Biodiversity credits are emerging as a promising tool to channel private capital into nature conservation, with projects expanding rapidly across several countries. Yet the market remains highly fragmented: prices vary widely and standards, metrics, and verification methods differ significantly across schemes, making quality hard to assess. Key integrity criteria—such as additionality, permanence, and leakage—are applied inconsistently, raising concerns about credibility and comparability. Without common standards and stronger public oversight, the sector risks repeating the shortcomings of carbon markets instead of becoming a robust instrument for global biodiversity protection.

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