Voluntary Biodiversity Credits for Business

Last reviewed: 19 August 2026.

C Level helps businesses fund community-led biodiversity conservation and restoration through projects progressing towards Plan Vivo Nature certification. Bioestrela in Portugal, Solent Seascape in the UK and the Bugoma-Budongo Wildlife Corridor in Uganda are all in the PV Nature pipeline. The market is still being built. No Plan Vivo Biodiversity Certificates have been issued anywhere, and Plan Vivo currently anticipates first issuance from Q2 2028. Businesses can engage earlier by pre-financing project development.

Question C Level answer
What can businesses support? Community-led biodiversity conservation and restoration
Standard Plan Vivo Nature (PV Nature)
Current status Three projects progressing towards PV Nature certification
Are PVBCs available today? No. First issuances are currently anticipated from Q2 2028
Can businesses fund projects before then? Yes. Pipeline projects can seek pre-finance from prospective buyers and investors
Is this Biodiversity Net Gain? No. This is voluntary nature finance, not statutory BNG compliance
Is it biodiversity offsetting? No. PV Nature certificates represent nature-positive contributions, not compensation for damage elsewhere

Talk to us about biodiversity investment

What are voluntary biodiversity credits?

A voluntary biodiversity credit represents a measured, evidence-based and durable positive outcome for nature at a defined place, produced by conservation or restoration that would not have happened without the finance. A business buys one by choice. Nothing obliges it to.

The general market term is “biodiversity credit”. Plan Vivo’s unit has its own name, the Plan Vivo Biodiversity Certificate (PVBC), and its own definition, which I come to below.

Here is the part most often glossed over. Biodiversity is not fungible. The International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits is explicit that a standardised universal biodiversity unit is not appropriate, because ecosystems are not substitutable for one another. Carbon has a common atmospheric unit, so a tonne can be compared with a tonne. Nature has no equivalent.

A restored oyster reef in the Solent is not interchangeable with chimpanzee habitat in Uganda, or with native forest returning to a Portuguese mountainside. Different species, different pressures, different people.

I would not buy a biodiversity credit that asks me to pretend one ecosystem is interchangeable with another. A serious project states what it measured, where, and against what starting point, rather than offering one number and asking for trust.

Voluntary biodiversity credits are not Biodiversity Net Gain

Voluntary biodiversity credits Statutory Biodiversity Net Gain
Purpose Voluntary finance for measurable nature recovery Planning compliance
Typical buyer Businesses choosing to fund nature Developers subject to BNG
Geography Determined by the project and standard England
Requirement Voluntary Mandatory for applicable development
Measurement Project and standard methodology Statutory biodiversity metric
Available from C Level Yes No

If you are a developer trying to satisfy a BNG planning condition, this is not the service you need.

Biodiversity Net Gain is a statutory regime covering most qualifying development in England. It normally requires at least a 10% gain measured with the statutory biodiversity metric. Developers meet it on site first, then through registered off-site units, and only as a last resort by buying statutory biodiversity credits from government. C Level’s voluntary international work does not discharge that obligation and cannot count towards it.

That distinction takes thirty seconds to read and saves both of us an email.

Biodiversity projects your business can support

All three projects are listed in Plan Vivo’s PV Nature pipeline. None is certified. None has issued certificates. C Level does not own these projects. Our role differs in each case, and each is set out below. Full detail on each sits with our biodiversity projects, within C Level’s wider regeneration portfolio.

Bioestrela, Portugal

Native forest restoration and wildfire resilience in the Serra da Estrela, with regeneration hubs supporting new local livelihoods alongside the ecological work.

Plan Vivo’s public pipeline names the coordinators as C Level and URZE, the forestry association of the Serra da Estrela foothills. We have been founding partners since 2023, working with Plan Vivo, Okala and local communities, and around 200 participants take part. The published Project Idea Note puts the project area at three regeneration hubs totalling about 100 hectares, at Valezim, Furtado and Aljão, within a wider potential area of around 5,000 hectares across the Malhão, Socorro and Aljão landscapes.

With Bioestrela we are not arriving at the end of the process to sell a certificate. C Level and URZE are developing the project itself.

PV Nature status: in the pipeline at Project Idea Note stage. Plan Vivo reports that all 11 pipeline projects are now developing Project Design Documents.
Coordinators: C Level and URZE.
Bioestrela in the Serra da Estrela

Solent Seascape, United Kingdom

Regenerating 522 km² of the Solent coast, including oyster reefs, seagrass meadows, saltmarsh and seabird habitat, in one of the most heavily used stretches of water in the country.

The Blue Marine Foundation is the Plan Vivo project coordinator and leads the wider partnership. C Level supports the project. We do not coordinate it, and it would be misleading to suggest we do.

PV Nature status: in the pipeline at Project Idea Note stage.
Coordinator: Blue Marine Foundation.
Solent Seascape

Bugoma-Budongo Wildlife Corridor, Uganda

Reconnecting 12,500 hectares of fragmented tropical rainforest between two reserves, in a landscape that remains a stronghold for endangered Eastern chimpanzees. The work is community-led restoration aimed at habitat connectivity.

The project is coordinated by ECOTRUST, the Environmental Conservation Trust for Uganda, working with community land and forest organisations. C Level supports the project and does not coordinate it.

PV Nature status: in the pipeline at Project Idea Note stage.
Coordinator: ECOTRUST.
Bugoma-Budongo Wildlife Corridor

Where biodiversity credits fit in a credible business nature strategy

Buying a biodiversity credit is not a substitute for reducing damage your business can actually prevent.

The UK Government’s principles for voluntary carbon and nature market integrity put credits in a specific place: use them in addition to ambitious action within your own value chain, use high-integrity credits, disclose your planned use of them in sustainability reporting, plan ahead, and make accurate claims. The order matters more than any single principle.

  1. Understand your nature-related dependencies and impacts, and where they sit.
  2. Identify the locations and value-chain pressures that actually matter.
  3. Avoid, reduce and manage those impacts first.
  4. Set nature priorities and targets.
  5. Finance additional conservation and restoration beyond that work.
  6. Disclose what you funded, and claim only what the evidence supports.

Two frameworks are worth naming accurately. The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures helps an organisation assess and report its nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities: a risk management and disclosure framework. The Science Based Targets Network helps companies prioritise impacts across operations and value chains and set targets for nature: an assessment and target-setting framework.

Neither is satisfied by a purchase. Buying a biodiversity credit does not make a business TNFD-aligned or SBTN-compliant, and anyone suggesting otherwise is selling something.

What can a business fund today?

There are no issued Plan Vivo Biodiversity Certificates to buy today.

That is the state of the entire PV Nature market, not a gap in C Level’s portfolio, and the reason is methodological. A project has to establish a biodiversity baseline, then monitor against it. Plan Vivo requires at least two years to elapse after baselining before first issuance, because one year of data cannot separate a real trajectory from ordinary year-to-year variation with any statistical confidence. Certification and independent verification exist to stop a project declaring success before the evidence exists. First issuances are currently anticipated in Q2 2028.

A certificate should come after the evidence, not before it. Requiring two years of monitoring makes the market slower. I think that is a virtue, and I would rather explain it than hide it.

Meanwhile Plan Vivo states that pipeline projects can engage prospective buyers and investors looking to pre-finance high-integrity projects with evidence-based outcomes, and that a pre-finance mechanism supported through the PV Nature registry is in development.

Early funding supports the work that has to happen before any certificate can exist: project development and design documentation, baseline surveys, restoration and conservation interventions on the ground, monitoring capacity including local teams and equipment, community participation and stewardship, and the path through validation to certification.

You would be funding a process, not buying a verified outcome. Projects in development can be delayed, redesigned, or fail to certify, and we will tell you which risks apply to the project you are considering.

Discuss biodiversity project pre-finance

How Plan Vivo Nature actually measures biodiversity

Carbon has a universal tonne. Biodiversity needs evidence tied to a real ecosystem.

Measurement PV Nature approach
Species sampling Minimum four target taxonomic groups for terrestrial projects, three for marine projects
Species analysis Species richness, species diversity and taxonomic dissimilarity
Habitat analysis Habitat condition, and habitat structure, which for land means connectivity
Combined figure The five measures are summed as cumulative year-on-year percentage change, giving one combined biodiversity metric
Baseline The non-project scenario, recorded before intervention, against which later change is assessed
Data collection Acoustic recorders, camera traps, smartphones and high-resolution imagery under standardised protocols
Data analysis Designated Plan Vivo Data Analytics Providers, not the project itself
First issuance At least two years after baselining, subject to certification and demonstrated outcome
Assurance Independent validation before certification, annual reporting, third-party verification at least every five years

Sources: PV Nature Methodology and Data Protocol V1.2 and Plan Vivo’s July 2026 baselining update.

The workflow runs in order: habitat map, sampling plan, data collection by local teams, analysis by the Data Analytics Provider, baseline, repeated monitoring, then issuance if every requirement is met. Plan Vivo built this, not us. What we can tell you is what it means in practice for a project we are developing.

What one certificate actually represents

Most pages stop before this. Two certificate types exist and they are not the same unit.

Certificate What it represents
PVBC Restore One certificate for each 1% increase in the site’s combined biodiversity metric, across one hectare, in one year
PVBC Conserve 5% of the biodiversity baseline conserved across one hectare for one year, so 20 certificates per hectare per year where the full baseline holds

Two consequences follow. For restoration, 20% of every issuance is deducted into the project’s own risk buffer before anything can be sold. For conservation, issuance falls from 20 certificates per hectare to 18 as the combined metric drops from 100% to 90% of baseline, and below 90% nothing can be issued at all.

What happens if the gains are lost

This is set by the standard, not by us. PV Nature Project Requirements section 3.10 requires risks to biodiversity benefits to be identified over at least 50 years, significant risks mitigated, and the assessment repeated at least every five years. For restoration projects the 20% risk buffer absorbs losses, and where negative results persist across three consecutive reporting periods the cause must be confirmed at verification and buffer or tradable certificates are cancelled. For conservation projects, 20% of income from certificate sales is held in a project-specific financial reserve. Buffers and reserves are held per project and are not pooled.

How to judge whether a biodiversity credit is credible

The section above answers most of this for PV Nature. Four questions are still worth putting to any supplier, including us.

What is the baseline, and can you see it? What was recorded before anything started, and what would have happened without the project? If nobody can show you the baseline, there is nothing to verify against. That is the single most useful question in this market.

Is the outcome additional? Is the finance causing something beyond business as usual, or paying for something that was happening anyway?

Who governs the project, and who benefits? Rights holders, how the decision was taken, how consent was obtained, and how the money reaches the people doing the work.

What claim does the certificate actually permit? Contribution is not offsetting, and one credit should be retired once, against one named claim.

Can biodiversity credits offset your company’s impact on nature?

Not in the broad international offsetting sense familiar from carbon markets.

Plan Vivo’s published position is that PV Nature certificates are not intended for direct offsetting. They represent contributions to nature-positive outcomes, not compensation for biodiversity damage elsewhere. The IAPB goes further and rejects international biodiversity offsetting outright, and says compensation, where used at all, must be local and like-for-like under strict conditions.

A business cannot damage chalk grassland in Sussex, fund tropical forest in Uganda, and claim the Sussex habitat has been restored.

Carbon credits and biodiversity credits are not the same thing

Carbon certificate Biodiversity certificate
Climate outcome Biodiversity outcome
Quantified in tonnes of CO2 equivalent No single globally fungible unit
Carbon-specific methodology Biodiversity-specific methodology
Climate claim Nature contribution claim under PV Nature
Can arise from a nature project Can coexist in the same project area under separate rules

Issuing both from the same project area is called stacking. Plan Vivo permits it between its climate and nature standards, provided each credit type is independently additional, each is measured by its own methodology, and the two are sold and retired separately with distinct claims.

A carbon buyer should not be allowed to claim a biodiversity outcome they have not bought or funded, and the stacking rules prevent it. If you already fund verified nature-based carbon projects with us, that does not give you the nature claim from the same ground.

What can your business say about its biodiversity investment?

Claim language has to track the evidence and the project stage. Funded, measured and independently verified are three different things, and collapsing them is where weak claims come from.

Claim Guidance
“We are funding biodiversity conservation and restoration through [project]” Appropriate where factually true
“We are supporting a project progressing towards PV Nature certification” Appropriate for current pipeline support
“We purchased and retired X issued PVBCs” Only once issued certificates exist and have been acquired and retired
“We contributed to measured nature-positive outcomes” Only where the evidence and the standard support the wording
“We offset our biodiversity footprint” Avoid. PV Nature is a contribution model, not offsetting
“Our company is nature positive because we bought credits” Do not make this leap. An organisation-level claim needs a far wider evidenced strategy

Check final wording against current UK green-claims requirements and the evidence you actually hold. This page is guidance, not legal advice.

Why C Level works differently

C Level was founded in 2000 and has worked with community-led nature projects and Plan Vivo for more than twenty-five years. Plan Vivo’s own public pipeline names C Level and URZE as the coordinators of Bioestrela, and we publish the project documentation rather than summarising it.

For years biodiversity was treated as a co-benefit of carbon. I never thought that was enough. A forest holds carbon, and it also holds species, soils, water and livelihoods. PV Nature is a serious attempt to measure the biodiversity outcome on its own terms, and we would rather help build that properly than wait and resell the result.

Our approach is simple: show what has been measured, say what stage the project has reached, and do not claim more than the evidence supports.

Talk to C Level about biodiversity investment

Three situations bring most businesses here. You are building a nature strategy and need to understand where finance fits. You have done the work on your own value chain and want to fund conservation and restoration beyond it. Or you want to support a PV Nature pipeline project early, while the baseline and design work is being done.

Tell us what your organisation is trying to achieve and we will show you the projects, the current evidence, and the claims that are actually supportable.

Talk to us about biodiversity investment

Frequently asked questions about biodiversity credits

What is a voluntary biodiversity credit?

A unit representing a measured, evidence-based and durable positive biodiversity outcome at a defined place, from conservation or restoration that would not have happened without the finance. Businesses buy them by choice, not to meet a legal requirement.

Are voluntary biodiversity credits the same as BNG credits?

No. Biodiversity Net Gain is a statutory regime for development in England, measured with the statutory biodiversity metric. Voluntary credits are a separate, global, non-statutory market.

Can C Level biodiversity projects meet a BNG planning requirement?

No. We do not supply statutory biodiversity units, and our international voluntary projects cannot discharge a BNG obligation.

Are Plan Vivo Biodiversity Certificates available yet?

No. Plan Vivo currently anticipates first PVBC issuance in Q2 2028, because a project needs at least two years of monitoring after baselining. Businesses can pre-finance pipeline projects in the meantime.

What is a Plan Vivo Biodiversity Certificate?

The unit issued by a PV Nature certified project, in two types: Restore, for measured uplift, and Conserve, for baseline maintained. The exact definitions are in the certificates table above. Issuance follows certification and measured outcomes, and never precedes them.

Can carbon and biodiversity certificates come from the same project?

Yes, under Plan Vivo’s stacking rules, with separate additionality, separate methodologies, separate retirement and distinct claims. A carbon buyer cannot claim the biodiversity outcome without buying and retiring the corresponding biodiversity certificate.

Can biodiversity credits offset damage somewhere else?

Not under PV Nature’s contribution model, and the IAPB rejects international biodiversity offsetting. Biodiversity is place-specific, which is why a global offset claim does not hold.

How many biodiversity credits should my business buy?

There is no conversion from turnover, headcount or carbon footprint, because biodiversity is not globally fungible. Start with the ecological outcome you want to support and your wider nature strategy, not with a number.

Sources and methodology

Every technical statement on this page comes from the primary document rather than from secondary commentary. All sources checked 19 August 2026.