Food System

Biodiversity credits and the food industry

September 5, 2026

187

A new report by the Global Nature Fund — produced with GIZ (the German federal development-cooperation agency) and the Food for Biodiversity association, within the IKI (International Climate Initiative) project ‘From Farm to Fork’ (Del Campo al Plato) — examines whether the food industry in Germany is ready to finance ecosystem restoration through biodiversity credits and other innovative instruments. The answer is cautious: interest is growing, but demand remains limited and strictly conditional (Hammerl et al., 2026).

Table of Contents

Context

The report situates its enquiry within Target 19 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls on Parties to mobilise financial resources for biodiversity from all sources, including ‘innovative schemes’ such as payments for ecosystem services and green bonds (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2022).

Biodiversity credits — defined by the Biodiversity Credit Alliance as certificates representing a measured, durable and additional unit of positive biodiversity outcome — have attracted particular attention since then. Peer-reviewed literature, however, has highlighted deep uncertainties in how a ‘unit of nature’ can be framed, quantified and verified (Wauchope et al., 2024).

Methodology

The assessment adopted a mixed-methods design. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with ESG managers of food companies belonging to Food for Biodiversity, plus one with a representative of the German retail federation; the nine interviewees together account for a substantial share of conventional grocery retail and food manufacturing in Germany.

Interviews lasted around 45 minutes, took place in May and June 2026 and were analysed through thematic content analysis. A shortened online survey, answered by six companies in June 2026, served as a triangulation tool, and the preliminary findings were discussed in a workshop with 20 actors from the German food sector, including a large share of retailers (Hammerl et al., 2026).

The sample is small and self-selected, as the authors acknowledge, and the results should be read as an exploratory portrait of early adopters rather than a statistically representative survey of the sector.

Main findings

Current practices and barriers

Biodiversity financing is already embedded in the sustainability strategies of most respondents, usually through supply-chain programmes, direct project funding, certified products or price premiums, implemented with NGOs or universities. Implementation nonetheless remains fragmented.

The principal barrier is measurement: biodiversity is perceived as far harder to quantify than carbon, impacts emerge only in the long term, and companies struggle to justify investments internally and to communicate them to customers who are not always willing to pay premiums.

Limited budgets and a lack of in-house technical expertise compound the problem (Hammerl et al., 2026).

Enablers and preferences

All interviewees identified a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system as a prerequisite for investment; 67% cited alignment with EU regulatory requirements and 56% required positive social outcomes alongside ecological ones.

Preferences are unambiguous: 100% of interviewees favour projects geographically linked to their own supply chains, ideally in the countries of origin of raw materials, with a marked interest in regenerative agriculture and pesticide reduction, and a preference for projects under 100 hectares.

None expressed interest in offsetting; biodiversity investment is framed as insetting and supply-chain resilience rather than compensation for impacts elsewhere (Hammerl et al., 2026).

Knowledge, risks and concerns

No participating company had purchased biodiversity credits, and self-assessed knowledge reached at most 5 out of 10, although five of the six survey respondents wished to learn more. Scepticism is largely inherited from negative experiences with voluntary carbon credits: 89% of interviewees identified greenwashing and reputational damage as the major risk, and 67% pointed to a lack of stakeholder acceptance.

Further concerns included double accounting, the absence of a common unit, the immaturity of providers and high transaction costs that divert resources from conservation on the ground (Hammerl et al., 2026). These concerns mirror those in the scientific literature, which warns that the biodiversity credit market risks repeating the flaws of carbon markets unless it adopts dynamic baselines, broad species monitoring and independent validation (Aide, 2024; Wunder et al., 2025).

In the European Union, the greenwashing risk perceived by respondents is no longer merely reputational. Directive (EU) 2024/825, applicable from 27 September 2026, adds to the blacklist of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive:

any claim that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment ‘based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions‘, together with
generic environmental claims lacking demonstrable excellence and
sustainability labels not backed by a certification scheme; claims about future environmental performance are admissible only where supported by verifiable, third-party-audited implementation plans.

The same directive, however, leaves companies free to advertise their investments in environmental initiatives, including credit projects, provided the information is not misleading.

The German industry’s rejection of offsetting and its insistence on independent verification therefore anticipate, in substance, the compliance conditions already fixed by the European legislator, as analysed in our previous articles on the transposition of the directive and on the enforcement road-map agreed by the CPC Network for pre-printed packaging (Dongo, 2026b; Dongo & Della Penna, 2026).

Opportunities and conditions for demand

Respondents nonetheless see a pathway towards credibility. Willingness to invest depends above all on:

a clear supply-chain connection (89%);
a robust scientific foundation (78%);
transparent impact measurement (56%);
independent third-party certification (56%).

Two thirds do not regard credits as a substitute for existing initiatives, while one third could envisage them as an additional instrument; the main motivations are brand value and reduced supply-chain risk.

Adoption is expected over a three-to-five-year horizon, with large retailers and major brands as likely first movers. When asked to prioritise financing options, no respondent selected credits alone: 43% preferred expanding their own programmes, NGO cooperation or a combination of approaches (Hammerl et al., 2026).

Expectations towards developers and policy

Companies expect sound project design with active farmer involvement, compatibility with frameworks such as the Science Based Targets Network and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and greater harmonisation of methodologies.

Workshop participants insisted that crediting schemes be tied to companies’ own productive landscapes, yet earlier project research found hardly any scheme adopting such a supply-chain orientation. Clearer guidance from the European Commission and stronger incentives are requested; credits are viewed as a complement to public funding, not a replacement, with Switzerland and the United Kingdom cited as examples of blended approaches (Hammerl et al., 2026).

A useful benchmark for the ‘clear standards‘ requested by respondents already exists in the adjacent field of carbon removals. Regulation (EU) 2024/3012 established the Union certification framework for permanent carbon removals, carbon farming and carbon storage in products, built on four quality criteria (quantification, additionality, long-term storage, no double counting) and on a transversal sustainability requirement that makes the protection of biodiversity, ecosystems and soil health a minimum condition for certification.

As recently reviewed on Great Italian Food Trade, the carbon farming methodologies are expected during 2026, a Union registry is due by 2028 and, in Italy, the voluntary agroforestry credit register at CREA operates under twenty-year commitments, native-species requirements and, so far, modest prices (Dongo, 2026a). Two lessons follow for biodiversity credits: certified carbon-farming units with documented biodiversity co-benefits may offer food companies an interim, supply-chain-linked entry point of the kind they say they want; and the CRCF’s architecture — public methodologies, accredited certifiers, a registry against double counting — is precisely what the German respondents identify as missing on the biodiversity side.

Discussion and conclusions

The report characterises the German food industry as being in an early-adopter phase: biodiversity is recognised as a strategic issue and companies are willing to invest, but market structures, knowledge and confidence in credits are still developing. Credits are seen as a potentially important additional mechanism whose success hinges on trusted governance frameworks, measurable outcomes and the avoidance of the credibility failures of voluntary carbon markets (Hammerl et al., 2026).

Two implications stand out:

first, the demand side wants insetting, whereas most existing credit methodologies are designed for stand-alone conservation; bridging this gap is a design challenge for scheme developers;
second, the industry’s insistence on scientific rigour, commensurability and independent verification converges with the conditions that researchers regard as essential for high-integrity credits, including the trade-off between simple metrics that enable liquid markets and ecologically adequate but costlier ones (Kim et al., 2025; Wunder et al., 2025).

Whether the market can meet those conditions at an acceptable cost remains the open question; what is already settled, in the European Union, is that any consumer-facing communication of such investments will be judged against Directive (EU) 2024/825, and that the certification model of Regulation (EU) 2024/3012 sets the standard of rigour that biodiversity crediting schemes will be expected to match (Dongo, 2026a, 2026b).

Dario Dongo

Credit cover Girolomoni

References

Report under review

Hammerl, M., Hauch, A.-C., & Lösing, L. (2026). Financing biodiversity in supply chains – Biodiversity credits and other innovative financial mechanisms: Findings on the demand of the German food industry. Global Nature Fund, GIZ & Food for Biodiversity. https://globalnature.org/en/download/cap-gnf-biodiversity-credits-and-other-financial-mechanisms/?wpdmdl=26948&refresh=6a841805867ca1787041797

Peer-reviewed studies

Aide, T. M. (2024). The Biodiversity Credit Market needs rigorous baseline, monitoring, and validation practices. npj Biodiversity, 3, Article 30. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-024-00062-6

Kim, E. H., Dellecker, A., Field, R., Stephenson, P. J., & Schrodt, F. (2025). Towards high-integrity biodiversity credits: Balancing commensurability, ecological complexity and governance. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 292(2053), Article 20250990. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.0990

Wauchope, H. S., zu Ermgassen, S. O. S. E., Jones, J. P. G., Carter, H., Schulte to Bühne, H., & Milner-Gulland, E. J. (2024). What is a unit of nature? Measurement challenges in the emerging biodiversity credit market. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 291(2036), Article 20242353. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2353

Wunder, S., Fraccaroli, C., Bull, J. W., Dutta, T., Eyres, A., Evans, M. C., Thorsen, B. J., Jones, J. P. G., Maron, M., Muys, B., Pacheco, A., Olesen, A. S., Swinfield, T., Tegegne, Y. T., White, T. B., Zhang, H., & zu Ermgassen, S. O. S. E. (2025). Biodiversity credits: An overview of the current state, future opportunities, and potential pitfalls. Business Strategy and the Environment, 34(7), 8470–8499. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.70018

Legislation of the European Union

Directive (EU) 2024/825 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 February 2024 amending Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU as regards empowering consumers for the green transition through better protection against unfair practices and through better information. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/825/oj

Regulation (EU) 2024/3012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2024 establishing a Union certification framework for permanent carbon removals, carbon farming and carbon storage in products. http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/3012/oj

Institutional documents

Convention on Biological Diversity. (2022). Decision 15/4. Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (CBD/COP/DEC/15/4, 19 December 2022). https://www.cbd.int/doc/decisions/cop-15/cop-15-dec-04-en.pdf