The EU Roadmap Towards Nature-Credits: Why Nature Matters

“Nature credits”? The connection between the two words does not seem obvious. Actually, we owe a lot to nature. We are even collectively “indebted to nature” as the Dutch Central Bank stated in 2021.

Even if people living in cities are no longer aware, nature provides several so-called ecosystem services, such as the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. 

Life on Earth would not be possible without the oceans regulating temperatures or insects pollinating plants. Furthermore, forests, oceans, and mangroves are capturing the carbon we continue to emit unsustainably. 

Our economies are still based on the false assumption that we can get all the ecosystem services “for free” and that nature is inexhaustible. It is not. Scientists warn that there is “a nexus” between climate, nature, food, water, and human health³.    

More than half of global GDP and two-thirds of the EU’s value added depend on nature and its ecosystem services,” according to the European Commission. Within the last 50 years, we have destroyed 75 % of life on Earth.  

According to the Network of Central Banks for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) “nature-related risks, including those associated with biodiversity loss, could have significant macroeconomic implications”. Therefore, they should be taken seriously.  

At the same time, nature-based solutions can help mitigate climate change and facilitate indispensable adaptation. At the Blue Economic and Finance Forum in Monaco in June 2025, Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, recalled that oceans are “our best allies” in tackling climate change.  

That is why the European Commission’s recent publication of a Roadmap toward Nature Credits represents an important step forward.  

Firstly, it recognizes the role nature plays in our economies, stating that nature is “a crucial foundation for a competitive and resilient economy”. 

An institution that has spent decades building the single market and promoting market-based approaches is now finally acknowledging that competitiveness and environmental protection are not opposed, but closely linked. 

Some private companies are already working to identify their dependencies and impacts on nature, as well as related risks and opportunities. However, we continue to deforest, convert natural land to artificial surfaces, pollute, and overconsume resources.   

The EU Commission also makes clear that “companies that adopt nature-positive strategies can benefit from higher investor confidence, better financial conditions, and greater long-term resilience. Some financial institutions are also starting to recognise this value and increasingly integrate biodiversity into risk assessments, as reflected in premiums, lending criteria, and investment decisions.”  

Secondly, agriculture remains one of the most integrated policies of the EU. If future nature credits can accompany the transition from our current intensive, often unsustainable agriculture to regenerative production, it can be a game-changer.  

The challenge is to make sure that we will be able to ensure long-term productivity by protecting soils and adopting regenerative methods.  

Some business leaders are aware of the mounting risks. As Andrea Illy, a coffee producer who created the Regenerative Society Foundation, said at a Bocconi conference on disclosure in June 2025: “Our business models remain linear and extractive when we should move to regenerative and circular”.    

Thirdly, the communication rightly insists on the need to measure biodiversity gains and losses in a rigorous and verifiable way. “Certification provides assurance that specific high-quality, nature-positive actions are implemented in line with pre-defined criteria or principles.” On that basis, a nature credit could be considered “as a unit that represents a nature-positive outcome, derived from a certified and independently verified action and quantified using a recognised biodiversity metric or indicator”.  

Other international bodies have been working with the ambition “to transform natural capital into financial capital” (Ralph Camy). The International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity credits (IAPB) provided at COP 16 in Cali (Colombia) a set of high-integrity principles, as well as pilot projects. We should learn from the carbon markets, as the EU Commission states. In order to create valuable sources of revenue for local communities, the products should be well-conceived, certified by third parties, and properly supervised.   

If public awareness of the need to protect nature increases and new tools are developed, this will pave the way for credits that generate revenue for those who protect, rather than destroy, natural resources.  

Currently, if you cut a tree, you get revenues from timber. If you keep it alive, allowing it to capture carbon, produce shade, cool the air, and participate in a broader ecosystem, you are not remunerated.  

This is what should change and what nature credits can make possible. Technical questions are still unresolved, but the ongoing work shows that it should be possible to create revenue flows for nature conservation and restoration.   

The fundamental shift from economies that have been ignoring what they owe to nature, to economies that fully integrate the negative externalities of human action and the extraordinary positive contribution of nature requires sound data.   

Voluntary disclosure frameworks such as the one elaborated by the Task Force on Nature-related Disclosure can contribute to the awareness of materiality. In the EU, if the European Commission wants to remain consistent with its own Roadmap, it should avoid oversimplifying the CSRD framework.  

If nature (biodiversity) disclosure is abandoned for the sake of “simplification”, not only would the efforts outlined in the Roadmap come to nothing, but European companies would lose competitiveness. And nature will strike back.