ReviewProceedings. Biological sciences2024
What is a unit of nature? Measurement challenges in the emerging biodiversity credit market.
Review in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- A framework for unit-level biodiversity credit integrity and market-level governance.npj biodiversity · 2026Article
- Defining the nature-positive economy: key concepts, challenges, and ways forward.npj biodiversity · 2026Article
- Potential of different area-based governance mechanisms for achieving Global Biodiversity Framework goals.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Species Extirpation and Colonization Reveal Mixed Homogenization and Differentiation Across Terrestrial Taxa After One of the World's Largest Tailings Dam Failures.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Five rules for scientifically credible nature markets.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Review
- Article
- Towards high-integrity biodiversity credits: balancing commensurability, ecological complexity and governance.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- What is a unit of nature? Measurement challenges in the emerging biodiversity credit market.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bending the curve of biodiversity loss requires the business and financial sectors to disclose and reduce their biodiversity impacts and help fund nature recovery. This has sparked interest in developing generalizable, standardized measurements of biodiversity-essentially a 'unit of nature'. We examine how such units are defined in the rapidly growing voluntary biodiversity credits market and present a framework exploring how biodiversity is quantified, how delivery of positive outcomes is detected and attributed to the investment and how the number of credits issued is adjusted to account for uncertainties. We demonstrate that there are deep uncertainties throughout the process and question if the benefits of biodiversity credits, and other efforts to abstract nature to a single unit, outweigh the harms. Credits can only be positive for biodiversity if they are used with unprecedentedly strict regulation that ensures businesses mostly avoid negative impacts and if they are purchased to quantify positive contributions rather than as direct offsets. While there may be a role for markets in attracting conservation funding, they will only ever be part of the solution, especially for the many aspects of nature that cannot be reduced to a unit.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.