Biodiversity Gains in Agrarian Landscapes

In short

One Biodiversity Unit per hectare per year (BU·ha·yr) equals a 1% change in a selected set of biodiversity metrics for agrarian landscapes.

What it is

The Fundacion Global Nature methodology quantifies biodiversity gains or losses in agrarian ecosystems that result from specific land management practices. It measures change across a given area using a preselected set of biodiversity indicators, and it has no geographic restriction provided the intervention site is an agrarian ecosystem. The approach produces biodiversity units that companies can use to project, quantify, and report improvements in biodiversity on farmland in a verifiable and comparable way. It is aimed at corporate reporting needs and custodianship of farming landscapes.

What it rewards

The reward is a credit called a Agrarian Biodiversity Unit (aBU). One credit stands for a one percent change in farm biodiversity across a hectare over a year. A verified gain in agricultural biodiversity, tied to food security and local livelihoods. A whole period of work is issued as one batch of credits at a time, in the same way a registry issues a batch.

What gets measured

To earn aBU credits, a project has to measure and prove a few things. An independent reviewer checks the evidence before any credits are issued.

• Basket of biodiversity groups (trophic levels). Metrics span different levels of the food chain (plants, birds, pollinators, soil biota).

• Relative abundance per group. Change is measured across the selected biodiversity groups.

• Plot-scale metrics. The basket mixes metrics applicable at plot scale.

• Landscape-scale metrics. …and metrics applicable at landscape scale (ecological infrastructures).

• Change vs baseline (%). Gains/losses expressed as % change in the aggregated set.

Who takes part

• Standard Registry. Owns the policy, approves participants, anchors each issuance to its evidence.

• Project Proponent. Registers the project and submits monitoring reports.

• Validation & Verification Body. Independently validates the design and verifies monitored data.

How it works

1. 1

   The project team registers the project and its plan.

2. 2

   An independent reviewer checks that the plan is sound and that the benefit is real and would not have happened anyway.

3. 3

   The team looks after the site and measures the agreed indicators over time.

4. 4

   The independent reviewer verifies those measurements.

5. 5

   Credits are issued for the verified result, and a buyer can retire a credit to claim the benefit once.