What Is The Global Biodiversity Standard?
The Global Biodiversity Standard is the world’s only international standard that recognises and promotes the protection, restoration, and enhancement of biodiversity.
It provides assurance that land management interventions such as tree planting, habitat restoration and agroforestry practices undertaken by organisations and governments are protecting, safeguarding, and restoring biodiversity, rather than inadvertently causing harm.
Its mission is to replace the ‘any tree at minimal cost’ solution to climate change and tree planting with long-term, best practice solutions that combine the considerations of biodiversity, local communities, and carbon capture by providing recognition, incentives, assurance and knowledge.
Pledge Your Support To The Global Biodiversity Standard
Three years ago, the Kew Declaration was signed by over 3000 practitioners, policymakers, funders, businesses, NGOs and researchers from 113 countries following the Kew-BGCI Reforestation Conference in 2021. By signing the Kew Declaration, they declared support for actions to protect biodiversity, mitigate carbon emissions and climate change, and improve livelihoods.
Since then, nature-based solutions have been formally recognised by the United Nations Environment Assembly as a method to harness our natural world and prioritise species conservation and biodiversity restoration.
Unfortunately, many interventions including tree planting, land management and agroforestry practices, have not only failed to record positive outcomes but have inadvertently caused harm to ecosystems and local communities.
90% of the world’s largest corporations undertaking ecosystem restorations fail to report a single ecological outcome, and even more concerning, none of them quantify the social or economic impacts on local stakeholders or traditional landowners.
In response, a coalition of global scientific experts have developed The Global Biodiversity Standard (TGBS) to support the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework. This standard provides independent verification that nature-based solutions are truly achieving their intended goals: protecting, restoring, and enhancing biodiversity.
Ahead of COP16, we recognise the critical need for a Biodiversity Standard.
With The Global Biodiversity Standard, we can begin to unravel the damage that has been done to our global ecosystems and work in partnership with the indigenous peoples and local communities who rely on them.
