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September 8, 2025

Financing the Biodiversity Plan: The role of Biodiversity credits – strong foundation or cautionary tale?

Overview

The Africa Climate Summit 2025 (ACS2) presents a pivotal moment to elevate nature finance as a core pillar of Africa’s green development.  This event aims to explore the transformative potential of biodiversity credits as a financing mechanism to scale nature-positive solutions across public and private sectors. By convening thought leaders from finance, policy, philanthropy, conservation, and development, the session will spotlight African-led innovations in biodiversity credits, aligning with ACS2’s strategic pillars of “Showcasing African Solutions” and “Unlocking Scalable Climate Finance”.

Under Target 19 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, this side event will explore not only opportunities in the fast-growing nature finance sector but also how tools like biodiversity credits can play a pivotal role in bridging this gap, ensuring we remain on track to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. There are also significant lessons to be learned from carbon markets and this session will cover these.

Read full concept note

Meet the Panelists
Dorothy Maseke

Lead ,Nature Finance & TNFD (Moderator)

Tim Christophersen

Vice President, Climate Action, Salesforce (Keynote)

Dr. James Mwangi

CEO, Equity Bank Ltd

Kaddu Sebunya

CEO, African Wildlife Foundation

Dr. David Obura

Chair of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

Marriane Haahr

Executive Director, International Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB)

Cécile Ndjebet

Activist and UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Advisor

Sanda Ojiambo

Executive Director, UN Global

Pauline Nantongo

CEO, EcoTrust

Objectives

The session will explore:

  • Biodiversity credits as a financing mechanism: How can tools like biodiversity credits, and their potential to address nature-related risks and scale solutions across public and private sectors.
  • Barriers to scale: What are the main obstacles preventing the expansion of nature finance solutions, and how can biodiversity credits unlock more capital?
  • Public-private-philanthropic partnerships: How can collaborations between public, private, philanthropic, and development finance institutions be expanded to meet biodiversity targets?
  • Regulatory and policy support: What policy and regulatory frameworks are needed to support and accelerate biodiversity finance, particularly in the context of a changing donor landscape.