 Hello, my name is Paul Steele and I'm the Chief Economist at the International Institute for Environment Development, which is a research institute based in the UK. Within the institute I work on climate finance and biodiversity finance. I've been with the Institute for six years and before that I was with the United Nations for eight years working with ministries of finance and Asia Pacific on how climate and nature can be integrated into economic decision making. Hi everyone, my name is Anna Ducro and I'm a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development. At IIED I work on the inclusive green and blue economy teams where I focus on innovative finance mechanisms for climate, nature and people. Some things I work on are debt for climate and nature swaps, human wildlife conflict insurance, social protection and biodiversity credits. Prior to working at IIED I was completing my master's of science in globalization and development at SOAS University in London and prior to that I was studying earth and ocean sciences with a minor in food and resource economics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Overall I'm interested in finding interdisciplinary and holistic solutions to the wicked problems that we face today. Today we're going to be talking about bio-credits a way to break the logjam over finance for nature and people. We're going to talk about the context and the urgency for increasing finance to nature and people. We'll look to what are biodiversity credits and how they can address some of these challenges, then we'll look at the challenges to designing and implementing biodiversity credit schemes, turning them to the market evolution and recommendations and finally concluding with next steps. So just in terms of providing some context we're facing a situation where nature is degraded and underfunded. Nature and biodiversity has now been significantly altered by multiple human drivers including changes in land and sea use, climate change, direct exploitation of organisms, pollution and invasion of alien species. Unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of the drivers of biodiversity loss around 1 million species will continue to face extinction many within decades. The degradation of biodiversity has a wide range of complex impacts on people including but not limited to food insecurity, loss of livelihoods and culture, reduced ecosystem services and increased conflict. Importantly however the impacts of nature loss and degradation are not felt evenly with vulnerable groups such as women and children bearing the brunt of the impact. Globally ecosystem services are worth an estimated 125 to 140 trillion US dollars per year which is equal to nearly 1.5 times global GDP. However this value is often an externality to the traditional global markets and this means that the shortfall in biodiversity and nature funding is not simply that there isn't enough money available but rather that the value of nature is not incorporated into the markets. Currently nature loss is not accounted for meaning it's a massive externality and this can could be compared to in the way that carbon emissions are externality. Therefore there's a need to increase funding to biodiversity, nature and the people that rely on biodiversity as well as the people who act as stewards for biodiversity. The estimated cost that we need to spend on biodiversity is between 722 to 967 billion US dollars each year over the next two years which has been deemed as the biodiversity funding gap. And though this is a large number it represents less than 1% of global GDP. And an important point in mobilizing financial resources this kind of can be done in three ways. One is reducing harmful economic activity. The second is to generate new revenue streams which we'll get to later and then the third is to make smarter investments in nature. Though the amount of funding that will be required to mobilize is key it is also important to really dissect where the funding should be allocated. So for example as the environmental stewards of nearly 80% of biodiversity represented on only 25% of the world's land it will be key that significant amount of funding reaches Indigenous peoples given their unique ability to conserve and live in coexistence with a thriving natural world. Yet currently less than 5% of nature finance reaches Indigenous peoples. So we turn now to biocredit as one of the solutions to the previously outlined challenges. So a biodiversity credit is a unit of biodiversity that can be bought and sold and it's tradable and traceable. Note that they're also known as nature credits or nature certificates. They can be used to enable and track improvement in biodiversity so this would be a restoration credit or maintenance of biodiversity which would be a conservation credit. The most common methodology for defining a unit is based on a spatial area for example one hectare or one square meter and then a variety of biodiversity indicators relevant to the specific ecosystem are established for example fauna and flora abundance and sometimes even a carbon sequestration rate. All of the biodiversity variables are then indexed using a basket of metric approach to reach a single value that represents the level of biodiversity within the unit. There is a margin consensus with the market that biodiversity credits must be differentiated from offsets. So although offsets may play a role in some part of the nature economy a global biodiversity offset market has the potential to cause more harm than good because biodiversity is not fungible at a global or even a national level in some cases. Therefore, biodiversity credits represent a purely positive investment in biodiversity and they don't represent damage done elsewhere. There are many emerging schemes of biodiversity credits including terrasos in Colombia value nature which is a global scheme with projects worldwide and Wallacea trust that's based in the UK again with projects worldwide. So as alluded to in the last slide biodiversity credit schemes are emerging it seems like every week there's a new scheme some are pilot schemes some are in development whereas some you can see in Australia the green ones are closer or in operational stage. So the note being here that biodiversity credits are not just a theoretical approach they are being applied to a variety of ecosystems all over the world. There are three challenges to an effective bio credit scheme firstly to define a clear and accepted unit of measurement of nature. A number of schemes are using a basket of metrics approach but credit design differs by purpose. Secondly pricing and generating sales on the demand side. Tech advancements are helping to lower the transaction costs. Buyers include corporates and individuals and governments can also play a role in creating the policies to incentivize purchases and then the third challenge is to make sure the finances generated by the sales of bio credits go towards indigenous people and local communities. So conservation schemes can in some cases restrict livelihoods and bio credits can be used to create sustainable livelihoods. Indigenous peoples and local communities must be included at every stage of the bio credit scheme from design to the actual implementation and receipt of the sales. Next market evolution so how is the market for bio credits developing? Demand is coming as I've already said from individuals corporates and to some extent from governments. Blended finance both public and private is the key to set up markets and as I've said governments can play a vital role in creating incentives. Bio credits interestingly were mentioned in the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity framework under target 19 which was somewhat unexpected as they hadn't really been much discussed going into the negotiations. And now we're seeing standard setters such as Vera, Gold Standard and Plan Vivo creating standards for bio credits. What are our recommendations? And here we've again broken it down to the supply, the demand and the market architecture and the financial flows. On the supply side we need to incorporate social and cultural values including the variables that acknowledge the traditional ways of knowing and valuing biodiversity by Indigenous people and local communities. On the demand side developers and others must screen buyers to avoid sales to corporates and individuals who then use the credits to account for displaced damage to biodiversity elsewhere known as offsetting as we've already mentioned and then another types of greenwashing and then on the market architecture we need equity and transparency in financial flows. So it's vital to ensure the majority of the revenues reach Indigenous people, both men and women and local communities through blockchain and other technological advancements. And then this is the final slide. What is the role for national development actors such as the Swedish government? And we've listed out five specific areas. Just first of all support pilot projects and programs which are mushrooming across the world in bio credits. Secondly, to have capacity sharing with relevant country governments in the majority world in the global south. And how bio credits can link to their national biodiversity strategies and action plans and monitoring and evaluation and so on. Thirdly, to ensure that Indigenous people and local communities are included and really benefit again by capacity building and supporting their engagement on consultation. Fourthly, demand side technical sharing and knowledge sharing. And fifthly, to support the development of government policy to promote buying and selling of bio credits. So to provide incentives such as tax credits and other incentives which makes bio credits more attractive. So we'll stop there and now open it up for questions. Thank you.