Critical choices for nature assessment design in emerging environmental markets
Drawing on experience from Australia's Nature Repair Market, this paper examines key decisions involved in designing nature assessment frameworks for environmental markets. It explores how assessment units are defined, described, graded, and monitored to ensure credible biodiversity outcomes, support investment decisions, and reduce risks of greenwashing.
Subject Tags
- Biodiversity
- Habitat restoration
Abstract
Environmental markets are becoming a significant tool globally to address environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Defensible, equitable and standardized approaches to measuring and assessing nature are foundational for robust and effective environmental markets so that private and public investments can be appropriately directed and evaluated and claims regarding conservation outcomes suitably verified. Well-designed nature assessment frameworks are also critical for avoiding perverse outcomes or misuse of environmental markets such as gaming or greenwashing. In designing nature assessment approaches, there is a key tension between credibility and robustness on one hand and more pragmatic considerations on the other, e.g. cost-effectiveness, data availability and ease of use. Nature assessment is also an inherently value-laden exercise, drawing on both science and normative judgements that are, in turn, shaped by many cultural, socio-economic and historic factors. Here, we contribute to the growing literature on environmental markets by identifying major choices involved in designing relevant nature assessment approaches, highlighting associated normative aspects and their implications. Drawing on our experience as current and past members of a small group of independent experts brought together by the Australian government to advise on the design of nature assessment approaches for Australia's newly established Nature Repair Market, we discuss these choices in relation to four key steps of designing nature assessment frameworks: 1. Defining assessment units, 2. Describing assessment units, 3. Grading assessment units, and 4. Detecting and attributing change. We aim to provide a clear foundation for decision-makers evaluating existing approaches and tools or designing new nature assessment frameworks for market settings.
Citation
Capon, S. J., Brazil-Boast, J., Fitzsimons, J. A., McDonald, J., Prober, S. M., Trebilco, R., ... & Eyre, T. J. (2026). Critical choices for nature assessment design in emerging environmental markets. Environmental Development, 101542.
TNC Authors
-
James Fitzsimons
Senior Advisor, Global Protection Strategies. Protect Oceans, Lands and Waters
The Nature Conservancy
Email: jfitzsimons@tnc.org