that makes the biodiversity unit a wicked problem is the endless argument about whether humans have the right to value Nature. The authors of this paper consider this issue a moot point. First, we already value Nature by extracting it silently for a $7.3 trillion dollars annual profit (20). Second, valuation schemas already exist and have been widely applied (see Table 1). Last, the unit proposed is for use in GBF accords, which most of the world agrees are important to achieve, and which have a 700 billion finance gap (3) — prioritization of targets will occur actively or passively.

Certainly, not every ecosystem is created equal. Applying biogeochemistry science to look at the planet as an organism, some ecosystems are organs (a liver or a kidney), and some ecosystems are muscle, skin, or bones (57). Internationally there is agreement that triage is necessary, directing resources in order of planetary importance (3, 4).

One key reason to include a value layer is that with additionality requirements pristine and unique ecosystems that are not under imminent threat of logging, mining, or land clearing may not otherwise be eligible for biodiversity crediting. A value layer allows their inclusion while accurately delineating threat for buyers who require it to act.

Furthermore, some of the most important and critically endangered ecosystems have inverse political representation or funding, especially if they are in the Global South (4, 17). Without separate value and integrity calculations, primary forest in the Amazon would trade undifferentiated from rehabilitated farmland in Western Europe or the USA. Lower-value (bronze, silver) ecosystems also typically cover larger land areas. Therefore, crediting projects could foreseeably be much larger in area, and thus are eligible for a greater number of total credits.

Regardless, many stakeholders in the biodiversity space may choose to ignore value categorizations for ethical reasons. As valuing nature is a human activity, not fundamentally associated with its inherent characteristics Value is a category, not a dimension of a biodiversity unit.

Value for this unit is determined by public data on global ecosystem value and threat from thirteen reputable public classification schemas (See Table 1.), simplified and normalized into 4 categories Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze for interoperability and market adoption. Where Platinum is generally high-threat, high-density, Gold is high-density, Silver is higher than average density, and Bronze are remaining sites.

This dataset is incomplete. Even the most respected organizations (International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), National Geographic, Biodiversity hotspots, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) among others) have partially characterized datasets, although it is to be hoped that directing more funding to biodiversity over the coming years will assist in this endeavor. We therefore strongly recommend that value should not be maintained by a commercial market, and requires independent, unbiased maintenance with adequate representation of global stakeholders.

Table 1. Ecosystem value table, normalized to Platinum, Bronze, Silver, and Gold categories based on 13 public ranking schemas.

Integrity vs value

It is critical to distinguish between the two data layers of integrity and value. The first is a dimension of reality which makes the unit tangible; the second is a human-assigned category. Mistakenly, conflating the two is one reason the biodiversity unit has been technically complex, a problem compounded by ideological differences.

The integrity of a hectare of ecosystem is based on how authentically it is expressed, its full health, or comparing like for like. The value of the ecosystem, representing the intrinsic biodiversity density of that region and the threat of degradation, is determined by geographical location, and compares unlike ecosystems. They are independent components, you can have high integrity/low value, or any other variation of the two.

Areas near high-value ecosystems (forest outside of a biodiversity hotspot), or high-density ecosystems that are not threatened (Amazon with low deforestation rates) could have full integrity, but will have a lower value category. Degraded areas within high-value ecosystems, (eg. cattle farms inside a biodiversity hotspot) could be high value, but would have low integrity. Making this distinction is important as it places financial pressure on returning high-value ecosystems in biodiverse regions to full integrity, and shifts farming practices to more abundant and less biodiverse regions. Unique biodiversity hotspots under threat from mining, logging, and agriculture will be supported by greater financial incentives.

Schemas that conflate these two data layers do not properly differentiate unit attributes for stakeholders. For instance, some biodiversity credit buyers only want to buy from threatened ecosystems (classic carbon additionality criteria), while some philanthropic donors fund across all threat levels in high-biodiversity zones. Some funders will only fund uplift (increased integrity) while others will only fund conservation (maintained integrity) with little interest in the underlying value of the ecosystem.

Calculation of a biodiversity credit

Calculations for generating biodiversity units from a methodology must be methodology-specific. A unit simply gives standardized dimensions for the final output. A simple example of a unified calculation formula follows, which may be further modified by area-based methodologies.

Where a indexes the one-hectare unit areas that make up the project area, A. Where t indexes the one-month unit time that covers the total monitoring period T, and the first unit time is t=1, which indexes a one-month period. Note that biodiversity units can only be summed if they have the same Value.

As shown in Figure 2, this calculation is interoperable for all area-based conservation, restoration, and corporate disclosures.

The formula above is sufficient for conservation projects. By definition, restoration projects monitor actions that lead to positive changes in integrity. As the unit time is short, it is reasonable to simply credit the integrity in each successive month of the crediting time. However, some methodologies may choose to subtract a baseline integrity when they credit. If so, the mechanism to update that baseline from one crediting period to another must be clear for fair crediting.

For calculations, Integrity is taken as constant throughout a one-month unit time period, and rapidly changing integrity must be averaged over this time. Changes in integrity are reflected over the full monitoring period of the project, subdivided into one-month crediting intervals.

Discussion

In summary, the interoperable biodiversity unit presented in this paper takes advantage of a timely opportunity to solve a wicked problem. By comparing an ecosystem to itself (like for like), we resolve the problem of uniqueness within, and abstraction between, ecosystems. Then all that remains is to standardize area and time to the smallest intuitive functional dimensions to solve economic problems with pricing and granularity.

Global interoperability enables conservation funding and other resources to be directed precisely where they need to go, based on the value of each unit which is dictated by the global free-market and independent authorities on planetary targets.

Now we cover many common conflations between the unit, and the concepts related to it.

Biodiversity vs carbon

There is considerable conflation between carbon markets and biodiversity markets. Carbon markets certainly have had problems with a lack of credibility, transparency, double counting, and equity (58). But, they always had a universal unit, a ton of carbon. Biodiversity markets can iterate on carbon-market failings, but the unit problem is a separate problem, and conflation between the two issues has delayed the design and adoption of an appropriate unit.

Where possible, we have incorporated lessons learned from carbon market failings in the selection of negotiable unit attributes and Indigenous co-design. However, the majority of unit decisions were constrained by logic, pragmatism, and multidisciplinary theory. The main reason we were able to clearly elucidate these constraints was to remove issues that were irrelevant to the discussion (see Figure 1).

The most powerful tool we had in negotiating this unit, was the willingness to leave intractable, but irrelevant debates out of the discussion.

Unit vs metric

Metrics are the first level of scientific abstraction. A metric is any core measurement, which usually has a scientific protocol for standardization. It typically includes not just the measurement itself, but a set of repeatable instructions or parameters. For example, the “diameter of a tree at breast height” is the core metric in almost all forest carbon estimates. Everything else is calculated from this raw data with standardized instructions in obtaining the metric, and extrapolated with allometric equations for scale.

In biodiversity, “species observation” might be a metric, but identifying a species is very different with different protocols depending on the kingdom (insects, trees, fish, etc.) or ecosystem (identifying dolphins in the ocean is different from sand crabs on the beach). Raw data, like game-camera footage, is converted into a metric like a species observation, through a formal process that controls for taxonomy, natural variation, DNA vs phenotypes, and species evolution. Other metrics of biodiversity have been proposed (such as eDNA testing of water), and local Indigenous people use their own metrics (such as the taste of the bark of an Amazonian tree). Both are highly accurate chemical tests, but practically impossible to correlate to one another.

It’s useful, but not essential, to use metrics and units that can be understood by different cultures across industrialized and non-industrialized paradigms. We do recommend metrics that meet cross-cultural epistemological requirements - prioritizing game cameras over eDNA. What is essential is that metrics are abstracted sufficiently for global markets, while retaining accuracy.

Metrics are constantly evolving with technology and scientific developments. The aim of this paper is not to constrain metrics, but instead to differentiate between metrics which are useful for market purposes (cleanly generate an accurate unit) and those which are useful for scientific purposes (measure ecosystems in other ways).

Much of what has made the unit debates intractable is the attempt to standardize metrics, which are desirably heterogeneous, instead of providing a comparable format for their final abstraction. This paper does not constrain metrics, it merely asks if metrics can be used in an ecosystem unit or not.

Unit vs methodology

Methodologies are the second level of scientific abstraction. A methodology is a protocol to make meaning out of metrics. The methodology chosen by researchers, often validated in open review, is a protocol to measure and quantify the biodiversity of a particular ecosystem, usually using a combination of metrics in a formal abstraction. In the biodiversity crediting market, these methodologies are technical documents that explain how to generate biodiversity credits. Once a methodology is published, the methodology can be used by projects worldwide to calculate their credits. Some methodologies have certification from companies that provide certification of biodiversity credits. Most methodologies are ecosystem-specific and constrained by action (i.e., a methodology for increasing pollinators in farmland).

Not all crediting schemas will use methodologies, some may credit from metrics alone. But in all cases, methodologies are independent of the final comparable abstraction, the unit, and merely clearly describe how the unit was calculated and from what metrics and with what justification.

Much of what has made the unit debates intractable is the attempt to prioritize one methodology over another, which are desirably heterogeneous, instead of providing a comparable format for their final abstraction. This paper does not constrain methodologies, it merely asks them to report their output in a final abstraction, an interoperable unit.

Unit vs price.

A unit is not a price. A price depends on the buyer-perceived market value at the time of sale (related to, but not to be conflated with, the Value category in this paper). This includes the perceived market value and reputation of each project developer, certifier, methodology, metric, ecosystem, action, and even charismatic species involved in unit composition.

As already described, units need to be logical and tangible in their composition. However, buyers do not have to be rational in pricing. In fact, the field of behavioral economics tells us they are likely to be quite irrational (59). Indeed, early market pricing for restoration is already nearly triple that of conservation, and inverse to species density, showing anthropomorphic buyer motivations (4, 53).

Furthermore, IP have been clear in many contexts that they do not believe biodiversity has a price, or it is priceless. And many abstain from putting a price on biodiversity no matter how it is measured.

Our task, in this case, is merely to design units that accurately reflect biodiversity itself. Not to promote pricing or value judgments on biodiversity.

We did bow to current market pricing in our choice of area/time granularity. Preferring the smallest functional ecosystem unit of hectare/month over alternatives such as sqkm/year. But this decision will not affect final market pricing for biodiversity, which will be based on market normalization in the future. Fluctuations in the price of the credit, or the price of land a credit is associated with, do not affect the unit it is measured in.

Unit time vs. monitoring time

The time component of the unit was chosen as one month (30 days) for minimum viable granularity. Larger monitoring periods (duration of crediting periods, methodology requirements, etc.) can be easily subdivided into smaller time intervals for conversion to this unit.

Controls and requirements for monitoring period length fall outside the scope of the unit design and must be accounted for by methodologies, certification bodies, international standards, and verifiers (see Figure 1).

Much of what has made the unit debates intractable is the option to select from a wide variety of seemingly arbitrary scales for standardizing time (month, year, twenty years) and area (hectare, acre, meter-squared). The point of a unit is to make a logical choice that makes intuitive sense to people who will use the unit, stick with it, and obtain stakeholder consensus around that choice. And this is what we have done.

Unit vs verification/validation

Methodologies, metrics, and units may be audited by independent parties in order to validate claims about biodiversity outcomes. Indeed, we recommend third-party validation. However, the validity of reported units and the comparability of reported are completely separate issues. The authors of this paper can all claim to be ten feet tall, and the truth of this claim does not affect the tape measure used to measure our height (see Figure 1).

We do note that making units tangible and simple greatly reduces the opportunity for manipulation of reporting, and this was a strong consideration in unit dimensions.

Unit vs market

This biodiversity unit does not have to be used as a commodity or transact in a marketplace. A unit that meets the requirements for a commodity has advantages in tangibility, market adoption, and accounting for expiration (biodiversity is either alive or dead) (28). However, given the strong presence of charitable stakeholders in this space, one could argue that an effective unit cannot only be commercial (13). It is preferable if this unit is used interchangeably across commercial and noncommercial settings. This unit can be also called a biodiversity ‘credit’, ‘certificate’, ‘asset’, or any other semantic variation as long as they are identical dimensions.

Much of what has made the unit a wicked problem is the endless debate about the commercialization of Nature, a highly emotional argument. In turn, the solution is to use it as a measurement across philosophical divides.

A note on offsetting

Biodiversity offsetting is the practice of compensating ecosystem degradation by providing ecological protections elsewhere. A biodiversity unit is a unit of measurement. While the authors of this paper cannot constrain its use in offsetting, the authors of this paper are opposed to offsetting for the following logical reasons.

While the efficacy of carbon offsetting is hotly debated, carbon is a basic element and can circulate atmospherically between ecosystems, and from ‘desirable’ to ‘undesirable’ states (58). Biodiversity is alive, unhealthy outside of the ecosystem it evolved in, and cannot circulate across ecosystems and between life and death. A living pool must be maintained; extinction is a forever event.

The practice of biodiversity offsetting directly contravenes the values and rights championed by Indigenous Peoples as well as the legal precepts of emerging Rights of Nature legislative frameworks (17).

Conclusion

The key to this unit’s interoperability lies in the fact that standardizing time, value, and area, allows methodologies and metrics to converge on a standardized integrity measurement from the perspective of the ecosystem itself. The integrity metric accounts for path dependence (a characteristic of complex (i.e. natural) systems) by comparing the ecosystem to itself (like for like).

This standardized integrity is critical to the interoperability of the biodiversity unit, allowing the evolution of market-based value comparisons and price determination based on principles of perfect competition, while accounting for the uniqueness of biodiversity credits’ origin.

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Authors

James Paynter PhD¹, Ana Isabel Lopez^2,3, Alvaro Vallejo⁴, Nawi K. Flores^5,6, Enrique Balp⁷, Andrea D. Burbank MD^2,8*,

Author contributions:

J. Paynter led the writing of the article, assisted by all authors. All authors reviewed, revised, and approved of the final article. A. Burbank, A. Vallejo, A. Lopez, E. Balp, N. Flores, and J. Paynter conceptualized the topic. All authors contributed to research design.

Funding and Support: This research was financially supported by funding from Savimbo Inc., and contributions by its authors. Note: The article contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the affiliated or sponsoring institutions.

Conflict of Interest: Savimbo Inc. is a social enterprise which sells biodiversity credits, and has a biodiversity methodology that sometimes earns royalties when other people use it. Andrea Burbank is CEO of Savimbo Inc., Ana Lopez is an employee of Savimbo Inc. Alvaro Vallejo is the International Carbon Registry Biodiversity Program Lead. The other authors have no competing interests.

Human Subjects Statement: No human subjects were involved in this research.

Acknowledgments: Miguel Chindoy, Enrique Balp-Straffon, Roberto Duif, James Pittman. Grace Rachmany, Jhony Lopez, Michal Krawczyk, and Fernando Lezama. The independent Indigenous leaders panel working with Savimbo.

Author’s note

Science is not a social club. This paper was written by an astrophysicist (published in Nature) and an MD (published in Science). We know how to write science papers.

The ideas were also tested before they were written down. Over a year of drop-in, ad-hoc working groups, 99 Indigenous leaders challenged and debated them.

Several journals have still refused it, while publishing multiple opinion pieces arguing the problem has no solution. It isn’t the writing. So it’s the topic, the co-authors, or the conclusions.

The stated reason is usually that it falls between social and mathematical science. It isn’t observational research, and it isn’t opinion. It’s closer to a proof, in an ecology topic. There was no category for it, just as there hasn’t been a multidisciplinary solution to the problem.

So here it is, open-source and machine-readable. We’ll keep submitting (we know the game). There’s no reason to hide actual work in the meantime.

Download PDF Spanish

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“There are deeper currencies at stake.” — Andrew Collier

​A lot of climate and biodiversity initiatives are thinly-veiled real estate schemes. Let’s talk about that openly. Why it doesn’t work, and what the alternatives are.

Our policy is: Land is for locals. But we're also pragmatic about the equity of formal land titling in nations that have been living under colonialism for 200 years.​

Why we still use the word colonialism

​A lot of people tell us not to use the word "colonialism" as it's activating and a turnoff to people with funding and institutional wealth. (That is kind of hilarious, you have to admit 🤓).

But at the end of the day, it's not an ideological term. It's a precise, technical, structural, and economic one.

“Mass poverty is not some kind of primordial lack; it is the result of an economic system that appropriates resources from the South, pays wages below the cost of subsistence, drains profits, and seeks to militate against attempts at sovereign economic development.” — Jason Hickel

So you can't reengineer what you won't name, and this is really important for fixing planetary boundaries. Colonialism could better be understood as the extraction of resources from other people's ecosystems beyond what they could reasonably sustain. And that’s what caused climate change, so that’s what we have to fix.

Land rights today

This isn't a yesterday problem, but a today one.

Forests are still being mowed down under colonial logic. At COP30 we helped negotiate on behalf of a 30,000-hectare forest in eastern Bolivia where two European nationals — holding title from before Bolivia capped private holdings at 5 hectares — were preparing to sell to a Brazilian soy giant to clear it. The forest sits on Monkoxi customary territory, the last forested corridor of the Chiquitania on the Brazil border. Climate scientists warned that losing it would disrupt the sky rivers — the atmospheric currents that carry water across the southern Amazon — with cascading effects far beyond the property line. Bolivia ratified ILO Convention 169 in 1991. The people who live in the forest never consented to the sale. The paper says one thing; the land remembers another.

It's unfair not to be honest that "titles" are concentrated among people who live in other countries and the city, and out of sync with Indigenous, customary rights, and smallfarmer reality. These are economic structures that also don't usually cross the border to Indigenous lands, where often land can't be owned at all.

About alternate systems

We do need to point out that there are alternate systems, and that’s basically Indigenous territory in a nutshell, or variant sovereign territories that rethink the modern nation-state. Basically, the closest Western analog is Georgism. There is currently a Henry George revival — land as commons, and rent-seeking as the original sin, "you're born owing money for the privilege of occupying space”.

But we'd argue:

1. ​Georgism is a 150-year-old Western attempt to reason its way to a position Indigenous law arrived at first and never left.

2. UNDRIP and ILO 169 are the global legal expression of what George was groping toward.

3. Property law in Europe was a 500-year wrong turn that the rest of the planet is now slowly course-correcting from.

4. Indigenous law gives you the same outcome with less philosophical overhead — start with customary rights.

Doing this simply and easily is just starting with customary rights and land control. We have practice guides for how to apply land control in biodiversity and reforestation as well.

What we mean by land control

Land control is a term we started using for "Savimbo will go to economic bat for your customary rights with you."

It doesn't mean “might makes right”. It means that the people who live in an ecosystem are the most accountable for and to it. They are the ones who actually control what physically happens there, so they are the ones who can commit to protecting it ecologically. Land control means they are already in a position to do so, so we can start working with them to get resources for conservation, make that formal, papered, etc.

• Economic land rights solutions. They won’t qualify for the carbon market without a formal title. (That’s one of the big insider facts most people don’t know, contributing to inequity in that market.) But they can qualify for Savimbo’s impact biodiversity credit, ecotourism, reforestation, and other programs that can reasonably operate within jurisdictional compliance when formal titles are never going to happen, or endlessly delayed for political reasons.

• Legal land rights solutions. Sometimes they don’t have land control, but do have customary rights (historical and traditional use of the land). For instance, they’re displaced, or there is someone else logging or mining. Then it’s not an issue of how to get resources to them, it’s an enforcement and legal issue. We have the Tierra program for land buybacks and grants to cover legal action with a network of land rights lawyers we recommend.

This is really important because of this image published in Science in 2024. Most of the regions we need to protect at a planet scale are concentrated in areas that got the short end of the stick for land titles, and still have governments colluding with colonialism in one way or another. But they do have Indigenous customary rights and local land control.

Indigenous land rights are a global problem, and one that is finally getting the attention it deserves as a climate intervention. Land control is how we operationalise Indigenous land rights without getting stuck in the formal-title bottleneck.

We are also pacifists; we can't work in conflict, and we must resolve conflict to begin working on higher-order problems like planetary consciousness. But this comes with nuance as we consider pacifism a trade. Not an ideology.

​So we work in a lot of areas like Putumayo with historical violence, inequity, and even slavery. Sometimes this is recent history. For example, in Colombia, the government is undergoing repatriation efforts called "Restitución de tierras". These are important healing processes for people and communities that have experienced war or violence, and a tree-planting or biodiversity initiative needs to work with, weave through, and respect them. 

Totally gratuitous red-pilling

Okay, just because you read this far into the article, you get a Savimbo special. ​

So people really do want to work in climate with the best of intentions, but often really have not fixed their subconscious colonialism. Yes, we definitely mean 80% of the “conscious living” crowd who are transparently buying vacation homes their children can inherit in the Global South.

Ideally, what do you do when intentions ≠ outcomes? You teach.

So we often recommend this Wired article called Land ownership makes no sense, as a colonialism red-pill. Then, and importantly, homework! It’s not enough to just nod-heads when you’re trying to get into the subconscious paradigms at play. We have to actually bring that home and into rewiring our identity.

We recommend that people read about it and think about what conflict would arise from applying it in their own home city.

They generally tend to come back and say that's practically impossible, it would never happen. And we say, fine, then don't try, and apply your systems in Indigenous territory. That's why there are borders, and Indigenous Peoples are so concerned about keeping them intact. 

For the 🌎.

Not easy!

Maybe it’s just Drea’s (not-so-secret ADHD). But we think maybe our accomplishments are perhaps just a weird combination of underestimating a challenge, then being too goddamn stubborn to admit we did. And completing it anyway on sheer grit.

So newsletters, turns out they’re not that easy in a high-growth startup. But particularly not in a startup that has authentic Indigenous friends, members, representatives and cofounders. Because a lot of below-canopy or off-grid culture, and problems, and negotiations, doesn’t really need to be shared.

It’s not secret, it’s intimate. And we like it that way.

We’ve been explaining to people all week that yes, our pipeline really is that big. And no, it won’t be public. And why not? It’s not just privacy, it’s a kind of appropriate level of cultural resonance and trust and comfort with exposure before you can talk about an authentic community partnership comfortably publicly.

We think maybe a lot of startups get this wrong, and hey most startups there’s a reason to talk about partnerships early, when “everyone knows” startups are just getting by.

But in OUR population, the population we were designed to serve and meaningfully employ, the 1 billion people who live in tropical forests, and now lots of friends from some oceans, and arctic, and a couple of deserts. (And hey why not a savannah? They’re cool and we just learned that’s a Taino word, although our first savanna friends are from Africa...)

...everyone DOESN’T know that.

Everyone DOESN’T know how tough it is to run a high-growth startup and really stick to your guns and build trust with low resources. So no, our pipeline isn’t public. We don’t claim community affiliations even after contracts are signed until we’re certain we’re a little ways into holding up our end of the bargain.

So newsletters are harder than we thought they would be.

Why we’re still writing

Our public channels were designed to be a duet from the beginning. In fact, we highly recommend you listen to the whole group so you can hear the harmony. Drea, Fernando, Jhony, and the jungle kids.

It’s hard to know how to describe a group that is divergent and yet united. We’ve been explaining that a lot lately when we get involved at the negotiating table with our Indigenous friends. How you need uniqueness for a collective voice to function properly.

There are a couple of ground rules for Savimbo negotiators and the tables they negotiate at. First, they only have to authentically represent their community. Second, they are always independent. They aren’t held to the Savimbo brand. Savimbo is the access, not a voice they are responsible to protect.

But for the responsibility of communicating the Savimbo voice, there is a similar level of difference. One of our internal mantras is “different but equal“, and that’s a core key to our success. We love each other’s differences, the different voices, ethnicities, genders, ages, backgrounds, skills, and nationalities on the team. It keeps things interesting and us curious about each other.

It’s like a stage crew and behind the scenes, very organized. We hire for conscientiousness, train on the job, and hold people accountable to their level of responsibility. A little like planet surgery, mostly. Probably. People get promoted, rewarded, or held accountable in small teams, usually. We’re still sorting it out. But we like The Culture Code and we try to stick to it as much as possible.

We think, if you want to solve hard problems like peace in a dangerous place with a sad history, or deforestation in the face of scary drivers, or protecting animals when people don’t have a good food supply — you really need to work as a team and be very clear on who does what when.

We’ve been proud of our team for a long time, and how they treat each other, and that pride is important. It’s the real juice in the engine.

So we’ll keep writing the newsletter so you can hear a little more about that. Because we think this internal fungus we’ve been brewing might have some cool funkadelic properties...🍄

What’s happening now

Soooo. Lots of pilots. But yep! Finally! Clients!!! Okay what can we say about clients.... they’re BIG. To gigantic for us. We’re scared. Its also going to take a while. But they seem pretty benign, like being a mongoose and suddenly finding yourself in a herd of elephants.

Maybe sort of like that. Everyone wants to know WHO and frankly we do too. But its just goign to take a while to announce that and when we do thats real news and probably won’t be newsletter but headlines.

Lets say that certifying the biodiversity credit took us to another level, one we really don’t have a lot of experience in yet, but people have been pretty understanding while we figure it out. Maybe this global business stuff isn’t that bad. We’ll let you know.

• The biodiversity credits did their first OTC trading (yeah, it’s a big deal)

• Jhony and Karen is starting a site in Peru

• If we didn’t tell you already, we won the Caracol Awards for protection of the environment

• Were scouting sites in Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Africa... more in Brazil.... a lot of sites.

• The charity arm opened for real finance with permission to raise funds with 100% granting for the formal UNDP group IEG-LAC.

• We have our first AfroDescendant site in Colombia and they rock

• Drea will be at Economic Futures in San Francisco

• Drea went to NY Climate week, Drea and Fernando covered CEIBA, and Drea and Robert covered Innovate 4 Nature event in LATAM to negotiate. (Too much Drea, more Jhony!)

How we feel about it

Sigh. Too much fame, not enough sales! We know, we know, attention brings resources, clients, positive feedback, and more importantly, community support.

But our favorite media from all of this was this article from Forbes Colombia with some of our favorite people that just said simply: Savimbo is doing its job.

Attention is one thing, doing a responsible job, that pays people who do great work is something else. And its far more important to use to accomplish the latter at scale.

So circling back to honestly the most successful and important and invested community in Savimbo (the first one, so don’t think we’re being unfair).

Cool stuff you probably didn’t see before

This is the smallfarmer community in Putumayo that started Savimbo and stuck with us through the really tough start. We think they are awesome.

We're super serious and professional almost all of the time. (Okay, yeah thats a lie). But regardless, we've decided to make a newsletter for Friends.

Why friends

When we say Friends, it’s capitalized. (For us, it’s basically a technical term.) It’s the people who like this page. We’ve done a good job of figuring out our clients. But really, our Friends defy logic — one reason we like them.

Yes, we have a business. We’re proud of it, and it has really cool products, and cool clients, but we mostly trade social capital with Friends. That’s also cool.

So why are you guys our friends? We don’t know. You come from all corners of the world, you have really different jobs, cultures, ages, and ethnicities. Most of you aren’t rich. Lots of you can only talk to Drea or Fernando, or Jhony at first, and only gradually get to know the culture you didn’t come from. There are two, now three languages at Savimbo, and many of you only speak one or the other.

But you all speak #Nature.

People want to know about Savimbo’s culture, staff, and general tings n’ stuff. The truth is, we do work really hard. We also know when it’s time for a hammock — and we’re proud of that balance. We’re pretty unfiltered in person, and we also like that earthiness. Thanks for appreciating our authenticity.

We also appreciate you.

Why a newsletter

We don’t keep you guys up on things like we should. We wanted to, and we talk to you guys on WhatsApp, and LinkedIn, and jungle visits and stuff. But more and more, things are happening too fast to keep everyone informed properly.

We’re careful with social media. Drea gets to be the bad cop with the savage climate dissections. Fernando is the North Star with careful commentary and a poetic style. And Jhony, well, he’s a rock star as you all know. We’ve tried to get him to say something. But he mostly talks on YouTube. (Although if you ever get to catch him on a podium, he’s fantastic at public speaking.)

Savimbo social is specifically designed to be a cure for your climate anxiety. The Kids run it, and come up with all the content from our jungle sites. Karen, Dayana, and Ilver are the main voices, but the whole team contributes when we have fun ideas.

We love their work. It’s endlessly fresh, creative, and authentic. We didn’t want to spoil it with TMI. So if you really want to stay up on the news, check in here and we’ll tell you via email.

What’s happening now

Forgive us for being a bit coy. We don’t always talk about what we are up to, for privacy reasons. A lot of the communities we work with talk to us for months, even years before going public with a project. That’s why we have our no-strings-pilots because we know trust is earned.

So we’ll dip a toe in the water with SOME news. See how it goes, and be more chatty once we get the hang of it.

• The biodiversity credits certified (yeah, it’s a big deal)

• Fernando is starting a site in Brazil

• Drea is scouting a site in Guatemala

• Jhony is handling the PR and ecotourism in Colombia

• We think we have our first AfroDescendant site, we’ll know soon

• Drea will be at NY Climate week, primarily for this event

• Drea and Fernando will be at CEIBA to negotiate

How we feel about it

Honestly, this part is scary. If you know us, and you follow us. Then you know we’re a scrappy underdog. We never got the funding our competitors got. We don’t have famous people putting their followers behind us. And none of us is wealthy.

We work for a segment of the population that lots of people want to take advantage of, and no one wants to fund directly.

To break global barriers like we just did is really new territory for us. Honestly, it’s a lot of exposure for a small company, and we’re worried about misstepping. We’re all feeling the pressure, and no one really knows what will happen.

So sign up to the newsletter and we’ll tell you. (Hey cliffhangers are good, just go hiking with Jhony and he’ll show you!)

Cool stuff you probably didn’t see before

A really old video of some really cool Friends. Thanks Douglas for the photos.

We keep getting asked why our clients partner with us. The truth is, our clients are using us for a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing planetary landscape. So maybe it’s not totally obvious. We’ll explain → 

Roxanna representing Onassis Fine Jewelry at our COP16 biodiversity event.

Yes, of course, like any responsible business owners, we went looking for clients. But we didn’t find our clients; they found us. 

Some of our clients did the planes, trains, automobiles, and backpacking trip into the jungle. Some were sent by friends, some just searched the right things on Google. Some we really have no idea — we forgot to ask and once it we started talking it was obvious that of course we would find each other.

We DO call into the void regularly on social media, cold calls, and search engines. But we haven’t been able to find a pattern in the people who decide to buy our products. No similarities in age, gender, ethnicity, industry, culture, language, or geography. We know that they all have planetary consciousness, but they also arrived at that awareness through different paths — logic, science, spirituality, or just traveling. 

So maybe the question isn’t ‘How did our clients find us?’, but ‘What were they searching for?’

Our clients are already cool

Yes, we’re the coolest. But here’s the thing, our clients were already cool before they met us.

Now we have lots of Friends who are non-commercial and help us in other ways. But our clients have a business relationship with us. So they buy our products instead of just supporting our general punkiness.

If you look at them as a group, like a lot of people are doing now becuase we’re launching new products globally, you can see they are all successful entrepreneurs targeting urban hubs. And they are pretty trendy. Most of them have cutting edge products, or market defining stuff of their own.

So as a group you could say our clients are all savvy businesspeople who have built something innovative, climate-friendly, and forward-thinking for their own markets. They’re living proof that the economy of the future is already here.

Our clients still had a problem

All our clients are credible people. We’re picky about who we do business with, and we truly admire the people we’ve told you about. They are serious-minded, smart, and trustworthy.

What’s interesting about our clients as a group is that they still had a problem. Their core focus was on their ecosystems. Urban hubs, smart cities, multigenerational consumers, reducing impact, ethical sales, emerging tech, and science.

They were solving business cases in their context.

But all of them had Nature dependencies, and in all the settings they were selling in, this was a question for their stakeholders. What were they doing about it?  How were they giving back? What was their sustainable sourcing strategy? How were they going to motivate their staff? What was their brand's positioning on the planet?

And most importantly — Where was the proof? 

In today’s world, innovation isn’t enough. Customers, investors, and the media don’t just ask, ‘What are you building?’ They ask, ‘Can we trust it?’ And that question of credibility takes time and resources our clients couldn’t afford to pull away from their core brand.

We’re mentors and allies

Sometimes it makes sense to handle something in-house. A lot of the major brands are attempting to do that for Nature right now with insetting teams. 

We know because we get a lot of frantic calls from those teams. For anyone working in this field, it’s rapidly becoming apparent just how specific this expertise really is. Like technology, planetary science is evolving too fast to be adequately curated, published, or taught in urban centers or universities.

Just to be clear here, the complex problem — whether in-house or outsourced — is how to convert money to Nature. See, you can put a lot of money into something and not get Nature out the other side. (And a lot of people around the world are discovering that the hard way right now.) 

Now it is not narcissistic at all, for Savimbo to state: we really are experts. For one thing, we employ a lot of Indigenous and local communities that aren’t necessarily going to work a 9 to 5 in the city, or get a PhD. But their hands-on expertise — more of a trade-apprenticship model — is absolutely unmatched. And for the core founding team our expertise is well-documented for over 20 years. 

So when it comes to the planet, we’re serious about our tagline. We’re mentors and allies.

But everyone also agrees, Savimbo’s best work is below the canopy. Making that conversion count. Stretching the financing as far as it will go. Making sure everyone knows work was done — AND done fairly. 

We’ve already built the financial rails, the Indigenous partnerships, and the biodiversity governance systems that make climate action real and verifiable. 

Our clients know we take care of the credibility, so they can take care of their business.

So thats why

So that’s why our clients work with us. We’re a competitive edge. 

When you work with us, you don’t have to split your focus. You stay the hero of your own story, while we stand beside you as the guide — making sure that when your innovation is tested in the market, it’s backed by trust, legitimacy, and transparency.

We’re not going to bullshit. Because we care about the planet more than we care about money. And we’re very clear on who we work for, we work for Nature. And our clients know that too. 

When you work with us, you don’t just build a great climate-friendly brand. You become recognized as a trusted pioneer — someone who shows the world not only that a new economy is possible, but that it can be done right.

For the 🌎.

Lots of people say they want more updates on what Savimbo’s been up to, but there’s talk and there’s action. So we’re sending you a sample newsletter. If enough people actively respond below we’ll put some extra time into keeping you informed this way.

Regardless, it’s a good summary of what 2024 has brought us. So here goes.

Big news

We did it. Or more precisely Jhony did it. World's first certified biodiversity credit project in open review from the Villagarzón project. Still have a couple steps to go to issue credits, but its progress.

Policy

There is a lot more to be announced but Fernando and Jhony were influential in creating a new org at COP16 called International Ecological Guardians that will be funded by UNDP.

Charity

Our charity projects for giving season are the displaced Batwa in Uganda, and the displaced Embera chami. If you're doing end-of-year donations, send it there.

Fun

Okay this is probably one of those "you had to be there" moments, but we finally caught Karen's fox on camera. Hard to decide who's more adorable, Karen or the fox.

So Savimbo is definitely an interactive experience. We’re too small and punky to be anything but personal at this point. If you want us to have a newsletter, you have to prove it by going to the Friends page and signing up.

Subscribe now

Generally we just communicate on social but if there is an interest in long-form or email comms we can probably engage with it this year.

Much love as always, to you guys and for the 🌍.

Drea, Jhony, and Fernando

Whats ecotourism? Read on! This article critically analyzes what it means to be a conscious modern traveler. We've worked hard to cultivate a special blend of ecological tourism that is associated with social justice, economic wellness, applied anthropology, circular economy, and high-impact biodiversity and cultural preservation. 

Indigenos art, Waonaan, Darien Gap, Panama

 We all want to travel to new and exotic locations, it’s part of the human condition to be curious about the next horizon. So how do we do that consciously and well on a changing planet?

What is eco tourism? 

Most people are unaware of the impact of tourism on the environment. 

In a 2015 analysis, researchers found up to three orders of magnitude difference in water and land use from tourism as compared to local use.  However, this overconsumption was more associated with luxury tourism, five-star accommodation, or tourism based on energy-intense transport modes (cruise ships, aviation) or long-distance travel.

If we want to define ecotourism simply, it’s travel without high environmental (or in our case social) impacts. In other words, travel where the impact of the travel is ecological conservation, and where eco tourism benefits outweigh social and environmental costs, or even leave a positive environmental balance! 

Research on happiness has shown that long-term happiness is associated with buying experiences, instead of buying possessions. One of the chief advantages of ecotourism is that it is trade in just that, experiences or deep and satisfying flow. 

How does ecotourism help the environment?

Sustainability ecotourism is becoming increasingly popular worldwide, as more and more citizens become interested in holistic lifestyles, circular economy, and learning from Indigenous ecological knowledge. 

But just because you're interested, doesn't mean you're educated. 

In fact, we would argue that the purpose of our ecotourism program is educational. Chief ecotourism advantages are kinesthetic and experiential learning about post-colonial economics and sustainable lifestyles. 

We still hear a lot from visitors looking for luxury treetop lodges and champagne stays in the Amazon. (Always good for a belly laugh 😂.) But the truth is responsible tourism, natural tourism, begins with the education of travelers about their own lifestyles, and preparation to learn a new lifestyle from people who live in ecotourism destinations.

As we tell people inbound to our sites, this is not your vacation home. This is the chance of a lifetime to learn what real Nature feels like, how much better you feel when it's cuing your biological rhythms, and how you actually have to live to maintain that experience. Once you really understand the impact of tourism on environment, you simply won't travel any other way.

The meaning of ecotourism is a true cultural exchange to support and learn from communities that have maintained biodiverse sites, animal populations, and conserved ecosystems because their lifestyle is low-impact. 

Ecotourism pros and cons

At first glance the benefits of ecotourism are obvious. Who wouldn't want to visit a natural paradise and hang out with another culture?

Local sites are just as excited about the prospect of international visitors with ready cash and deep pockets. Pretty much any deep-jungle Indigenous site we work with is delighted at the idea of having ecotourism visitors.

But the environmental impact of tourism can sometimes be very different than the dream. The effects of overtourism can be hard to anticipate in advance for a community that is inexperienced in hosting visitors. And tourism environmental impact is often only understood after it's too late. Lastly, real eco touring is a very different physical comfort level for someone from the industrialized world unaccustomed to a simpler life, and simpler needs.  

Safety is also an issue. It isn't only about the community, or deep jungle settings which are often host to a variety of natural dangers and illegal activities.  Visitors need to be coached carefully and actively on avoiding childlike and dangerous mistakes (ie picking up a poisonous snake) that an adult in the host site might not think for a minute to warn them against. 

So said from claims of ecotourism benefits, here are some well-researched pros and cons of eco tourism. Because all good solutions start with conscious design. 

• Pros. Eco tourism experiences like birdwatching, photography, jungle hiking, and camping can be a very low-impact way to bring sustainable revenue for Nature to combat extractive regional businesses like mining, petroleum, logging, and narcotrafficking.  

• Cons. Overtourism can inflate the cost of living, reduce local access to important infrastructure and transport, and lead to a lack of community privacy. 

• Pros. Ecotourism can bring attention to important conservation topics that are more difficult to engage with without firsthand experience. Many industrialized word advocates first found their passion for Indigenous cultures, biodiversity, or Nature through a guided ecotourism experience. 

• Cons. "Ethno-tourism" or the marketing of Indigenous cultural experiences can dilute culture and become exploitative. The "sacred is not for sale" and commercial transactions around rites and ceremonies can dilute rare cultures and languages instead of strengthening them. 

Understanding ecotourism cons is a potent tool to better designed projects, and better outcomes. Ecotourism meaning lies in the meaning we give it, not a word — but a real experience. 

Ecotourism examples

So what's ecotourism? Let's take a look at some of the history of ecotourism before we get into the basic definitions and principle of eco tourism. Because the reality of a healthy ecotourism trip requires strong boundaries on both sides.

Ecotourism in the United States is very different from ecotourism abroad. Some historical facts about ecotourism make it obvious what principles to follow, and which to avoid. 

• The Hawaiian Islands are a paradise, but contact with European traders in the 1800s was not beneficial to the Indigenous population who were severely impacted by sexually transmitted diseases and the introduction of invasive species. The effects of this continue to present-day economic colonialism through gentrification, blockbusting, and price hikes. 

• The Galapagos Islands by contrast, has preserved its biodiversity by enforcing strict stay lengths and an eco-tourism tax.  They have instituted price hikes to reduce overtourism and have clear, strict rules enforced by authorized tour providers. Foreigners are prohibited from buying property except through marriage (you'll see this theme repeated often in post-colonialism). 

• Costa Rica was the poster-child for ecotourism in the 1990's. Turning around the top deforestation rate . However, government policies that favored larger, or foreign-owned ecotourism businesses produced economic colonialism associated with ecotourism. 

• Thailand by contrast, has some of the highest levels of tourism in the world but strict policies about land purchases and residency stays which has enabled a sustainable economy for ecotourism there. However 

Ecotourism facts, and case studies from real projects, and natural experiments around the world go a long way to guide sites in setting up sustainable ecotourism that goes the distance, instead of providing a quick buck a the long-term expense of a vulnerable community or ecosystem. 

Indigenous ecotourism best practices and principles

We follow social sustainability and anthropological guidelines for our ecotourism programs. Ecotourism activities are negotiated with the community in advance to be low-impact and positive. Here are some sustainable tourism examples. 

In  2009, World Bank experts analyzed different Indigenous-led ecotourism case studies and concluded that certain types of ecotourism can benefit Indigenous communities if the following rules are respected:. .

Example of ecotourism:

• Small projects with the community in control,

• Recruitment of "responsible tourists" with an emphasis on participating in community activities,

• Ecotourism activities marketed in direct relationship to nature tourism, including conservation efforts and sustainable biodiversity,

• Tourism as one element of a blended income strategy for both individuals and the community,

• Tourism that contributes to the revitalization of Indigenous culture;

• Regional management and control of tourism by Indigenous organizations,

• Inclusion of Indigenous demands of territory, identity and autonomy in all projects

We usually recommend that Indigenous communities set designated places for ecotourism outside of communal living spaces to preserve privacy. Eco tourism activities do not necessarily have to include cultural exchanges (ceremonial foods, dance, or elders) and can instead focus on shared activities in Nature or community work days. And in many cases, we recommend they don't as cultural preservation often means privacy, and attention to the sacred within a community. The "exotic other" might be a powerful tourism draw, but the end effect is one of pageantry, instead of meaningful exchange. 

Smallfarmer eco-tourism examples

For smallfarmer sites, we've found that standardizing accommodations is key for reducing environmental impact and simplifying local economics in implementation. While Indigenous communities can draw on the value of a collective to provide guiding, food, and communal activities, smallfarmers often have small family groups, and have to take the time away from a busy farm.  

As an example, over 2000 mountaineering huts were built for European alpine hikers and climbers in Germany, Austria and South Tyrol. The huts provide a simple, easy, and low-impact network for travelers.  We've modeled this for our smallfarming communities, encouraging travelers to follow a route between several farms with a 1-2 day stay between each. This keeps travelers entertained with a wider variety of experiences, reduces the logistical load on a smallfarming host, and distributes resources more fairly around the community. 

Sustainable ecotourism can be a strong value to a community. The importance of ecotourism is in its social impact.

Ecotourists can create bridging social capital, without eroding bonding social capital and reinforce meaningful relationships with Nature in their enthusiasm and wonder for natural capital locals often take for granted. 

But ecotourists can also set local value with their interests. Cultural interactions are never one-sided.  

As we tell all visitors to our sites, what you ask for, shapes what is provided. If ecotourists are interested in birds, smallfarmers don't shoot harpy eagles that eat their chickens. Think if the things you ask for add long-term trees to the region (“I’d love to go for a hike and see the jungle”, “can I sit by the river and read?”) or remove trees (“Do you have beef for this stew?”, “Why doesn’t my room have the laundry done every day”).

It is better to go with the flow and see what people offer as far as extras, and have very minimal needs.  Some stuff is incredibly hard to provide (like satellite internet, and mosquito screens on the dining hall) and so it should always be taken as a luxury, not a necessity. 

Why is ecotourism important

So what is ecotourism? It's not just a marketing phrase. For us, eco-tourism meaning the fair purchase of an experience that truly changes your relationship to Nature.

We believe the benefits of eco tourism outweigh the costs when programs are properly designed, communities are properly informed, and travelers are properly coached about what they can expect to gain from the experience. Below we've provided a list of our ecotourism attractions. These might not sound like a lot of fun on paper (unless you've already tried them), but we guarantee they will put you in a state of flow, and give you a rich physical, emotional, and sensory experience of true communion with Nature, and by extension with other cultures that also commune with Nature. 

Indigenous people own and preserve a disproportionate amount of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. Why? And what can we learn from them?

In order to scale Indigenous outcomes to the rest of the planet, we need to look at how they are doing it. And the shift is radical: for Amazonian Indigenous communities, there is no such thing as Nature.

Indigenos artisan, Embera Peru, Darien Gap, Panama

Our current understanding of conserving biodiversity is based on the wrong ontological foundation. This article is to reframe an industrialized-world understanding of social and natural capital to one from an Indigenous perspective. Then bring it to scale thanks to Savimbo’s infrastructure and social capital.

Fernando Lezama, is a Taita (traditional indigenous healer in Colombia) and an indigenous activist. He started Savimbo because people came to him from around the world in search of healing, then wanted to help the jungle in return. Like many have done before he could have just started a charity. But, Fernando didn’t want another charity. He saw that what his people are doing with the forest is a valuable service, worth payment, not charity. He wanted impact. He wanted to build a business by and for Indigenous communities with global reach.

The magic happened when he met the two other Savimbo co-founders: Johny López, an indigenous conservationist who had been tracking jaguars for twenty years and Drea Burbank, a US-born technologist who had come to meet the jungle on its terms. They realized that together they were holding an unseen combination of social capital that could serve communities living in highly valuable - and threatened - ecosystems. 

What is social capital?

Social capital can be technically defined as "the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively". 

But that definition isn’t very intuitive. 

Instead, think of it in terms of your friend driving you to the airport to catch a flight. If you had paid for a rideshare, the ride might have cost $100. So your friendship, the fluid exchange of help, respect, and trust you have built up with your amigo is worth $100 but it's not exchanged in money, it's exchanged in social capital. 

Many Indigenous communities conduct the majority of their transactions communally, not in money, but in the complex web of equitable exchanges that keep friendships, families, and relationships alive and healthy. 

And this social capital, and the psychological security it provides, is the very thing that industrialized cultures miss without knowing they’re missing it.

Bridging vs bonding social capital

In the last two decades, there has been an increasing distinction between bonding and bridging social capital. Here’s why.

Bonding social capital describes the networks of relationships among people who are alike, generally within a group or community; as Robert Putnam put it, it is capital to “get by”. 

Bridging capital, however, refers to relationships between social groups, class, race, gender, religion or other important sociodemographic or socioeconomic characteristics; Putnam describes this type of social capital as the one to “get ahead”.

The meeting of the three Savimbo co-founders led to the realization that together they were bringing a very rare combination of different forms of bonding and bridging social capital that could enable them to tackle the issue of biodiversity conservation of biodiversity at scale. What is that? 

On the one hand, Indigenous communities rely on very high levels of bonding capital in order to live in societies that provide for almost everything in the midst of complex ecosystems without involving a lot of monetary exchanges. (And believe us, “getting by” in the forest while preserving it is no small feat!)

To understand how they do it, we need to look at the way they interact with their ecosystems through their eyes.

Natural capital as social capital

Taking the Indigenous view: could natural capital only be another form of social capital?

Something that most people who do not live in the rainforest do not realize is that for many indigenous communities in the Amazon, nature does not exist. 

Indeed, as the anthropologist Philippe Descola showed, Amazonian Indigenous animist ontologies do not ontologically separate humans from non-humans.

In this understanding of what the world is, there is no such thing as Nature, a unified system defined in opposition to humans. Instead there is constantly-maintained web of relationships with humans and non-humans. That might be a deeper reason why “nature” hasn’t been destroyed by those communities: because there is no foreign thing to tame and exploit, but a diversity of beings to relate with.

In other words, it can be argued that what is generally called natural capital, is here seen in Indigenous terms as a form of bridging social capital: networks of relationships between unlike animated beings that enable a - more-than-human - society to function effectively and sustainably. The human and non-human realms are one whole; no separation.

Lets focus on an outcome such as forest biodiversity being preserved over time; allowing human societies to thrive in its midst. We can see that reframing the way Indigenous societies interact with their non-human environment make more sense in terms of (bridging) social capital. A more-than-human social capital through a web of relationships between humans and non-humans that provides services. For example, traditional medicine in the Amazon is generally a business of enlisting the support of plants’ friends, both in matter and spirit.

Scaling the Indigenous worldview of social capital

How can we bring an Indigenous co-existence model to scale? 

For many decades, Indigenous communities have been mobilizing horizontally. Applying strong bonding capital by organizing locally and transnationally to resist extractive industries. The conservation of what is left of the Amazon owes a lot to that resistance; sometimes, forging more or less successful alliances with non-profit allies from the Global North too. But that was mostly to get by in the face of a malignant extractive complex.

This is where Savimbo enters the scene. 

Both co-founders Johny and Fernando had been at the forefront of this reality, having worked and fought tirelessly the last twenty years to preserve the forests of El Vides in Putumayo, Colombia (have a look at that river!). 

When Drea Burbank showed up in the valley, she brought another layer of bridging social capital completing the puzzle that is Savimbo. Adding to the existing bonding and bridging indigenous social capital, Burbank brought to Savimbo a global network of technologists, ecologists, lawyers, scientists, and activists.

Tapping into this bridging capital, Savimbo is able to enlist the most recent tech to build an Indigenous-led infrastructure that is designed to pay directly people and communities for the work they already do to preserve the forest. Savimbo is the bridge that allows a new reality where local conservation along Indigenous standards is being funded by global climate and biodiversity credit markets.

Savimbo’s brand of social capital

• Locally: Indigenous communities govern (bonding social capital) large territories and have an intimate knowledge of their ecosystems establishing nurturing relationships with the non-human world (bridging more-than-human social capital).

• Translocally: Indigenous communities have developed trust networks and can mobilize together bringing effective solutions to scale (bridging social capital).

• Globally: the Savimbo organization taps into a global network of experts of many trades to craft its infrastructure delivering global finance directly to local communities (bridging social capital).

Conclusion on social capital

Savimbo was designed by, and for Indigenous communities. But its impact reaches beyond its initial owners.

While Savimbo’s biodiversity crediting methodology stems directly from Indigenous wisdom, it can be used by any individual landowners.

Using the protocol for its financial incentives in the form of biodiversity credits, they are subtly nudged to become porous to the view of traditional Indigenous communities by monitoring indicator species - which are traditionally known as totemic species. Doing this, participating owners develop a refined understanding of who inhabits the land and are incentivized to regenerate the forest supporting higher levels of biodiversity. Thus, Savimbo not only spreads a methodology but an Indigenous way of “composing the world”

That is the real secret of an ancient way of protecting biodiversity, where humans and non-humans live together, not separate.

At Savimbo we do not compromise on the fact that we are Indigenous-led and serve Indigenous and local communities first. In order to do that, we realign technologies and concepts - such as social capital - on Indigenous terms. We are open to everyone joining this movement, on our terms.

Written by Adrien Labaeye, Griffin Flannery, and Drea Burbank. Adrien is transformation catalyst, and Griffin is an impact strategist, and Drea is a delinquent savant.

This is what it looks like when a tree-planting initiative originates from an Indigenous community, under traditional leadership and cultivation knowledge.

Image supplied by Prince Autu Asuman. Batwa Community, Uganda

Batwa Community
Karambi settlement
Dundibugyo district
Uganda

To whom it may concern,

I’m Prince Autu Asuman, the son of King Nziito Geofrey, of Batwa community in western Uganda Bundibugyo.

I greet you for caring for God’s people like us who were neglected.

Our ancestors, Aulangama, came from DRC via Ituri forest across river Semuliki and settled in Semuliki forest.

In 1927, there was an outbreak of sleeping sickness, and the colonial government gazette it. Later, it was degazetted by Iddi Amin’s regime and our family went back to the forest and stayed there until the forest became a national park.

We thank the organization Fight For The Forgotten for recognizing us as God’s people who had no specific settlement.

The organization has purchased a reasonable land for us in Karambi for settlement. In this settlement, there is safe water, medical services, literacy classes, provision of food, seeds, tools to use for cultivation of food crops, play materials, vocational skill training, and entertainment devices.

Me as a prince, I have identified one major challenges, we found when the residents had destroyed the environment through charcoal burning due to poverty level in the area. Like every Monday there is a market day in Rwamabate where we see both men and women carrying charcoal for sale.

So, as a leader, am planning with my community to carry out mobilization and sensitization about the importance of natural trees.

Our next step is to do re-forestation to replace the trees which have been destroyed in remembrance of where we came from and to tell the new generation about our history.

Another rule is to carry out sanitation and hygiene in and around our settlement by recycling waste products.

I shall be grateful when I am supported to make my environment better.

Yours sincerely,

Autu Asuman

If you are interested in funding Indigenous-led reforestation initiatives please let us know. This can be in catalytic capital to specific projects, or by buying our tree credits which are distributed between participating communities on an outcomes basis.

  Clients Growers Friends  

Currently, in carbon markets, the main burden of methodology development falls on developers, an effort that often ends in nothing. Perhaps biodiversity markets offer an opportunity for iteration. Can we improve action and outcomes by reallocating roles, or streamlining procedures? 

Photo: by Silvan Schuppisser on Unsplash

We are living in a human-caused mass extinction event, and we must act on behalf of biodiversity. The survival of other species, and our species both depend on it. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity established an international mechanism for action, and the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework treaty has been ratified by 196 nations. We have shared aims. 

Now the time has come for action, with an estimated $180B commercial biodiversity credit market emerging to measure, trade, and reach these aims.  

At the beginning of 2023, Carbon Pulse published an analysis of this market, and how it relates to existing carbon markets — Dos and don'ts – Biodiversity market looking to carbon for guidance. In it, they stated that the biodiversity crediting market needed to establish robust standards early to drive growth. 

However, robust standards require time.  Time that is crucial to channel finance for biodiversity protection and restoration, as global targets are slipping away. Currently we have met only  one-third of the required total for global targets.

How can we iterate on carbon markets, to increase speed and accuracy of action in biodiversity? 

Streamlining methodologies as an opportunity to improve action

It has been just over 20 years since the publication of the first carbon-dioxide removal methodology — Incineration of HFC 23 Waste Streams --- Version 1. Today, several hundred methodologies are scattered across all productive (or destructive, as in the case of deforestation) sectors. These methodologies delineate processes that contribute to climate change in over 50 standards for voluntary carbon accreditation — and range from the simple to highly complex, as is the case for some REDD+ methodologies (which are, in fact, the closest to biodiversity conservation, a symptom of what might be to come).

Since the inception of the carbon market, the burden of developing methodologies has fallen on project developers, as their use is a prerequisite for certification. After approval, developers have carried the additional burden ensuring these methodologies are standardized, widely used, in addition to ensuring the generation, integrity, and quality of their carbon credits. 

So, if you want to build your house, it is not enough to draw up the plans; you also need to develop a general regulation on buildings, applicable to a wide range of situations and get it approved in a public setting. 

Some standards also require a study of the potential global applicability of the proposed methodology. Then, you must pay for the review of the standard and an independent third party to ensure transparency.

What if the standards themselves or other independent parties took on the task of the methodological developments required by their activity? It could be just as transparent with the advantage that a standard (in principle) would be in a much better position to guarantee independent evaluation and the principles required than a developer.

Yes, the current approach of requiring approved methodologies for certifying carbon projects is justified.  It helps ensure the integrity and quality of carbon credits. However, the path to their development — at least in the case of carbon markets — has taken years of enormous effort, frustration, and considerable expense that in many cases has ended in nothing. 

Further, it has placed a financial burden on developers that has significantly restricted market access, and slowed focus on action. 

If we are to learn from the carbon markets, we must find a more agile regulatory pathway with a fair sharing of burdens among the different actors. 

Currently, it is on the projects that the main burden for action falls: that of conserving and restoring biodiversity in a context of crisis and urgency, which cries out for effective action on an adequate scale, over and above wars and petty interests.

How can we enable this action? 

How biodiversity methodologies differ from carbon methodologies

Compared to carbon projects, the complexity of biodiversity credits poses challenges in developing methodologies for specific ecosystems. This means methodologies could have to limited replicability and excessive efforts focused on theoretical developments rather than practical biodiversity conservation actions —delaying actual conservation actions on the ground.

While developing methodologies for biodiversity credits may indeed be more intricate and context-specific, it is crucial to balance the need for robust, scientifically sound approaches with practicality and efficiency to ensure the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation efforts.

Standardized methodologies might not be suitable for all project types, particularly innovative projects that involve new technologies or approaches. Allowing flexibility in addressing methodological issues directly in the project design could encourage innovation in biodiversity conservation and restoration strategies.

For the past two years, Savimbo, together with other volunteers, has been developing an interoperable biodiversity unit to help standardize and streamline the nascent biodiversity credit market. This unit is defined in terms of area, time, a differential in ecosystem integrity attributable to a biodiversity conservation or restoration initiative, and an independent categorization of the relative value of the ecosystem.

There is little controversy or difficulty in measuring area and time since these are two widely standardized concepts. As for the categorization of the relative value of the ecosystem, since it is done independently of the developer (and ideally, of the certifying standard), it is essentially up to the developer to define: 

1. How to define and measure the integrity of the ecosystem and 

2. How to monitor and report. 

The other elements commonly included in methodologies should be defined by the standard under which the certification shall be done.

Many types of biodiversity projects have clear conservation and restoration actions. Often these are explicitly defined by the standard or by an external committee. For these methodologies, the development, prior approval and use of a methodology would not be necessary, as long as essential elements are clearly defined in a project design document.  In this case, project documents must only emphasis the practical implementation of biodiversity conservation actions to ensure tangible on-the-ground impact and effective conservation outcomes, delineate stakeholders involvement, and show robust design of robust monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to assess their effectiveness. 

Projects that defined their specific methodological elements in their design documents could then be approved more quickly and at a lower cost.

The development of methodologies would still remain open to those who are willing to go down this path. Ideally, if they can contribute elements and processes that facilitate the implementation of projects in different places and even ecosystems. 

A middle path could also be the definition of an innovation and learning stage, where biodiversity conservation and restoration projects can move forward without approved methodologies for a prudent period, about two years, after which it would be possible to define better whether the use of approved methodologies is indispensable and, if so, the types of actions, the types of ecosystems and the essential elements that these should have. Only after this analysis and reflecting on who should bear the burden of the methodology development could their use be required to implement biodiversity conservation and restoration projects.

Conclusion, biodiversity methodologies and improved action

The biodiversity crisis demands urgent action. Let us prioritize practical conservation efforts on the ground — streamlining processes to channel resources effectively while maintaining scientific rigor and stakeholder involvement. Through pragmatic approaches, we can drive tangible progress in conserving and restoring ecosystems without getting mired in excessive bureaucracy.

Written by Alvaro Vallejo, biodiversity expert and independent consultant.

Environmental justice is more than talk. It is action. It implies the recognition and guarantee of rights. Indigenous peoples have more than the right to direct climate action, they have demonstrated and earned the moral authority.

Photo by Carmen Villegas

Regarding the widely publicized COP 28 event, currently taking place in Dubai, where those with decision-making power over the fate of the planet and humanity gather; from various corners of the Earth and diverse cultures that form the garden of humanity, unable to speak to you in person, we send a message from our hearts on the subject that occupies that crucial political space in the UN.

Indigenous Peoples, from our ancestral lands, have been warning for decades about the mistake of the capitalist system that has supported the idea of development under the utilitarian and objectifying model of vital resources from nature. This model, entwining politics and the market, has given rise to an uncontrollable power that now threatens all forms of existing life.

Contrary to the vision and practice of Indigenous Peoples, this utilitarian development model has been incapable of understanding the language and codes of nature, its laws, and teachings. In its eagerness to impose the empire of modernity, it has globalized the mirage of materialistic development around categories and concepts alien to the ancient knowledge and idiosyncrasies of our peoples.

Around this utilitarian development model, a technocratic language of indicators has been created, marking the thermometer of inequalities, essentially injustices. It has established mercantilist and destructive patterns of behavior, such as the 'polluter pays' principle, forgetting ethics towards nature and responsibility towards future generations.

This utilitarian model of well-being has managed to sicken the natural environment but has also afflicted the hearts and minds of humans with the thirst for power without ethics, becoming the seeds of greed and corruption, which in turn are the causes of all forms of injustice and others' pain.

Therefore, discussions about climate change, which essentially means the Earth's ailment caused by humans, cannot be solely from the logic of those who currently hold political decision-making power and economic influence. It must also include the power of those who, for centuries, have wisely exercised the mission of being guardians of nature.

Environmental justice, much talked about lately, implies the recognition and guarantee of rights. When we associate the issue of climate change with environmental justice, it implies the prior recognition of the rights of Mother Earth; she is not a thing, she is a living being, the mother of humanity.

If the United Nations system (UN), the states that compose it, and the economic enterprises truly seek the health of the planet, the first step to healing is the recognition of the Rights of Mother Earth, binding for the states. The behavior of rulers and peoples should be in the service of dignifying all forms of life.

This is not about a simple declaration of rights as a protocol; it is about safeguarding life, reconnecting with nature, cultivating global peace. This is the path toward a biodemocracy that the modern world needs, considering the fundamental principle of RESPECT FOR NATURE, a principle that indigenous peoples continue to uphold.

Therefore, faced with the environmental emergency humanity is currently facing, from Indigenous Peoples, we make a respectful call to the United Nations (UN) system to exercise and defend its mission in defense of planetary life. Similarly, to the states and governments of the world, for politics to be governance for life around the pedagogy of the rights of Mother Earth. Finally, to economic enterprises, to realize that the best investment lies in guaranteeing the sustainability of life as the right path for the continuity of our species.

From our ancestral lands, December 1, 2023.

Children of Mother Earth.

Co-signers:

• Ñawi K. Flores, Translational leader, Runa, Ecuador

• Jayesh Joshi, Leader from Maharashtra, Bhil, India

  Indigenous  

Written by Miguel Chindoy, Legal representative of the Asociación Indígena Agro Pueblos. Kamëntsá tribe, Colombia.

Real planetary action will be an Indigenous lifestyle. Dubai is the most unsustainable city on Earth — built on oil money. There is a true need for a global consensus, but the consensus must be: Enough.

This sounds harsh, but it’s not. It’s freeing.

Photo by Ilver.

We don’t know what we will have to give up.

We formed Savimbo when I was living in Dubai. It's a lovely city. With lovely people. Peaceful and hopeful. A dream of plenty. But I couldn't shut out the awareness, after living in the Colombian Amazon, of how horrifically unsustainable it was.

This is a strange article. It is pouring out of me unanticipated. Because so many people are asking me why I am not attending COP28 for Savimbo.

We are sending local representatives, people I respect to truly advocate for a desert nation. They work on water, food supply, and reforesting in the desert. They are worried about their people because they know — if the oil money stops, there will be nothing to eat.

The intimacy of equity

Because I’m a pigheaded American who always cycled in San Francisco, I brought a bicycle to Dubai for commuting. It was a true case of Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

I underestimated the ecosystem.

I was cycling across the city during the summer — a truly insane endeavor in the Gulf. But I wasn’t alone, there was a strange community of the poor cycling with me. People who couldn’t afford the air-conditioned cars and futuristic public transport — to leave the country when the seasons changed.

Crossing the spaces between the built environment I saw the poverty hidden behind and in-between the buildings. Most of the truly poor are exported from UAE to Jordan or surrounding nations. Only healthy laborers remain, imported from Africa, India, and Eastern Europe. The country is so wealthy that they hire temp Americans as McKinsey consultants and doctors to be a cognitive working class. A position I was frankly hopeful to attain.

A trendy startup person, I had a desirable skillset in Dubai’s new crypto boom. But traveling from meetings with high-net-worth oil moguls, I noticed people picking cardboard along the freeways. Cleaning the streets. Eating hummus in enclaves of all-male construction workers. I began to realize, peeking behind the scenes, that the entire country was artificial — created to be an enclave of the wealthy.

I’ve been on both sides of this divide. Seen this kind of constructed inequity before in California and Thailand. The Buddhists call it the God Realm (one of the six samsaric hells). And it is lovely, but heartbreakingly intangible. Perfection. Perfect faces, perfect clothes, perfect environments, perfect possessions, perfectly peaceful. Supported by a stage crew of silent commuters. And everywhere something to buy.

But this time it gnawed at me. Because I had recently come from the Colombian Amazon, living in an Indigenous community. Everyone equal, and equally flawed. Everyone known — their sun and moon personalities. No one cared about my trendy startup skills there. Unfamiliar with the jungle economy I was frankly a burden. My only value, the ability to communicate with the outside world.

No one can escape real equity, it means people know you. What you’re really like behind the mask. Outside of your bank account.

Intimacy breeds love, and acceptance. Or you can’t sustain it.

The desert, and the jungle

Dubai is a desert. Yes, it is a lovely desert. I learned to love desert ecosystems when I was a firefighter in the American Southwest. They are fragile, delicate biozones with strangely adapted species and humans. The ultimate zen experience.

I truly respect Arab nations, the segmented lineages, the hospitality that is such a legacy of living in a resource-restricted ecosystem. I see the same kind of welcome when I talk to Australian Indigenous Peoples. Cultures hatched from deserts know what it means to be without water — what it means to give it.

Because I was truly experiencing the desert, and I had just come from the Amazon, I realized the terrifying difference in abundance. I became painfully, horrifyingly aware, of what our planet has been, and what it would be like if it became a desert.

Our planet is a garden. And that garden is dying. We have a stark, and truly imminent choice in what our lives will become.

We have to give up the dream of Dubai. Not the people who live there, but everything else. And that leaves Dubai itself in a terrible, awful, situation. If the people who lived in Dubai, had to be sustained by their actual ecosystem, they would be in dire need.

So what are they sustained by? The answer is simple: oil. Petroleum. And we know, we will have to give up petroleum or face extinction. The writing is on the wall, the changes are already being made. And anyone who lives in Dubai, and cares about their people, is frantically preparing for this. Using their wealth to learn how to make a desert into a garden.

Or if they are more short-sighted, fighting to prevent it.

Giving up the dream

Sustainability is deceptive. We think it's going to be one thing, and it’s actually going to be another.

We think it’s going to be another climate conference, a more important set of people, and a better LinkedIn title. One that makes people want to date us, because although we live in a constructed bubble of wealth, we are so kind. We are so smart. We are so futuristic.

We think we’re going to make a lot of money off it. I know people think this because I talked to 3,000 climate investors. Who told me candidly they don’t invest in Nature. They do mechanical carbon capture, our something equally industrial, despite how scientifically questionable it remains. 

As a scientific purist, I know that if you can’t disprove it it’s outside the realm of Western science and trespassing on science fiction. With dreams of 1000-year permanency, these claims are the ultimate hoax - who can tell if it works? Who’s going to pay the price if what we were sold doesn’t deliver? It reminds me of our dreams of being crypto barons - someone else footing the bill in an endless Ponzi scheme.

Sure forests are out of fashion, but have you wondered if it’s only because we can measure our failures in them faster?

Climate VCs are building digital platforms, where they will Win and everyone else will pay them to do something automated. To buy and sell Nature, to measure it, to account for the impact they are subconsciously terrified of changing. And 90% of them will fail. And when they fail, how will they live? What will the 90% do to better the planet? What can they do? We’re good at automating things and building machines. But who is going to need that in fifty years?

Just like crypto, nothing artificial lasts. Artificial inequity cannot sustain itself. The cells in your body, that endlessly maintain perfectly imbalanced states, must work constantly at disequilibrium. Those sodium-potassium pumps are busy little bees, perhaps the true hallmark of life. 

So we’re on the wrong track. So what? I’m an optimist, we’re a creative species and we tend to figure things out…. Honestly, I wasn’t going to say anything about this. Just skip the event with an (admittedly off-brand) polite disregard. This is not because I’m so nice, we rarely go to climate conferences anyway. But because I didn’t think people were ready to hear it. I was worried it would seem like a counterproductive attack, although it really, really isn't. It's just an understanding.

Because I get it, I really do. I didn’t want to change either. Just suddenly, one day I became aware of myself, and change automatically followed. And I understand why you might not see it yet. You’ll get there.

Truth changes you. When I saw how I was living, and how entrenched my consumption really was. I realized I was chasing a mirage, and I was never going to catch happiness through that means. The dream of being more important, more special, and deserving more than the people around me wasn’t true — and surprisingly, it wasn’t satisfying.

I was always hungry.

Driving along the freeway in Dubai, in an air-conditioned car, pretending to have more money than I did, I saw the endless series of billboards for luxury goods, and I realized I didn’t want ANYTHING. Yes, it was shiny, but I didn’t want what Dubai had to sell. I didn’t want the indoor wonders, and the endless chase to consult for another, more important, patron. The stylish spreadsheets, and the projections…. climbing always climbing. And the beautiful parties. It wasn’t Enough.

I had a horrible gnawing feeling as I made growth-curve after high-tech growth-curve, the pitching cycle for another startup — that I had seen the curve before. I had seen it in medicine when we studied bacterial overgrowth in a petri dish. We modeled it in biology 101 lab, because it was so predictable. It was a fundamental principle of life.

Nothing that consumes exponentially survives its environment.

What Indigenous Peoples KNOW

I’m telling you all this because when I explained to a few close friends why I wasn’t attending COP28 (the candid text above)  - they surprised me. “I totally, 100% agree”, responded a woman I respect and adore today. A collaborator on our biodiversity methodology and the Ecological Benefits Framework. My friends surprised me, these people who I have been working with virtually for months. I love them because they’re all action and very little talk. They aren’t names you would know, but you should.

Perhaps I wasn’t alone. Perhaps the reason we were working together so successfully, was that we all saw it.

What my friends embody is the realization that climate isn’t about other people. The plebian masses living on a diet. (The true topic of every climate convention while the invite-only events serve hour d’erves.)

Just like my 6-month yoga bender to lose my COVID weight gain using every trick in the medical book. I had to actually change what I actually did every single day. 

Climate was about ME.

Starting over, I realized I had to figure out what a sustainable life was actually going to be like. Then build it into my automatic habits. I had seen behind the Wizard of Oz curtain — but was I capable of doing something different? How hard was it going to be?

But acting was no longer a choice. I only wanted Nature. I craved it like a fix. The only thing that was filling me up. The only peace I had found. I wanted the turbulent muddy waters of the Amazon, hopping around snakes, eating bananas, and the friendship of a close community. I didn’t even know I lacked community until I truly experienced for the first time living among Indigenous Peoples here. It was FUN. I wanted the superfoods, picked off a tree, and simply prepared. The piled meals of yucca and beans. I didn’t want more, but I no longer wanted less.

And something strange happened to me when we started Savimbo. At first, it was a blind groping, trying to make a new life in the Amazon jungle, using skills I already had. Just finding a reason to live in Nature, because to me it felt like real wealth. But then it became something more, because as I worked in the jungle, and the jungle started to teach me how to live, the people in the jungle began to actively teach me.

They see a lot of people come and go here in the Amazon. They come and do psychedelic ceremonies and make promises about saving the planet and they go back to their lives and forget — because actually curating the planet is a big, and very personal, change. You’d be surprised at who comes, and how well-positioned they are in the industrialized world. Indigenous Peoples, at least the shaman, are well socialized 🙂

But it’s a vacation for most of our visitors. “Oh, that's Nature!” they crow with big smiles, and they love it, and then they go back to the city. And it fades into a nice memory.

But if you really work for Nature, take concrete action, if you have real skills to offer, and you really give up your inequity, and really put your skills to work for the jungle, and find ways to create true opportunities that help, then it’s worth the effort to learn how to collaborate.

Because these are big paradigms, biases, and stereotypes, and preconcieved perspectives. And those are painful and delicate to change.

See here, they aren’t stupid. They know. They know about the industrialized world and all the gadgets, and the shiny toys, and the endless chase. They know it’s not fair, and it wasn’t fairly obtained. It’s pretty obvious from the other side. But they also know, how profoundly insufficient it all is. They know how sick we actually are. And it makes them sad for us.

There is this horrible paradigm in the industrialized world, that we have it soo good. All the modern conveniences, and all the knowledge. That indigenous people are savage, the past, and so naive.

But when you reach the end of civilization, like I did in Dubai, when you travel to the future and see it is a profoundly inequitable desert. When you realize what that future holds, and that you don’t want it, that you need something else…, Well,  then you know something Indigenous Peoples already know.

They live in a garden, and they keep the garden alive. They learned how to do that. Because they know.

This is not to romanticize ethnicity or culture. People are people and we all have flaws. But there is ecological knowledge within cultures that have prized ecological values. Just like Americans are good at technology, Indigenous Peoples are good at protecting and restoring ecosystems and there is value in having respect for that, and what paradigms formed it because we all want to live in a planet that is a garden.

If you ask, Indigenous Peoples will teach you. But you can’t ask the way you think. You can’t demand the information, and try to sell it with your own plastic packaging. Words mean nothing.

You have to prove it with real actions. 

Indigenous Peoples and climate leadership

What I am telling you is to make it real. Indigenous Peoples are not climate lip-service. They are not charity cases. They are the only real climate experts. The only sustainable civilizations our planet has.

Yes, we need a global conference. We need to meet in person because there are some painfully tough things to agree to. There will be laws and lawsuits. Leaders lead, and limits have been crossed and people are finally taking responsibility. But if you are in Dubai this week, then make it count.

Walk outside of those artificial environments, feel the actual desert. Look at the luxury goods, notice the constructed inequity of the Blue Zone, the artificial FOMO, the inside and the outside. And don’t be fooled. Don’t make a pageant of a change like this again. Find the people in Dubai that are making water in the desert. And don’t talk about later. Do it Now.

There is no other time to change than NOW. There is no other person to change but ourselves. But I can promise you that this change will be the best thing you ever do. You are not alone. And there are people who know what to do next.

  Indigenous  

By Drea Burbank, MD. Drea is an MD-technologist and delinquent savant.

We need to learn from carbon market failures because Indigenous Peoples own 80% of the biodiversity, and their rights are international law. Biodiversity projects and markets that fail to recognize these rights will inevitably fail. But, we’ve got a handy primer! Here’s what you need to know….

Photo of Abuelo Guilermo lucitante and Beatriz Lucitante from the Cofán indigenous community in Colombia

It is increasingly suggested that the emerging biodiversity credits market must learn from the shortcomings of the carbon market. The carbon credit market has recently taken big reputational damage, partly because of the many scandals involving projects that did not respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights, with many projects even being canceled or suspended.

Given that the biodiversity credit market is relatively new, there is a need to ensure that Indigenous Peoples’ rights are respected in the specific context of biodiversity credits, and to design initiatives in a manner that ensures rights are protected and respected. This is not only a moral, legal, and rights-based imperative, but also, a fundamental prerequisite for any such activity to be feasible.

In this context, this document is a call for all actors, including State actors, private-sector, non-governmental organizations, and multi-stakeholder initiatives in the biodiversity credit markets, to take adequate steps to ensure that these rights are respected.

The rights of Indigenous Peoples

The rights of Indigenous Peoples are most clearly articulated through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and also by many binding treaties and conventions, including but not limited to:

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)

• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

• International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)

• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

• ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples

Those instruments, in addition to many national constitutions and regulations, jurisprudence and authoritative interpretations developed by international and regional human rights mechanisms, comprise a growing network of protection for Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

In the context of biodiversity credit markets, many of those rights require further analysis. In any case, it should be noted that Indigenous Peoples have rights not just as individuals but as collective subjects of international law, as affirmed by the UNDRIP, as well as many human rights mechanisms.(1) Indigenous Peoples are represented through their own governance structures and should not be equated with vulnerable or local communities. (2)

The right to self-determination 

Self-determination is a foundational right of Indigenous Peoples, without which, many other rights cannot be fully enjoyed. The right to self-determination has an internal aspect, meaning that Indigenous Peoples have the right to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development, without external interference. It also has an external aspect, meaning the right to determine their political status at the international level, based upon the principle of equal rights and exemplified by the liberation of peoples from colonialism and by the prohibition to subject peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation. (3) Accordingly, Indigenous Peoples also have the right to self-government, autonomy, and to maintain and develop their own legal, social, and cultural institutions and juridical systems. (4)  The right to Indigenous Peoples to self-determination is affirmed by the UNDRIP, ICCPR, and ICESCR. (5)

The lands, territories, and resources, the right to enjoy one’s culture, and right to property

The right of Indigenous Peoples to their culture, and to their lands and territories is reflected throughout the UNDRIP and international treaties and conventions. Accordingly, Indigenous Peoples have a right to own, use, develop and control their lands, territories and resources. (6) “The  right of indigenous peoples to lands, territories and natural resources originates in their own customary law, values, habits and customs and, therefore, is prior to and independent of State recognition in the form of an official property title.” (7)

The right of everyone to enjoy their culture is guaranteed by ICCPR Article 27. In the context of Indigenous Peoples, the responsible treaty body (CCPR) has established that Indigenous Peoples have an inalienable right to enjoy the territories and natural resources that they have traditionally used for their subsistence and cultural identity. (8) ( Likewise, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has clarified that the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ lands and resources is directed towards preventing Indigenous Peoples’ extinction as a people, and to guarantee that they may continue living their traditional way of life, and that their distinct cultural identity, social structure, economic system, customs, beliefs and traditions are respected. (9)

Indigenous Peoples also have a right to property in relation to their lands, territories and resources, based on the principle of non-discrimination. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has clarified that ignoring Indigenous Peoples’ customary laws, comprises a form of discrimination as it would have the effect of nullifying or impairing, on an equal footing, their right to property tied to their cultural identity. (10) As such, the term right to property is also considered to encompass property in the context of Indigenous Peoples, who may have totally different systems of property rights from that laid down in State law. (11) Moreover, “indigenous peoples’ rights to traditional territories exist independently of domestic legislation, and the fact that the national legislation does not award them formal title is therefore irrelevant, according to international human rights law”. (12)

Indigenous Peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return. (13)

The right to participate in cultural life, right to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production, and right to intellectual property

The UNDRIP affirms that Indigenous Peoples “have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.” (14) This right is also guaranteed under Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (15)

Indigenous Peoples’ right to collectively, or individually, benefit from the protection of moral and material interests resulting from their scientific, literary or artistic production is also guaranteed under Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. For example, the overseeing treaty body (CESCR) has called on States to “adopt measures to ensure the effective protection of the interests of indigenous peoples relating to their productions, which are often expressions of their cultural heritage and traditional knowledge,” and to “prevent the unauthorized use of scientific, literary and artistic productions of indigenous peoples by third parties.” (16)

The Declaration (Article 11) also affirms that Indigenous Peoples have a right to restitution of their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, customs and traditions.

The principle of non-discrimination in relation to Indigenous Peoples’ property systems also gives rise to important questions of Indigenous Peoples intellectual property rights over such cultural heritage, knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. Presumably, such property rights based on their customary laws, customs and traditions may encompass totally different systems than that laid down in State law and must be recognized and respected as such, and the lack of State protection over such intellectual property rights cannot justify the violation of such intellectual property rights.

As such, it is necessary that information imparted by Indigenous Peoples or individuals in the context of biodiversity credits or related activities should not be used for any other purpose than those explicitly authorized, and should not be redistributed to third parties without explicit consent.

The right to privacy, home, and family life

It is possible that data collection or monitoring used for biodiversity credit markets could negatively impact Indigenous Peoples’ privacy, home, and family life. The right to freedom from unlawful or arbitrary interference with one’s privacy, home, and family is guaranteed under Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The treaty body overseeing the ICCPR has affirmed that the right to freedom from arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family or home should be understood in light of Indigenous special relationship to their territories in which they reside and enjoy their privacy. (17)

Presumably, to guarantee that those rights are respected, special measures should be taken to ensure that such data collection or monitoring does not infringe on those rights, and is subject to free, prior and informed consent and mutually agreed compensation and benefit-sharing agreements.

The right to free, prior and informed consent

The right to free, prior, and informed consent is reflected throughout the UNDRIP. The Declaration explicitly calls for free, prior, and informed consent in relation to relocation of Indigenous Peoples (Article 10); in relation to Indigenous Peoples’ cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property (Article 11); in relation to legislative or administrative measures that may affect them (Article 19); in relation to their lands, territories and resources (Article 28; Article 32); and in relation to storage of hazardous materials on Indigenous lands or territories (Article 29), and in relation to military activities on Indigenous lands or territories (Article 30).

It has also been affirmed by the jurisprudence of various international and regional human rights mechanisms, included but not limited to:

• CERD’s general recommendation 23 calls on States to ensure that “no decisions directly relating to their rights and interests are taken without their informed consent”. 

• CESCR’s general recommendation no. 21 calls on States and businesses to respect the principles of free, prior and informed consent “in relation to all matters that could affect their rights, including their lands, territories and resources that they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.”

• CEDAW’s general recommendation no. 39 has called on States to require free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous women and girls in all matters affecting their rights, including before authorizing any projects affecting their rights.

• The Human Rights Committee (CCPR) has established that participation in decision-making be effective, which requires not mere consultation but the free, prior and informed consent of the members of the community. (18)

Operalization of free, prior and informed consent

Many industry guidelines exist for companies on free, prior and informed consent, but they often limit free, prior and informed consent to narrow understanding, i.e., ‘one-off’ events related to the approval of projects. Rather, free, prior and informed consent should be understood as stemming from non-discrimination and self-determination, aimed to safeguard various rights of Indigenous Peoples, and to enable their exercise of self-determination and control over their lands, territories and resources. For free, prior and informed consent to occur, it also requires that good-faith consultations are held in cooperation with Indigenous Peoples, and that Indigenous Peoples can effectively participate in decisions that may affect them at the conceptualization stage of such a proposal, and that their right to their lands, territories and resources are guaranteed. (19)

• Effective participation in decision-making: Given that Indigenous Peoples protect much of the world’s biodiversity, it is clear that the manner in which various standards, schemes, and regulations are developed will affect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and interests. As such, for effective participation to occur, it should not just happen at the implementation of a project, but also at the conceptualization stage of the various biodiversity credit initiatives at the international level, and on an ongoing basis. This also requires that such initiatives provide Indigenous Peoples with access to sufficient legal, technical, and financial resources, as well as information to be able to participate.

• Consultation: Consultations should be free, prior and informed, carried out in good faith, in cooperation with Indigenous Peoples.

  • They should be free, meaning that they are free from intimidation and coercion, and Indigenous Peoples should be able to participate freely, and be consulted about the process of consultation per se. Indigenous Peoples should be able to exert sufficient control over defining methods, timelines, locations and evaluations; as such, restricting the scope of modes of consultation to pre-defined methodologies would call into question the extent to which such consultations are free. Indigenous Peoples must also effectively be able to say no to a project, without facing any repercussions or limitations of any rights or services.

  • They should be prior, meaning that they should take place as early as possible at the conceptualization stage, and not just after important decisions or investments have already been made. They should also respect Indigenous Peoples’ timelines and decision-making processes, and allow for sufficient time for Indigenous Peoples to absorb and analyze information.

  • They should be fully informed, meaning that information should be objective, accurate, clear, and be presented in a manner that is accessible to Indigenous Peoples, on an ongoing basis. The information should include the nature, size, pace, reversibility and scope of any activity, including possible risks, benefits, and best practices. Adequate resources and capacity should be provided. (20)

• Right to give or withhold consent: Consent is required in relation to matters of fundamental importance for Indigenous Peoples’ rights, dignity and well-being. As explained by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, consent can only be received when it fulfills the three criteria of having been free, prior and informed. Consent must be “ongoing” with express opportunities and requirements for review and renewal set by the parties. Indigenous peoples must have the opportunity, moreover, to give or withhold consent to each relevant aspect of a proposal. If the right to be consulted, right to participate, and right to lands, territories and resources is missing, consent cannot be achieved. (21)

Compensation and benefit-sharing

The right of Indigenous Peoples to receive compensation for limitations of their rights, and to share in the benefits arising from the utilization of their lands and resources should not be seen as a form of charity, but rather, a right that Indigenous Peoples are entitled to under international law. (22)

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has established that Indigenous Peoples have a right to compensation for the limitation and deprivation of property rights, and their regular use and enjoyment of such property (23), based on their traditional patterns of use and occupation, not limited to means of subsistence but also cultural and spiritual uses. (24) Such compensation should be aimed at repairing the negative impacts on any environmental, social, cultural or spiritual aspects of their lives. (25)

failure to duly compensate results in a violation of property rightsSeparately, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has established that Indigenous Peoples have a right to receive a reasonable benefit from the activities taking place within their territory. (26) The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has established that the failure to duly compensate results in a violation of property rights. (27) The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has called on States to punish transgressors in case of unauthorized use or appropriation or cultural knowledge without free, prior and informed consent and adequate benefit-sharing. (28)

In this context, it should be noted that according to international human rights law, the term right to property is also considered to encompass property in the context of Indigenous Peoples, who may have totally different systems of property rights from that laid down in State law. (29) As such, compensation and benefit-sharing is also required for the utilization of Indigenous Peoples cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property.

Call to action for a just and fair biodiversity credit markets

It is clear that there is still much to be done for biodiversity credit markets to be just and fair. To be just and fair, it must, at minimum, respect those that do not wish to participate in such markets, and where Indigenous Peoples freely choose to participate in them, ensure that their rights are respected. Doing so will create a foundation for good-faith, mutually respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples, improved biodiversity outcomes, reduced risks, and higher investor demand. To do so, actors in the biodiversity credits markets should act with due diligence to recognize and respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and take proactive steps to prevent and mitigate any adverse impacts that they may cause or contribute to, and ensure that adequate safeguards, including consultation, participation, FPIC, compensation, and benefit-sharing are applied and reflected in regulation, policies, standards, schemes, action plans, projects, agreements, and contracts. For businesses, this responsibility exists independently of State recognition or protection of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. (30)

Indigenous Peoples or communities also ought to exercise these rights, by duly investigating any proposals with regards to respect for their rights, and require that governments, businesses, investors, and multi-stakeholder initiatives respect them.

  Rights PDF (EN) Indigenous Rights PDF (ES)

The author of this article,  who is a member of an Amazonian Indigenous people, has chosen to remain anonymous.

References

1. See e.g., Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Entitlement of legal entities to hold rights under the Inter-American Human Rights System, Series A No. 22 (2016), para. 75

2. UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Twenty-First Session

3. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. (1996). General Recommendation 21 on self-determination

4.  UNDRIP Articles 4,5 & 34

5. The Committee on Cultural, Economic and Social Rights (CESCR) has expressed concern for “precarious situation of indigenous communities in the State party, affecting their right to self-determination under article 1 of the Covenant”. See Committee on Cultural, Economic, and Social Rights. (2003). E/C.12/1/Add.94: Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Articles 16 And 17 Of the Covenant Concluding Observations of The Committee On Economic, Social And Cultural Rights: Russian Federation; The Human Rights Committee (CCPR) has noted that self-determination is linked to the effective realization of the rights of indigenous peoples. See Human Rights Committee. (2023). CCPR/C/137/D/3585/2019: Views adopted by the Committee under article 5 (4) of the Optional Protocol, concerning communication No. 3585/2019; The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has noted that substantive rights of Indigenous Peoples are underpinned by Common Article 1 of ICCPR and ICESCR. See Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (2007). Case of the Saramaka People v. Suriname Judgment of November 28, 2007, para. 93.

6.  UNDRIP Article 26

7. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2010). A /HRC/15/37: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous people, James Anaya, para. 54.

8.   Human Rights Committee. (2022). CCPR/C/132/D/2552/2015: Views adopted by the Committee under article 5 (4) of the Optional Protocol, concerning communication No. 2552/2015, para. 8.4.

9.  Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (2007). Case of the Saramaka People v. Suriname Judgment of November 28, 2007, para. 121.

10.  Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2022). CERD/C/106/D/61/2017: Opinion adopted by the Committee under article 14 of the Convention, concerning communication No. 61/2017, para. 4.7.

11.  Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. (2020). CERD/C/102/D/54/2013: Opinion adopted by the Committee under article 14 of the Convention, concerning communication No. 54/2013, para. 3.2

12. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. (2020). CERD/C/102/D/54/2013: Opinion adopted by the Committee under article 14 of the Convention, concerning communication No. 54/2013, para. 3.2

13.  UNDRIP Article 10

14.  UNDRIP Article 31

15.  Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (2009). E/C.12/GC/21: General comment No. 21. Right of everyone to take part in cultural life (art. 15, para. 1 (a), of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), para. 37

16.  Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 17 (2005) The right of everyone to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he or she is the author, para. 32

17.  Human Rights Committee. (2022). CCPR/C/132/D/2552/2015: Views adopted by the Committee under article 5 (4) of the Optional Protocol, concerning communication No. 2552/2015, para. 8.4.; Human Rights Committee. (2019). CCPR/C/126/D/2751/2016: Views adopted by the Committee under article 5 (4) of the Optional Protocol, concerning communication No. 2751/2016, para. 7.8

18.  Human Rights Committee. (2009). CCPR/C/95/D/1457/2006: Communication No. 1457/2006, para. 7.6.

19.  Expert Mechanism on The Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2018). A/HRC/39/62, para. 14

20.  Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2018). A/HRC/39/62, para. 20-23

21.  Expert Mechanism on The Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2018). A/HRC/39/62, para. 14, 24, 33, 43, 44

22. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2010). A /HRC/15/37, para. 79

23. Saramaka vs Suriname, para. 129, 139-141, 153-154

24. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2010). A/HRC/15/37: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous people, James Anaya, para. 54

25. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (2010). A/HRC/15/37: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous people, James Anaya, para. 71-75.

26. Saramak vs Suriname, para. 129, 139-141, 153-154

27. Endorois vs Kenya, para 294

28. Endorois vs Kenya Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. (2022). General recommendation No. 39 on the rights of Indigenous women and girls, para. 55

29.  Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. (2020). CERD/C/102/D/54/2013: Opinion adopted by the Committee under article 14 of the Convention, concerning communication No. 54/2013, para. 3.2

30.  UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, commentary to Principle 12

Hawai’i cannot withstand the utilitarian agricultural system that is common in the West. These truths are hard to witness and even harder to live under. We can make a credit system to make us feel better, but are we truly balancing our economies, and impact on the planet?

Photo of Benji Ekolu Rodrigues, Translational leader, Kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian), USA, Hawaii

Aloha kakou,

O wao Benji ekolu Rodrigues kou inoa, o Hawaiʻi nei mai au, I am a son of Hawai’i, I am a father, a farmer, a steward of land, sea, and water. I am a caretaker of our native sciences, stories, traditions, sacred sites, and medicines of my family. I'm here to offer my manaʻo on the biodiversity credit system that is being proposed.

Hawaiʻi since before contact with the western world has been home to many of the most unique endemic species in the world. Over the last 180 years, it has become one of the most imperiled ecosystems on the planet, with many of our plant, and bird relations now considered rare, endangered, and or extinct. The songs of many of our ancestral manu (birds) are no longer heard in our precious remaining mesic forest.

Over the last 130 years the introduction of many imported invasive species, and with the tides of development on the rise, our ecology has taken a back seat to commercial progress, severely degrading our ecosystems, sacred sights, ancient burials, and subsistence food systems. Our cities are constantly growing and more places are being paved over and slated to be developed as man continues to sprawl across the landscape. Here in our homelands of the Hawaiian people, bulldozing, water pollution, bombing, fuel leaks, and water diversion continue to contribute to deforestation and loss and toxification of our precious ecology and aquifers.

Hawai’i has always been a gem in the Pacific with year-round agriculture potential in it’s volcanic soil. This drove nearly 1 million acres of Hawaiian land to be cleared and planted with sugar in the heights of the sugar boom, which was the next agricultural boom following the rubber industry which has had similar impacts on the Amazon forest and its people. In the process of feeding the worlds sugar supply from 1 million acres of our prized agricultural lands, the agribusiness in Hawaii relied heavily on chemical fertilizer and commercial pesticides as common practices, compounding soil degradation and compaction of earth. In the 19th century, much of the lands of Ka malu Ulu o lele in west Maui, were deforested and intentionally burned to make room for the new cash-crop of sugar, waterways were diverted to central Maui, and along with it the loss of our sacred intentionally planted Ulu grove of lele, which at its heights was multigenerational food forest, that fed countless generations of Hawaiians reaching back into the 15th and 16th century.

This legendary forest would perish into history books and newspaper articles of the 1860’s, and the moʻolelo(ancestral stories) of a time passed.

The land in west Maui was permanently changed and the ecology and ecosystems in the area forever altered; estimates of 8 to 10 million trees in the mid 18th century in west Maui were destined to become a dry grassland desert renamed Lahaina, which translates in our mother tongue as the merciless sun, no more precious native trees such as hame, in the place known as ukumehame, very little traditional food crops of Ulu remaining in lahaina, which is the tree that its original place name, ka malu Ulu o lele was named for, the original name to the capitol of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Truth be told in light of recent events, the tragic wildfires our communities have faced in Maui, have been in the making nearly 180 years.

It seems the Hawaiian was to meet the eventual fate of losing our subsistence food systems, same as the first peoples of turtle island, would lose their sacred buffalo in massive eradication of their primary food sources. This would push many of the Native peoples into food insecurity, as mass commodification of food resources spread throughout the Americas, diminishing food systems, alongside the struggles of the losing ability to speak our language in government, and schools, many would lose their connection to Place through boarding schools. The Hawaiian people began to become imperiled along with our ecosystems as our communities began to become marginalized, further exacerbated through the displacement from our traditional lands, it's become apparent the indigenous peoples of the planet were experiencing massive change to our consciousness, and ways of life with lasting impacts that are clearly visible in our communities today.

By 1906 the denationalization campaigns in Hawai’i were in full force, as the program for patriotic exercises, replaced our National holidays, cultural celebration, was replaced by that of American holidays, as the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America would be standard operating procedures for all schools in Hawai’i. This would further assimilate the Hawaiian people into a foreign language, and a foreign world view leaving behind intimate relationships with our homelands, as development would forever alter our lives. Much of Hawaiian history through the 19th century was silenced; this disconnection left many Hawaiians unable to speak our mother tongue, by systematically being indoctrinated into the department of education. We are now living in a generation of Hawaiians, the majority without the ability to read their history, much of which sits untranslated in our archives with more than 1 million articles yet to be reflected on in our present generations. The Hawaiian were prolific writers through the 1830’s to the 1890’s, leaving many Hawaiians unaware of their constitutional protections and land rights giving us undivided interests in our ancestral lands. A stream of constant division tactics hampered the self determination and organization of the Hawaiian, a complete take over of our National identity became fully realized through the boarding schools of the 19th century, their native being to be replaced with Americanization, and capitalist culture.

In 2023 through the advancement of technology and the interconnectivity of internet-of-things, we are now able to piece together the picture of our understanding of what has happened to the Hawaiian, as much of our history and language have been oppressed, Hawaiians haven’t been able to sift through old Hawaiian language newspapers to orientate ourselves with rightful history, now through the internet these histories can be laid out in front of us, for us to make sense of our historical and contemporary adversity the peoples and ecology of Hawaiʻi have faced, the culmination of these understandings, and now can witness the correlation of the current, health, housing, and language statistics of the Hawaiian, giving us a holistic view of why we have arrived at the present moment in the condition we have.

Hawaiians and many natives understand that knowing the past is crucial to understanding our now, it gives us the ability to help us chart a better way forward in the future. I ponder on what the critical race theory for Hawaiians, has yet to explore, in the way Hawaiians have been impacted on a psycho-spiritual level, that have undoubtedly caused many adverse impacts on the Hawaiian consciousness. In family systems this is better known today as generational trauma, and identity crisis.

Today in 2023 the Hawaiian kingdom still sits in an occupied state, our lands and our waters still being threatened by the progeny of our first occupiers. Over 130 years of assimilation, commodification of our land bases, and the import of over 385,000 workers from around the world throughout the Hawaiʻi plantation era, would create massive plantation townships, which would further exacerbate the socioeconomic, environmental, and housing issues of the Hawaiian. In 2023 the Hawaiian people equate less than 10% of the population of our traditional lands with over 30,000 people still waiting for access to lands under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. This system meant to govern the Hawaiian as wards of the state is broken, as 130 years ago the world didn’t treat people of color, be they Hawaiian, African, or Maori with very much dignity, as it became a crime to be who god created us to be, as the world hated on many of our people for the color of their skin, much of the writings of that era would be written with the conviction of human nature which has been shown to be perceptions of superiority over the colored man by those of lighter complexion.

These truths are hard to witness and even harder to live under; the Hawaiian among many people of color, would lead lives of hardship throughout the 18th century into the civil rights era. The Native American already facing 200 years of persecution, and violence, long before the Hawaiian. Clear words and thoughts of hate written in racist newspaper articles throughout the 18th century damning us as uncivilized barbaric people. Many of these claims can be found through a cursory search of newspapers at the turn of the 18th century in relation to Hawaiʻi and our monarchs.

These circumstances have caused much distress to the Hawaiian and our traditional homelands, and the Hawaiian is still seeking and making sense of the trauma inflicted upon our people, and ancestral lands, while working on regaining our National consciousness to work towards self determination. Treaties of friendship, reciprocity, and commerce lay in the library of Congress, still unrecognized by the United States of America, and with it the acknowledgments of the American President Grover Cleveland through the Blount Report of 1894, would confirm and conclude the unlawful nature of the occupation of Hawai’i by America in 1893. Yet the president would only serve one term, without any justice or due process being served to the Hawaiian people.

Hawaiʻi is and was a treaty recognized independent sovereign nation, of which having our own constitution, laws, and land tenureship, all still valid today, and recognized by the United Supreme Court. Hawaiians are now challenging fraudulent title to our ancestral lands and reclaiming our ancestral land tenureship known as Kuleana. American corporations such as Pioneer Mill, Maui Land and Pine, and Alexander & Baldwin took control over our National lands and became the gentries of the Pacific. Now the modern developers continue in their legacy of displacement of Hawaiians and exploiting our natural resources, to develop gentlemen's estates and homes in gated communities which Hawaiians could never afford. Maui leads the islands in medium home prices, as more and more Hawaiians and local people are leaving to be able to have a more affordable cost of living. As much of the world looks to Hawaiʻi as a place to leave the cities and by extension continue to gentrify our islands.

I Benjamin Ekolu Rodrigues am an aloha āina patriot, who deeply loves my country, people, and ways of life here in Hawai’i, and I convey this with my deepest respect: before there can be meaningful progress, and development of new systems, there are many things that need to be addressed before new laws, charters, and partnerships can be formed with the Hawaiian people. For 130 years the Hawaiian has been seeking reciprocity & justice for the non consensual abusive and toxic relationship we have been forced to be a part of by the United States Congress, and its agents.

The Hawaiian people are intimately connected to our lands, and continually advocated the immediate end of using our sacred lands as bombing ranges, failed fuel tank systems, and for building on our sacred sites.

Our precious ecology is very much still at risk, much of our native trees don’t have any legislative protections, while they are very much imperiled, and facing mass extinction due to over development, unchecked harvesting, invasive species, and diseases such as rapid ohia death, and the many threats inadvertently imported to our homelands through increasing population and expanding markets that don't consciously consider their impacts to our environment and ecology.

Hawai’i cannot withstand the utilitarian agricultural system that is common in the West. Our endangered and threatened ecosystems cannot handle the unchecked commodification of resources, which our history has shown us, has been a detriment to our ecology, culture, and traditional ways of life.

This biocredit system alongside carbon credits doesn’t guarantee the regulations and enforcement of these world powers, corporations, militararies, and the many industries across the globe to comply with practices that preserve land, water, sea, and forest, for the future generations of humanity. We can make a credit system to make us feel better, but are we truly balancing our economies, and impact on the planet? If this panel is truly seeking help and collaboration with indigenous peoples, I truly implore you all to consider the history, treaties, and thoughts within this letter. If we are to start new, and begin to shape better practices for the planet, we must first hoʻoponopono and make right for the things of the past that currently continue to impact us today as the Hawaiian people. We pray the world can move past short-term thinking, and the self-destructive way man has been trampling across the earth, limiting ourselves to profit margins, over the health and wellbeing of humanity.

Our thoughts, and prayers, are with all the nations of the earth, and the highest of respect and aloha to all the sacred colors of man, we pray for truth, reconciliation, and healing for humanity. May we build something lasting, and may peace reign on earth once again and may all the fighting cease. We all know that with all that the earth has to offer, there is enough to take care of us all, if we live in a conscious and loving way.

Me Ke Aloha Āina,

Benji Ekolu Rodrigues
Executive Director- Kumu Foundation

  Clients Growers Friends  

Written by Benji Ekolu Rodrigues. Benji is a Translational leader, Kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian), USA, Hawaii

In recent years, Indigenous Peoples have become a ‘hot topic’ in the business, climate, and conservation communities. This has been the case, particularly after COP15 which ended with a landmark biodiversity agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The Framework has various targets, many of which relate to Indigenous Peoples. The various initiatives that increasingly mention Indigenous Peoples include but are not limited to disclosure standards, investor alliances, and proponents of biodiversity credit schemes.

Photo by Melibea

The imperative for including Indigenous Peoples in nature protection and restoration initiatives is simple. Indigenous Peoples protect a large share of the world’s remaining intact ecosystems, and the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights over their territories have been shown to be crucial for biodiversity protection. Initiatives that seek to protect nature will simply not work well if they fail to ensure the participation of Indigenous Peoples, and respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

But what is actually behind those various initiatives, and to what extent do they promote respect for Indigenous Peoples’ effective participation and protection of rights?

Some of these initiatives appear to have sought to promote Indigenous Peoples’ rights; for example, the investor initiative Nature Action 100+ asks companies to prioritize rights-based approaches developed in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples and local communities when they are affected.

However, other initiatives seem more concerned with pushing the financialization of nature onto Indigenous Peoples, while disregarding Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and thereby seriously undermining efforts to protect nature.

Standards for disclosure on nature

The perhaps most known initiative, the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) recommends companies to disclose their material risks, impacts, and dependencies on nature, as well as their human rights policies, engagement activities, and oversight by the board and management, with respect to Indigenous Peoples, and other stakeholders. They have also developed Guidance on engagement with Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and affected stakeholders.

Indigenous organizations have been clear that effective disclosure requires “companies to publicly report on their value chains, including the exact name and location of their suppliers, and actual and potential impacts identified, in order to allow us to identify the actors violating our human rights including our right to a healthy environment, and give us the necessary tools needed to monitor companies’ value chains...” However, TNFD does not require companies to disclose their human rights or environmental impacts, nor to provide transparency of their value chains.

To answer whether the framework would be effective for uncovering environmental damage on Indigenous territories, one simply needs to ask:

What would self-disclosure look like for a company whose business model is reliant on displacing Indigenous Peoples from their territories and destroying their territories, either directly or through their value chains?

Most likely, the company would use their TNFD report to greenwash, by claiming that they “engaged” some group of Indigenous people, without providing the transparency required.

Nature-based solutions and biodiversity credits 

The World Economic Forum’s report Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of Landscapes was clear that actors engaged in nature-based solutions should “design and follow processes that will ensure all the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples are protected and respected, including as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).” Unfortunately, this has not been the case for the majority of initiatives working on biodiversity credits.  

A report by Pollination, for example, finds that “the majority of schemes do not establish comprehensive requirements for obtaining free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and do not require co-ownership, partnership or benefit-sharing models with IPs and LCs.”

The Taskforce on Nature Markets issued a set of final recommendations, without references to the rights of Indigenous Peoples; rather, the report was only concerned with economic benefits for Indigenous Peoples being derived from nature markets. In other words, it seems as if the message is that Indigenous Peoples should be happy with their rights being violated as long as they are economically compensated.

Likewise, the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits, which was launched by France and the UK, seems more concerned with benefits for Indigenous Peoples rather than rights. Their report A Global Roadmap to Harness Biodiversity Credits for the Benefit of People and Planet for example, states that they will set up an advisory panel focused on five focal areas, none of which mentions Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Co-incidentally, both France and the United Kingdom have previously sought to impede the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

In the negotiation of the EU regulation on deforestation-free products, France sought to oppose the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the regulation.

Likewise, the United Kingdom has stated that “With the exception of the right of self-determination, we, therefore, do not accept the concept of collective human rights in international law,” despite the recognition of collective rights being crucial for Indigenous Peoples' physical and cultural survival as distinct people.

The rights of Indigenous Peoples

The rights of Indigenous Peoples are most clearly articulated through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The Declaration “expresses and reflects legal commitments under the Charter of the United Nations, as well as treaties, judicial decisions, principles and customary international law.” As such, it is largely reflective of international human rights law; however, there is a tendency among some actors to claim that the Declaration simply represents non-binding statements. This is incorrect; several binding treaties and conventions, and in some cases, national regulation have been interpreted to guarantee many of the rights enshrined in the Declaration.

For example, the requirement to obtain free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples, is required under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ rights.

It should also be noted that Indigenous Peoples do not just enjoy human rights individually, but have rights as collective subjects of international law and not only as members of such communities or peoples. The refusal of both France and the United Kingdom to recognize and protect those collective rights seriously calls into question the good faith of their biodiversity credit initiatives.

Despite Indigenous Peoples’ rights being recognized and protected by various international instruments, as well as national constitutions and regulations, governments and private sector actors seem to frequently disregard or fail to respect those rights, ultimately creating unnecessary risks.  

In Colombia for example, a judge suspended a carbon credit project that sold credits without the knowledge and consent of local Indigenous Peoples. Respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights is not just a matter of compliance with international human rights law, but also critical for business viability.

Recognizing the contribution of indigenous peoples to protecting the planet

Across the world, there is a tendency of governments and businesses to seek to compensate Indigenous Peoples to stop cutting trees, e.g., through REDD+ programs. According to this logic, Indigenous Peoples should be compensated to stop destroying nature. However, this logic is incorrect.

Most of the destruction occurs outside of Indigenous territories, or by outsiders to Indigenous territories, or where Indigenous Peoples lack legal rights to their territories, or where Indigenous Peoples lack institutional, legal, technical, and financial capacity to protect their territories against external threats.

The international community should recognize the valuable contribution that Indigenous Peoples have already made to protect the planet and support their continued defense and protection of nature, not conditional on being able to claim offsets or credits, but rather because of the work Indigenous Peoples have undertaken and its inherent value for the whole planet, and for all the historical injustices done unto Indigenous Peoples, who will suffer the most burden from climate change and the ongoing destruction of nature.

Furthermore, the international community should recognize that threats to Indigenous Peoples exist in a social, economic, and political context that cannot be fully addressed with market-based solutions, but rather, seek to revert the very extractive and colonialist paradigms that drive the destruction of Indigenous territories. The first priority should be to stop, halt, nullify, and revert destructive activities on Indigenous territories that have been granted without our consent, and to enable Indigenous Peoples to reclaim or re-purchase traditional Indigenous lands that have been unlawfully or coercively taken or privatized.

In no instance should Indigenous territories be used for claiming ‘biodiversity offsets’ that serve to enable further environmental destruction elsewhere.

Moving beyond a tokenistic approach to Indigenous participation

It is time that Indigenous Peoples’ participation in such initiatives move beyond tokenistic approaches toward true and equitable participation. Simply having Indigenous participants in an advisory board without decision-making power, or consulting with Indigenous groups without incorporating their input does not on its own constitute effective participation. Such approaches work to legitimize the agendas of corporations and national governments that have historically caused and continue to cause, the destruction of nature while putting Indigenous Peoples at a disadvantage.

It is critical that Indigenous Peoples have an equal say regarding the development of those various initiatives from the conceptualization stage, and have access to sufficient resources, capacity-building, and independent expert and legal advice to develop our own mechanisms, assessments, studies, and standards for protecting the planet.

Effective participation of Indigenous Peoples also requires an understanding of the situation of Indigenous Peoples across the world. Not only are we consistently discriminated against and excluded from participating in decisions affecting us, but we also face many barriers to participating, and face severe risks when defending our rights, including violence and criminalization.

For example, in October, an Indigenous leader from Brazil was killed after denouncing the invasion of their territories by businessmen at the United Nations. This is not an isolated case; over 60% of Indigenous territories worldwide are currently threatened by industrial activities, and although Indigenous Peoples comprise just 6% of the world’s population, we comprise over a third of assassinated environmental defenders in the last decade.

As such, simply seeking to include Indigenous people in a system that already works against us and harms the planet can never be just and equitable. It will also not be effective in protecting and restoring nature, nor for reverting the irreversible tipping points that are closer day by day.

Instead, the international community should first seek to learn from, understand and fit into Indigenous Peoples’ worldviews and priorities. Failure to ensure the effective participation of Indigenous Peoples and failure to ensure respect for our rights means that any attempt to protect and restore nature will be in vain.

  Indigenous  

The author of this article,  who is a member of an Amazonian Indigenous people, has chosen to remain anonymous.

This message is directed to the United Nations and the states that currently govern and control the world with their laws and science…

Miguel Chindoy, Legal representative of the Asociación Indígena Agro Pueblos. Kamëntsá nation, Colombia

Those of us who express and sign the content of this document are descendants of the first peoples and nations that creation has left under the laws of nature to take care of the earth, which is the home of humanity. We are the historical guardians of life that manifests in water, plants, fauna, forests, mountains, moorlands, snow-capped mountains, oceans, glaciers, mangroves, beaches, wetlands, and every living form that represents a cell of the existing cosmic order.

Since time immemorial, our ancestors understood the codes of nature, its laws, and its teachings, so that each people from every place of origin, according to traditions, totems, spiritualities, and knowledge, could exercise governance over life. This is the inheritance that ancestral wisdom has left us, which we still preserve, and for this reason, we feel the duty to express to the United Nations and the states, so that, in the face of today's environmental emergency, we may be heard from their consciousness.

With due respect, but without baggage, we express that we understand, but we lament the logic that those who hold technological power and economic power wield control over the world; because through this path, power has become an obsession of powerful nations that have blinded their essence as children of the earth and have become masters of the planet. In this utilitarian logic, they have objectified the world and commodified everything that exists, and this is now the backbone of the system that states have adopted today.

This wave of injustices against the goods of nature has been interpreted by many grandparents, elders, and sages of indigenous peoples as a war against Mother Earth and a denial of the rights of future generations; in the face of which many leaders of indigenous peoples have raised their voice of discontent, and many of them have sacrificed their lives for these claims. Therefore, we reaffirm that a large part of human history is a history of pain written with the blood of our ancestors.

We do not intend to denounce or scandalize the actions of those who currently hold the power of decision regarding the destinies of the world, but we do want them to remember that, in recent decades, injustices have been committed with nature in the name of development, and rights of the land have been violated through megaprojects that have destroyed vital resources and desecrated sacred sites. Faced with all these irreparable damages, in recent years, it has been callously asserted that the polluter must pay, trying to imply that everything can be resolved with the god of money.

Around these injustices with the assets of nature, categories and concepts about wealth and poverty have been created; social inequalities have been established, and above all, human thought has been contaminated, with all the repercussions that derive from it, and in the face of which Indigenous Peoples often consider us poor, backward, and ignorant. That is why today Indigenous Peoples ask the world if it is more ignorant to recognize the earth as a mother or to consider the earth as a commodity.

One of the first pieces of scientific equivalence knowledge of Indigenous Peoples is that the earth is a living being, with sensitivity and epistemic wisdom; we owe to it what we are and what we do as peoples. Our history, traditions, myths, languages, and all practices as peoples are owed to Mother Earth; she is the source of the ancestral sciences of Indigenous Peoples, today still in force and necessary for the preservation of life.

Therefore, in the face of the proposal for payment for environmental services and bonds or credits for various vital resources by those with economic power, it is necessary that we jointly evaluate the adverse impacts caused against nature, with effective participation of Indigenous Peoples as guardians and mourners of nature and not only by those who hold decision-making power in the spheres of global politics where climate change is discussed, but in reality, it is about the earth in a state of illness.

It is not fair that those who have caused the greatest contamination and deterioration of nature now assume a heroic stance as if it were a help with financial resources so that we continue to care for or restore nature's resources; which they further intend to be under their logic, their norms, and their convenience, in which we would end up absorbed by the market system. We cannot forget that today we are facing environmental damages caused by greed that no economic budget can repair.

We understand that the birth of the United Nations was motivated to safeguard order and advocate for rights related to life; hence the UN system has become institutionalized in all fields, which we recognize its importance. But at the same time, it seems paradoxical to us that around environmental issues today, life is in imminent danger. In this sense, we consider it urgent that, just as human rights have been declared binding for states, the rights of the earth must also be recognized as binding for states.

Therefore, from Indigenous Peoples, we urgently call upon the United Nations to lead this task in conjunction with the people. It is a commitment to just mitigation and a change in human behavior in the face of the environmental emergency caused by projects such as mining, deforestation, the use of agrochemicals, biopiracy, animal trafficking, river, lake, and ocean pollution, among others. If every year heads of state meet to issue statements about their management or concern, why is it not possible to gather the many voices of the Indigenous Peoples, so that from the UN microphones, we can speak to the world on this issue?

Given all of the above, since the matter of bonds and/or credits will be a reality, we, as Indigenous Peoples, advocate for these processes to be based on principles that guarantee the exercise of the rights that we hold as pre-existing peoples to the states; because before human laws, we are protected by the right of birth, in accordance with the natural law or law of origin written in the codes of nature since the beginning of time.

In this sense, the agreements, commitments, or deals that are to be established must bear the hallmark of transparency, good faith, and due process; where clear dialogue will be the guideline for understanding. Indeed, each agreement with the communities must be preceded by the corresponding consultation, so that there is prior, free, and informed consent. In this way, Indigenous Peoples do not assume the simple role of beneficiaries, but that of strategic allies to continue fulfilling the mission of being guardians of life.

Finally, we express our will that the present content be incorporated as a preamble or historical background to the terms of reference and the letter that will guide the parties involved in the upcoming agreements, with the certainty that the future of humanity depends on the health of Mother Earth, and her health depends on our commitment as her children.

Co-signatories:

• Benji Ekolu Rodrigues, Translational leader, Kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian), USA, Hawaii

• Fernando Lezama, Taita, Pijao, Colombia, Putumayo

• José Alberto Garreta Jansasoy, Governor of the Cofan Indigenous Reservation, Cofán, Nariño, Colombia

• Jattopa Rufino Antonio Ponare, Cacique and Master of Tradition,
  Huottoja, Venezuela

• Jayesh Joshi, Leader from Maharashtra, Bhil, India

• Goengalla Yin JummaJumma McLeod, represents ALL the Australian aborigines, Jaithmathang, Australia

• Jhony López, Environmentalist, Pastos, Putumayo, Colombia

• Demer Gonzales Vasquez, President of the Autonomous Territorial Government Organization of the Shipibo Konibo Nation, Peru

  Indigenous  

Written by Michael Chindoy, Legal representative of the Asociación Indígena Agro Pueblos. Kamëntsá tribe, Colombia. On consultation with leaders from >53 leaders from independent indigenous nations, some of which are public personally or as a group. Please note that these leaders and their statements are independent, and may not be affiliated with Savimbo or in agreement with biodiversity crediting.

The Amazon has biodiversity. We should preserve it. How? We’re glad you asked! First, ask the locals. Second, put their traditional actions into code. Third, sell it as a planetary service. Fourth, repeat. (Especially if you’re an indigenous group because you probably really deserve to get paid for this, you’ve been doing for the planet for a long time for free.)

Savimbo biodiversity crediting algorithm where one second equals one month and blue circles are credited areas over time. Video by Enrique Balp data scientist.

We should preserve biodiversity in the Amazon. (Sigh. We’re going to have to tell you why, aren’t we...) 1. Most of our medicines come from biota there. 2. Species have value all on their own. Humans aren’t the only child of this planet. 3. We need other species to eat. Sigh.

Okay educated? Now let's talk about how.

Where did this methodology come from?

Savimbo, a company created by and for indigenous peoples and smallfarmers. We conserve the Amazon through the sale of biodiversity credits and other environmental products. We use a methodology based on the traditional activities of indigenous peoples.

Our methodology is based on image and video records of indicator species through camera traps strategically installed in the area. Each record of an indicator species must have a date, time, and geolocation to be valid. 

Our company was founded in the Colombian Amazon, along the Tropical Andean biodiversity hotspot. Colombia and its neighbor Ecuador offer a unique blend of ecological richness and cultural diversity. This region is emblematic of natural capital because of its diverse ecosystems, rainforests, rivers, and abundant wildlife.

Savimgo is a company rooted in this environment, sprouting from its traditional ecologists. What we did, do… will continue to grow — is a flowering of this knowledge—a fruit.

What is an indicator species?

To select indicator species for biodiversity validation should use a data-driven approach that considers local ecology, IPLC needs, threat factors, and conservation goals. These species need to be sensitive to environmental changes and represent the ecosystem's integrity. It's best to track 1-3 main species for consistency, ensure they align with biodiversity objectives, consider multiple indicators for ecosystem complexity, choose cost-effective monitoring, and include rare species for a comprehensive view.

There are eight categories to consider, and public research from reputable sources must identify these indicator species, aiming for a balance between inclusivity and reliability in monitoring.

• Sentinal: Share trusted research to find sentinel species, understand how they react to environmental changes, and gauge their suitability as an ecosystem proxy.

• Umbrella species: Share reliable research to pinpoint umbrella species and their suitability as an ecosystem proxy.

• Rare species: Share credible research to find rare species that can act as a representative measure for the protected ecosystem.

• Endangered species: Classify indicator species based on their IUCN level with a reminder that to qualify as an indicator species due to threat level alone, they must have a Critically Endangered or Endangered status at the subnational, national, or international level.

• Trafficked species: Include only trafficked species listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

• Keystone species: Share trusted research to identify keystone species and assess their suitability as an ecosystem proxy.

• Emblematic species: Supply credible research from a trusted source to find culturally important species, including their historical or mythological significance, role in traditions, use in arts, and symbolism in cultural stories.

• Endemic species: Identify species as restricted to a particular geographic region and not naturally found anywhere else. Endemic species are important indicators of the uniqueness and ecological significance of a particular region.

How do we calculate biodiversity?

Our indicator species such as the jaguar, tapir, harpy eagle, and pygmy marmoset, are associated with their normalized home range in a circle, calculated in hectares. Each of the system's credits has a grade based on the ecosystem value. They can be platinum, gold, silver, or bronze.

Our Growers need to keep demonstrating the continued presence of their rare species with periodic proof of life. Each registration lasts two months (60 days), If during this period of time a new registration is obtained, a double payment of the credit is not made, but the area or time of the credit might be expanded if it’s an animal with a wider range, or the dates extend the timeline.

In conclusion

Our project, and this methodology aims to generate a rapid change in hunting behaviors and aggressive deforestation affecting the environment.

Given the urgency of conserving to avoid mass extinction, the participation of local people is essential. Locals are critical during this process because they are the guardians of the earth and have the right to be compensated for it.

Today, we extend this invitation to you so that you can learn first-hand about our progress and study the possibility of replicating this methodology in your territories. 

  Clients Growers Friends  

Written by Rocio Fernández and Robert Senter. Rocio is an ethno educator and Robert is a Polymath working on the Savimbo project.

We need to innovate in climate and indigenous groups have underutilized solutions, but we’ve been ignoring them. So it’s time to change.

There is a reason a jaguar is the sexiest thing in the Amazon. Indigenous groups have been stewarding this ecosystem longer than civilization itself. They know, as our scientists do, that apex predators are the best metric for this healthy forest. 

So how do we use this knowledge to better climate markets?  Read more to find out…

Game camera video used in biodiversity crediting. By Jhony Lopez, leader of Savimbo’s biodiversity credit program.

It’s not rocket science. Our civilization has perfected extraction. Other civilizations have perfected conservation. For conservation efforts to be effective, we need to learn from the pros.

We have to rapidly evolve climate markets for greater impact. Indigenous knowledge is an undercapitalized resource for measuring ecosystems. However, indigenous peoples have been poorly included in climate markets. Therefore emerging automation should utilize their knowledge while automating for scale. 

Our biodiversity credit methodology is a computer algorithm for bottom-up conservation. It stops deforestation in the borderlands of pristine Amazon jungle because it’s an expression of indigenous thinking about that same healthy jungle. 

What do locals know that you don’t about conservation? 

Biodiversity science lags indigenous knowledge.

We’d love to think that Western science solves all problems. But we still lack viable market solutions for deforestation or ecosystem tracking. However, our hubris isn’t the whole story. The reality is Western science hasn’t devoted enough time, funding, or effort to tracking healthy ecosystems and other species. We need to learn from civilizations that have. 

Indigenous people have known the solution for millennia. Their totemic animals are intricately entwined with ecology, culture, language, and conservation activities. Because they didn’t do it for science; they stewarded natural resources for survival.

Biodiversity is a better metric of natural ecosystem health than carbon credits. The presence of rare or endangered animals demonstrates intact water, soil health, below-canopy forest integrity, absence of noise pollution, and controlled human predation and trafficking. (Those ever-classy ecological co-benefits we’re trying so hard to quantify.)  In the case of an animal like an apex predator, an indicator species is also indicative of the presence of the entire food chain. 

But how do we quantify biodiversity? The truth is we’re really not great at quantifying other species. Species richness scores are poorly researched in many of the most biodiverse and remote zones of the world. Species themselves are ever-evolving and poorly classified. In the Catologue of Life, “The most complete authoritative list of the world's species - maintained by hundreds of global taxonomists,” we see the succinct tongue-in-cheek caveat “Be aware that the COL Checklist is still incomplete and undoubtedly contains errors.” 

Yeah, we’re really cute, but we’re still getting there when it comes to being a caretaker species. (Don’t worry we’re not going to beat ourselves up today, we’re going to celebrate a cross-cultural victory!)

Wait! What about our indigenous friends?

Thus far, our efforts to create metrics that quantify biodiversity in all situations are earnest but difficult to standardize. Now finally, biodiversity is easier to measure than carbon. How did we hack it? The solution, as always, was to ask the locals!

The biodiversity credit market has been delayed by difficulties with quantification and MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification). Buyers didn’t trust it because the metrics weren’t consistent. 

The early design of biodiversity credits was based on the Walawacea protols. They utilized baskets of metrics that were defined at the project level. Projections that were then met, or not met. Sound familiar?  Yep, its basically a multidimensional REDD+ project with all its pitfalls (counterfactual, project-defined baselines) only in five dimensions without any standardization of aims. No way a market still reeling from REDD+ failures will accept it. 

The truth is, there is absolutely no way to be good at everything. We have to combine efforts. So after I tried to put a QR code on every tree in the jungle (yeah 😳, true story, fail fast!) Jhony and Fernando listened nicely, then kindly pointed out some really cool video clips of jaguars. 

To my surprise, I learned that there is a 5,000-year history of using the jaguar to indicate a healthy jungle. In fact, Jhony tracked jaguars for fun (and occasionally for money when conservation nonprofits came around asking him where they were). Being the entrepreneur I am, I immediately put it into code, and being the hacktivist I am, I immediately open-sourced that code.

Savimbo biodiversity crediting algorithm where one second equals one month and blue circles are credited areas over time. Video by Enrique Balp data scientist.

 Our code and the methodology to use it miraculously solve standardization problems. It works in every ecosystem, every species, every biodiversity hotspot, and every indigenous group automatically understands it. Because it’s based on a fundamental principle of how life lives on earth. 

It’s based on indigenous knowledge. 

Indicator species, why they work, and who they work for

The reason this code works to measure biodiversity is that it doesn’t measure everything. It measures what matters for conservation.  

Take a scientific critique. 

An eager scientist wrote me directly last week. He suggested a method that had led to the publication of two books in his name. Research ~500 wildlife species, determine a modern range map for each, then get 600 people to help identify habitat relationships with 33 habitat classifications. That should cover about two US states. To quote “Indicator species do not represent a fuller list or richness within a system nor the functions performed within that system. This is a simple approach that may not represent its true credit value. Everything small and large counts!”

Of course, none of this work has been done in the Amazon, which covers 2.5 million square miles and has at least 3,680 unidentified tree species alone.  In our region, former FARC territory, and one of the most biodiverse in the world, it has 16% deforestation rates in some areas due to narcotrafficking, and hasn’t had a Western scientist in here for 20 years. No worries, 600 Western scientists and several books later we… won’t have any jungle left to measure. 

The Amazon is at a tipping point folks. We’re out of time for perfect methods. 

We need a quick, dirty, fast, fair method that directly incentivizes locals, the agents of change in deep jungle. Giving them the power to move the dial in the right direction, on their terms, and with their knowledge.  

We need the algorithm above. One indicator species like an apex predator, is captured on video camera (an inexpensive alternative to animal tagging or soundscapes). Credits are paid within the living range of that species, on a reasonable timeline that fits with smallfarmer and indigenous hunter-gatherer behavior. An imperfect estimate of intact forests, and intact biodiversity that works for locals battling to preserve a complex, now chaotic system. 

This method is cost-effective and well... EFFECTIVE. It stops deforestation immediately on the borders of primary jungle and extraction economies.  At $30/ha/yr, it also costs 70% less than carbon credits for the same outcome (an estimated $100/ha/yr). 

Let’s stop trying for perfection, and start aiming for impact. 

In conclusion

We need hacktivists from two cultures to figure out how to swing the climate steering wheel in time to avoid a catastrophic global collapse. We don’t have time for perfect methods if they were even possible in a complex, chaotic system. 

  Clients Growers Friends  

Written by Drea Burbank, MD and Robert Senter. Drea is a MD-technologist and co-founder of Savimbo. Robert is a Polymath at Savimbo who enjoys writing.

Some of the most important places on Earth for climate have no direct relationship to buyers and sellers of climate credits. Our species must think of Earth as a complete organism, to have a chance of becoming a starfaring (or even long-lived) resident of this planet.

NASA model of atmospheric carbon dioxide, tagged by source for the year 2021. Green is absorption, brown is emissions.

A story.

We were co-founded by indigenous leaders to work with smallfarmers. Birthed in former FARC territory in the Colombian Amazon — we were designed to be an economic tool to do one thing: protect pristine jungle. All the other local economies (petroleum, mining, logging, and narcotrafficking) were extractive. Brazil and Ecuador had devolved to local violence between indigenous groups protecting forests, and multinationals pushing smallfarmers to extract. So four taitas asked us to make a local economy that protected the jungle AND created peace between these two groups. So we did.

We stop deforestation with a monthly micropayment for grassroots conservation activities. Then sell six fair-trade climate products internationally for shared profits: carbon, biodiversity, and water credits, agrobiodiversity crops, and sustainable ecotourism. Landowners (smallfarmer and/or indigenous) get to be co-owners if they complete a successful year. Everyone wins.

But shortly after we started we had a problem with our target clients… carbon credits. The problem was, they simply didn’t make sense to an indigenous smallfarmer. Carbon credits are intangible, require advanced science, and rely on international death-by-committee standards. (Yes, you could argue they don’t make a lot of sense to anyone else either, but that’s another debate.)

We did the best we could, but in the first year, on our pilot site, we faced a pernicious local rumor. In a series of community meetings, and over many innocuous neighborly visits, we had to explain, and then explain again, that selling carbon credits did NOT mean we were going to send a giant automated aerial vacuum cleaner to suck up the air over our farmer’s land.

(My friends keep asking but I really have no idea if this idea came from a credulous viewing of Space Balls).

After trying unsuccessfully to translate the concepts of tons of carbon, international markets, allometric equations, emissions regulations, and deforestation rates. We struck upon a solution. We invited 100 farmers and their families to lunch, set up a large TV with a generator, supplied several rows of seating, and played the video you see above. “The people at the top have to pay the people at the bottom to keep cleaning the air,” we said. And that was that. Everyone finally understood.

Why did this solution work? Because it was a simple depiction of a planet-wide problem. Sure, it might seem like a funny story about a naive population, but it’s not. Because I talk to investors, activists, scientists, and citizens every day who are still applying local experience — and their peer group’s consensus — to a planet-wide problem.

This article is to get you to think past your vacuum cleaner. Look at the data as it really is. Widen your lens and see the answers for yourself.

Planetary consciousness = Paradigm shift

Would you cut off your own foot? Probably not. But what if you couldn’t feel it? What if you didn’t know it was a part of you? 

Planetary consciousness is the idea that we are bigger than our families, our race, or our gender. We’re beyond our own species and an integral part of natural cycles. We span nation-states.  Subject to natural laws - still somehow unique and fundamentally unknowable. 

We are more than the sum of our parts.

There is a reason some people act forcefully outside their own apparent self-interest on behalf of Nature. Because they didn’t. Their self expanded. When they became aware of how they were connected to other living systems — the Next Right Action was self-evident.

(Indigenous peoples call this awareness “adulthood”. But we don’t listen to them as much as we should — despite their long history as civilizations that live without ecological destruction. Perhaps if we did, we wouldn’t be in this pickle.)

When do we cease living as if we are perpetually alone, and constrained when everything we know about the universe suggests that we don’t stop, or begin?

If you are reading this, then you are part of a food chain, you are composed of ancient elements that cycle through even your bones, and some part of your DNA will live on after you die. Pick the discipline whose results you respect… spirituality, intellect, quantum physics. Our brightest minds agree on this topic. We are our planet.

We must evolve our sense of self-preservation.

Planetary consciousness = Biogeochemistry

You don’t have to be a spiritual person to have planetary consciousness. In science, we call planetary consciousness biogeochemistry, the study of the earth and its natural cycles as an organism.

This field evolved from the synthesis of organic chemistry, earth & environmental science, and biology. The best textbook on the topic I’ve read was authored by William H. Schlesinger and extends far beyond carbon cycles into nitrogen, phosphorus, photosynthesis, and tectonic plates. Basically, everything on earth has a cycle - even things we perceive as static.

We could look at this planetary meta-organism as a fractal of the human body. Ocean currents are its arteries, and international shipping routes are its nervous system. People its cells… Or perhaps on a bad day — its bacterial colonies.

So this makes Earth a complex system. To simplify, a system with multiple component parts that interact with each other to produce unexpected results. Sound familiar?

Well, now that we’ve crossed six out of nine planetary tipping points, Earth is probably a chaotic system as well. In other words, a dynamic system that is sensitive to initial conditions yet unpredictable and uncertain.

So what do we learn from those two observations? We learn to stop using linear science. Chaotic and complex systems DO have a pattern, but it’s not a linear pattern, and it’s not predictable. In fact, it’s much more likely to be a fractal pattern.

Sure these systems are advanced, but they can still be manipulated, modeled, and even modified — IF you use the right tools. Complex and chaotic systems can absorb large inputs with no change whatsoever, but be disrupted by small things — the much-vaunted butterfly effect.

Small things like 100 smallfarmers and a video.

Planetary consciousness = Different actions

What happens when you apply the lens of planetary consciousness to carbon cycles? Well first, you start directing your actions and money to different geocodes. Geocodes that aren’t within your neighborhood.

Let’s look at California’s much-vaunted progressive cap-and-trade program for carbon credits. Although emissions are emitted to the atmosphere, carbon credit buyers are required to store their carbon in California. This makes no sense.

• 25% of the world's land carbon is stored in the Amazon, which is also one of the planet's most critical ecological tipping points.

• California has a higher-than-average risk of wildfires, while Amazon forests are very humid and rarely burn.

• At our site, forests recover to full standing height in 6 years and live for 300 years. The average tree in the US lives for 40 years and has to face worsening drought conditions.

• The Amazon itself is at a tipping point. Very little money is required to stop deforestation at the forests' edges and the cost of operations is fractional compared to California's reforestation programs.

Despite these facts, California legislators are still thinking with a vacuum cleaner mentality. Yes, emissions from California logically should be controlled in California, but, do carbon sequestration funds need to stay there? Why not store carbon more efficiently? Why not store it in a geocode where it’s more effective, that has no funding of its own? (Remember, California will also go down with the planetary ship if the Amazon collapses.)

Most Amazonian funding – and funding for other equatorial tropical forests like the Congo, are being processed through nonprofits (a 33% operating margin) or large public payments to nation-state governments that have minimal access to, or oversight of, these forests. (Even in cases where funds are not stolen outright.) Neither of these mechanisms incentivize the 1B smallfarmers and indigenous groups who live in tropical forests and are a devilish force for good or ill depending on the incentives.

Savimbo was designed to solve a problem that the industrialized world doesn’t care about. A bottom-up problem within the hotly contested borders of the Amazon rainforest. It’s a company for the indigenous peoples and local communities who were losing the battle for the protection of the jungle to their immediate neighbors. It's their action, and their dream, we’re optimizing.

But to solve this problem, we need funders, and clients, and friends with planetary consciousness. People who see the image above and want the green part to keep doing its job. People who think our farmers are worthy business partners.

People like our farmers — who stopped believing in vacuum cleaners, and got to work.

In conclusion

Earth is an organism — and currently a particularly fractious one. No worries - there’s an app for that! But you need to widen your lens a bit to care about it. Stop worrying about vacuum cleaners and look for a global solution.

  Clients Growers Friends  

By Drea Burbank, MD. Drea is an MD-technologist and co-founder of Savimbo.

Fernando Lezama is a traditional doctor who began to walk the path of ancestral knowledge as a child. Since then, he has dedicated his life to service. He works to awaken awareness in himself and others — that in order to live in harmony, it is necessary to respect and love all living beings. Following are the steps of a Taita who has been guided by the voice of his ancestors in order to perpetuate life on the planet. 

Photo by Carmen Villegas

I came to the jungle when I was 5 years old. It was a divine place. Nature was in a wild state and the few human beings who lived there did so in complete harmony with the animals and the enormous trees that sheltered us. Every day was a celebration. The crystalline rivers flowed down the mountain and filled the atmosphere with freshness.

I used to get lost in the forest to get in touch with nature and learn from it. I saw the animals in their daily lives, masters of balance and mindfulness. My neighbors were wise people who managed the territory, guided by the spirituality born of their ancestral knowledge and their permanent contact with the power plants that Mother Nature has given us, to see beyond what our human eyes allow us.

Why is everyone talking about the rainforest?

The jungle is the most sacred place we have. The indigenous tribes are clear about this, and that is why they respect it and live in harmony with it. They have transmitted, from generation to generation, the way to live there without unbalancing its precious fabric.

Undoubtedly, it is the most complex design that nature has created and its balance is manifested in the entire planet. As we have already seen, the great losses that occur in this territory are reflected everywhere. As we lose more and more hectares of forest, all the systems of the planet deteriorate. 

The forest is the nervous system of the Earth. In addition to water, animals, and trees, it is home to metals such as gold, lithium, and platinum, which are conductors of energy and radiate vitality to all corners of the world.

Although I have only traveled one path, that of the sacred medicine of yagé, it has taken me to many places. Thanks to that, I can say that none is as majestic as the Amazonian foothills, where the clouds crash to drop the water that feeds this ecosystem and travels, in streams, until it reaches the Amazon River. This river flows endlessly into the Atlantic Ocean and reaches the coast of 98 countries. Everything is interconnected, distances mean nothing. We are one family and we inhabit the same planet. What we do here will have an impact there and vice versa. 

It is the principle of rhythm, in which everything ebbs and flows, and to avoid the destruction of the world we need to find the balance again.

Is the rainforest in danger?

More than twenty years ago, I had a vision. With the eagle's sight, I could see the entire jungle and understood we were destroying it. The path brought me back to Putumayo. I started conservation and awareness work in the area. This led me to meet Jhony Lopez, the most committed environmentalist in the region. For many nights, we sat, under the shelter of the power plants, looking for a solution that would allow people to coexist with the jungle, without destroying it, moved by a purely economic necessity. 

The question was simple: How to save the forest? And the answer we found was both simple and complicated. We must dedicate ourselves to conserving animal species and forests, as well as regenerating deforested areas. But for this to be a long-term solution, it is necessary to develop a green economy that benefits native farmers and indigenous communities, who are the ones living in the territory, so that all of them can make a living caring for the forest and protecting all the species that live in it.

For decades, cattle ranching and agriculture have eroded this biome. The sale of timber has savagely reduced its size and the oil companies have no scruples when it comes to raze all its manifestations of life, in order to continue with their business. Due to the lack of resources in the area and the neglect that successive governments have perpetuated in the region, the natives have no choice but to be part of this devastation. 

But if we create a new job that allows these people to subsist, taking care of the territory they love and know like the back of their hand, we have no doubt what decision they will make.

The first steps

I belong to the Pijao indigenous community. I carry their ancestral knowledge in my blood. Throughout my training as a traditional doctor, I have had the good fortune to study with grandparents from the Cofán, Coreguaje, and Siona communities. All these ancestralities converge in me and I know that each of these communities preserves the knowledge and the desire to protect this essential territory. We are all driven by the same vision: to return to the origins of our ancestors, when humans lived in harmony with nature. 

During these last twenty years, I have discovered that we indigenous people are not the only ones who are willing to give our all for this magical biome. The Tigres del Alto protection trail and the association El Salado de los Loros bring together more than 1,500 people who have united their lands to create a reserve where hunting and logging are prohibited. We are twenty-three villages working for a common cause: to protect the forest from poachers and prevent the entry of multinationals that want to exploit the riches of the ecosystem at any cost. 

Over time, we saw that we needed reinforcements to achieve our dream: to create the largest reserve on the planet to protect this indispensable natural treasure, which belongs to all humanity. Thus Savimbo was born. 

A company with a heart

I met Drea Burbank at a medicine retreat for Cofan Taitas. The connection was immediate, as it was clear that we shared the same ideas: the importance of the rainforest for the planet and the lack of awareness that humanity has of it. We got to work immediately. Jhony brought all his knowledge about the Piedmont and the animal footage he had already recorded, thanks to his camera traps, which showed the good health of the area's biodiversity. I already had in mind the company's structure that would allow us to activate the region's economy, around the care of the entire ecosystem. Drea brought her scientific and technological background and her experience in the world of entrepreneurship so that our ideas could be developed on a large scale. Together, we created a machine with a heart that seeks to expand human consciousness about what is truly important: rescuing biodiversity at risk due to the consequences of progress that advances without limits or respect for the environment.

Savimbo is an activist company that looks out for the common good, leaving aside individualities. Our main objective is to activate the economy of the region so that all its inhabitants can abandon the practices that deteriorate the environment and dedicate themselves to applying the knowledge they carry in their blood to care for and multiply the life that throbs in the body of our great mother: nature.

The first thing we built was trust. Month after month, we have demonstrated our integrity and our honest desire to work for the locality and for the rainforest. Today, more than 200 families have already joined the different conservation, reforestation, and ecotourism projects, with excellent results. Our reserve is growing, as is our work team, made up of local men and women. Because, in addition to our environmental work, Savimbo is also a school. If the native people learn to do the work themselves, they will not need Savimbo to continue it and will be able to transmit this new knowledge from generation to generation, perpetuating the love and respect for nature, as well as the awareness of the treasure they have in their hands. 

The value of a living tree is incalculable because it keeps in its body the whole universe. Galaxies of living beings run through it, from the roots to the last leaf of its crown.

The future is in everyone's hands

The work of saving the rainforest cannot be silent. We must go out into the light to infect the entire planet with our passion. We want to open the windows, take out banners, use megaphones, invade the networks. We want to invite all of humanity to be part of this project. We want to be the multinational of the environment and reach every screen in the world with a practical way to put a grain of sand in the conservation and expansion of the rainforest. We want people from every corner of the Earth to press a button, not to buy a new piece of clothing or a new technological accessory, but to plant a beard, a walnut, or a strawberry tree. That we all sponsor a jaguar and all the species that shelter under its umbrella.

Here we already have our hearts set on this task, but there is room for everyone. The more of us there are, the greener our future will be. 

And if we take care of the forest, if we protect the trees, we will have in our team the true sowers of this biome: the animals. They are the propagators of the seeds. Thanks to their habits, the forest grows and regenerates. Thus, we will have succeeded in turning the vision into reality. All species united, working in harmony, for a planet that is greener every day; for a rock that travels through space, overflowing with abundance; for a tiny blue dot that is infinite at the same time.

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Written by Fernando Lezama. Fernando is a founder of Savimbo and an important chaman in the Putumayo area.