This decision support tool is the public-facing output of a 2024-2025 Master’s Student Group Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Bren School of Environmental Science & Management entitled “Evaluating the Biodiversity Implications of Nature-Based Carbon Credit Projects.” To learn more about the project, please see the final report here.  

About the Project

This thesis-equivalent collaborative project aimed to understand how nature-based carbon credit projects and biodiversity intersect. The group first identified metrics of analysis that assess the biodiversity co-benefits of nature-based carbon credit projects through a detailed literature review. Then, the team created a framework of analysis that evaluates aspects of carbon credit projects’ location and design by selecting eight project location metrics and 10 project design metrics that are suited to analyze these biodiversity co-benefits. Finally, the group applied this framework to five case study carbon credit projects. The results of our analysis are positioned to inform companies’ carbon credit purchasing decisions by revealing projects’ biodiversity co-benefits. 

About This Tool

This buyer decision-support tool walks carbon credit purchasers through project characteristics that determine the potential for a carbon credit project to include biodiversity co-benefits. It then allows buyers to indicate their credit-purchasing priorities, and finally provides recommendations for which biodiversity-supportive carbon credits to purchase. 

This Group Project provides guidance for companies wishing to jointly achieve their carbon and biodiversity goals through purchasing carbon credits that hold biodiversity co-benefits. As the carbon market continues to expand, the results of this analysis and the accompanying buyer decision-support tool can aid companies in supporting biodiversity as they work towards climate change mitigation.