Written by
Danny Chen“Measure to improve” happens when people have a comparable reference to evaluate the difference. As a stakeholder, how will the baseline be determined for the biodiversity outcome?
The baseline scenario is a description of the events or conditions most likely to occur in the absence of the project activity.
When developing a biodiversity project, developers must document the current scenario for people, people’s prosperity, and the planet with potential biodiversity threats.
In addition, project proponents are asked to disclose the implementation barriers related to biodiversity outcomes, the data availability, reliability, and limitations that foster stakeholder communication.
When setting up the baseline in the biodiversity project, developers need to calculate standardized condition indicators information at the project start date with the ecoregional baseline trend.
To avoid conflict of interest, the ecoregional baseline trend for the next 10-20 years is conducted by third parties for Verra and reassessed every 10 years.
The standardized indicators, combined with third-party trend evaluation, will strengthen consistency and reduce potential credit overestimation due to conflict of interests or based on global data sets that are not specific to the areas.
In the long term, the standard requirements mentioned will foster trust across stakeholders and accelerate the positive change in the biodiversity space.
