Forest biodiversity credits: Advancing societal goals across managed Swedish forests in a global context
Project overview
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Short summary
This project aims to assess the prospects of financially compensating private landowners for more biodiverse Swedish forests.
We focus on forest biodiversity credits (FBCs) to represent units of durable biodiversity outcomes denoting measurable improvements - for which forest owners can be compensated via private capital investments. We take a comprehensive approach to:
(1) Identify evidence-based opportunities and challenges to the practice of payments for biodiversity and forest ecosystem trade-offs,
(2) Assess landowners and investors’ perceived barriers and preferences toward FBCs,
(3) Explore organizational structures to efficiently broker and monitor FBCs,
(4) Generate a Blueprint for societally-desirable Swedish FBCs.
Our team brings expertise in forest economics, forest planning, business, econometrics and stakeholder outreach, and relies on primary and secondary data to generate robust evidence-based knowledge addressing our research objectives. Our four-year project responds to a global biodiversity crisis raised in EU laws and Sweden’s environmental quality objectives, and complements societal goals for sustainability and resiliency. We study FBCs as a tool to help meet biodiversity goals and provide additional income to Swedish forest owners, big and small. Knowledge can support positioning Sweden as a world leader in FBCs with lessons facilitating their adoption elsewhere with wider global benefits.