Two line items can sit on the same slide in a nature strategy. One reads purchased 1,200 biodiversity credits. The other reads holds a certificate on a named wetland. Both cost money. Both photograph well. Only one is a claim about a place that still has to be there next year.
If you searched what are biodiversity credits, you are probably deciding which of those two lines to write. This post gives you the definition, what each purchase honestly lets you say, and a way to hold a living system directly if that turns out to be the job.
Biodiversity credits are quantified, transferable units of measured biodiversity gain or protection, issued by a project or scheme and bought by a company or investor who wants to fund or claim that outcome. The unit is designed to move: sold on, retired, or set against something happening somewhere else. That mobility is the product. It is also the trap. Industry writers sometimes call the same unit a biodiversity certificate. We do not. Here, certificate means specific ensurance: a 1:1 claim on a named agent and place, not a tradable uplift receipt.
the receipt and the hold
Start with what a credit does well, because the people building these markets are doing real work. A register makes a unit legible. A methodology makes two units comparable. A price makes a buyer show up. In England, Biodiversity Net Gain turns that into statutory demand, and habitat banks are genuine land deals with thirty-year management obligations behind them — a habitat bank is a land deal, not a vibe treats them as exactly that. The integrity work at IAPB and the Biodiversity Credit Alliance improves the receipt. It does not change what a receipt is.
Now the structural fact. A credit is fungible enough to represent a gain somewhere — you cannot trade what you cannot compare. But once a unit can be claimed away from the site, the buyer's relationship is with the unit, not the site. You hold a receipt that says nature improved. You do not hold anything that keeps paying for the place's condition after the credit clears.
BloombergNEF's factbook draws the line for you: biodiversity credits are distinct from offsets, and each is "a tradable unit of biodiversity uplift." Tradable is the operative word. What a biodiversity credit actually is builds the definition; the carbon template biodiversity is copying shows how twenty-five years of offset evidence already stress-tested this design.
You can buy a credit without the place staying alive. That is not a scandal. It is the product working as specified.
three things you can buy, and the claim each one lets you make
Most buyers are choosing between three instruments and calling all of them "nature." They are not the same purchase. The table is the post.
| biodiversity credit | contribution | certificate of ensurance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| what you hold | A transferable unit of measured gain, on a register | A funding relationship with a project — money, not units | A hold on one named place or purpose, 1:1 with the account that runs it |
| claim you can make | "We funded X units of gain" — in some schemes, "against our impact" | "We funded this work." No offset. No neutrality | "We hold [place]. Its condition is priced and funded through us." No neutrality |
| what fails | Baseline and additionality uncertainty; leakage; a unit counted far from the site; land rights and consent where the site is not the buyer's | Hard to compare across buyers; no register; easy to underfund because nobody is counting | Small live volumes; condition measurement is ours to prove; not liquid; no secondary book |
| who is accountable | The scheme and project developer, to the registry's rules | The recipient, to the funder — as far as the grant terms reach | The named account behind the certificate, which receives proceeds and carries the stewardship obligation. Accountability is ours to prove — we do not yet run third-party enforcement if a steward fails |
Read down the middle column first. Contribution claims — the direction Barbara Haya and colleagues at the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project have argued carbon buyers should take — are the honest salvage of the offset era: money that does not buy permission. The Science Based Targets Network lands in the same place for nature: biodiversity offsets are not accepted as compliant with a science-based target, and credits cannot satisfy remediation outside a multi-stakeholder landscape effort. Avoid, reduce, restore on site. Then fund what is left.
A certificate of ensurance is a contribution with a named place and a standing account attached. That is the whole difference from the middle column — and from the left one.
what a certificate is, in plain words
A certificate of ensurance is 1:1 with an agent — one named place, one named steward, or one named purpose — and its proceeds go to the account that runs that place. That is the gloss. Three things follow from 1:1.
It is not an offset unit. A certificate on one wetland is not interchangeable with a certificate on another wetland for a neutrality claim. Units inside one certificate can be minted in quantity — some live certificates have about ten thousand units — but that is supply of a named instrument, not a pool you retire against a footprint somewhere else. We have also issued thematic certificates (a climate-stability sleeve, an industry book). Those are real, and they are the weaker form of the hold. The convert case is still a named place.
It is not a neutrality claim. Holding a certificate nets nothing off your operations. You are funding the present condition of a living system, not buying permission to degrade another one. The mitigation hierarchy still applies to you — an offset is permission to destroy nearby is the long version.
Someone is on the other end. A named-place certificate has a steward receiving the proceeds and answering for outcomes. Thematic sleeves and internal plumbing certificates exist too — they are the weaker form, and some have no field steward at all. Some sit on a titled parcel where the owner works with us and carry ecological data on that parcel. Others fund stewardship across a watershed or for a species where no single owner exists, and carry the steward's claims and evidence, not a title. Both are certificates. Neither is a credit — nature credit vs carbon credit covers why "nature credit" is an umbrella, not a third asset class.
Price, here, is a bridge. We price a place's condition so capital can fund it; the number is not the worth of the wetland. If a page ever tells you the habitat is worth its unit price, close the page.
where we actually stand
Volumes, honestly. As of September 2026 there are 26 certificates live on the protocol and 191 general ensurance coins (protocol-wide tokens, not place holds). About two thousand accounts exist in the directory; only a small fraction have a deployed wallet. A handful of certificates sit near ten thousand units minted; four have never been minted. There is no secondary market to speak of. We do not promise you a coupon — is nature an asset class yet answers that the way we would want it answered about us. One live certificate title still talks like a return (493% on a wetland). That figure is an ecological productivity ratio — $1,449,703 in annual ecosystem-service flows against $294,250 of stock value — not a cash coupon to the holder. The number is a bridge, not the worth of the place.
For scale on the other side: the voluntary biodiversity credit market is also small. BloombergNEF's COP16 factbook estimated less than $1 million of credits purchased between 2022 and October 2024. Bloom, an independent tracker, records about $6.8 million cumulative through May 2026, and estimates $8–10 million with unannounced over-the-counter deals. Different trackers, different methods — do not line them up as one trend. Neither the credit market nor the hold market has earned the word "liquid."
The statutory side is the exception. Atom Bank's three English habitat banks produced 480 registered BNG units, enough for roughly 2,410 homes, on loans of £100,000 to £2 million at up to 65% loan-to-value. That is land finance with a register, and it works because the law demands the unit — demand by statute is why that leg is the market's strongest.
So the honest comparison is two early instruments: one designed to be claimed elsewhere, one designed to stay put.
when the credit is the right answer
Sometimes it is, and you should not feel talked out of it. If a planning authority requires units, buy units. If your supply chain has an impact in a landscape and a multi-stakeholder program there issues credits, SBTN lets that count as remediation — inside the landscape, never traded outside it. If your job is a communications claim about nature-positive intent, a credit from a credible scheme is a communications product that works. Capital doesn't invest for nature explains why money shows up for the claim before it shows up for the place.
What the credit cannot do is the thing many buyers actually want when they type this phrase: keep a particular place alive, with a named party accountable for its condition, funded now rather than reported in arrears. For that job the unit is the wrong shape. Not a worse version of the right shape. The wrong shape.
the ladder
You do not have to decide the whole strategy today. The rungs are short.
- Read the pillar. What a biodiversity credit actually is — ten minutes, no pitch.
- Open one place. Start at explore and open a named place —
arno riveris a live place certificate.elkandwildlife corridorare live too; they are cross-place syndicate holds (species and corridor), the weaker form this post already named. Some of those pages still say tradable and yield-bearing: that is protocol-distribution language, not a coupon on the place and not a unit you retire against a footprint. One wetland tile still reads as a 493% ROI: that figure is annual ecosystem-service flows against stock value, not a cash yield. The page is underwriting demand, not a bound hold; if it failed to bind, proceeds would move to a comparable site in the same bioregion. That substitution is the move this series refuses in credits. - Hold one. A single certificate on a place your business depends on or your mandate cares about. Small, 1:1 with that agent, no neutrality claim. Units can exist inside one certificate; that is supply, not a pool you retire against a footprint. It goes on the slide as holds, not purchased.
- If you already have a bank, a BNG obligation, or an offset problem, talk to us. Not to replace the unit — to add the hold on the same ground. Start a conversation, or begin at solutions for corporations. Allocators: investors · capital providers. What you hold is a funded position in a named place — condition priced, stewardship evidence, protocol exposure — not a coupon and not an offset book.
frequently asked questions
what are biodiversity credits?
Biodiversity credits are quantified, transferable units representing a measured gain in, or protection of, biodiversity, issued by a scheme or project and bought by companies or investors. Most frameworks treat them as distinct from offsets, but they share a shape: a unit that can be claimed away from the site that produced it. The credit is a receipt for that unit, not a hold on the place.
what is the alternative to biodiversity credits?
Fund a named place directly instead of buying a unit that represents it. Contribution claims — money that does not buy permission — are one version. A certificate of ensurance is a contribution with a standing account attached: 1:1 with one place or steward, proceeds routed to its stewardship, no neutrality claim, and no right to retire it against a loss somewhere else.
can I hold a place instead of buying a credit?
Yes. A certificate of ensurance is a hold on one named place, priced on its present condition and funded through the account that stewards it. You do not get a unit to retire against your footprint. You get a standing claim on a living system and a named party accountable for it. Volumes are small; the instruments are live. Start from explore, not the return-titled tiles.
the series
Six posts on biodiversity and nature credits — what the unit does well, where it stops, and what to hold when the job is the place.
- what a biodiversity credit actually is — the definition and the unit-vs-place trap
- the carbon template biodiversity is copying — twenty-five years of offset evidence as the honesty layer
- a habitat bank is a land deal, not a vibe — mitigation banking and BNG banks as land markets
- nature credit vs carbon credit — same receipt shape, different thing counted
- an offset is permission to destroy nearby — the mitigation hierarchy ends at the site
- what you hold if you want the place to stay — the convert (this post)
Adjacent reading: demand by statute, capital doesn't invest for nature, is nature an asset class yet, and what is ensurance.