What Boris Johnson can teach the EU about restoring nature

illuminem summarizes for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on POLITICO or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: Boris Johnson's UK Environment Act has set a precedent in Europe by establishing a nature-pricing scheme to combat biodiversity loss
• The law mandates that developers ensure a 10% biodiversity net gain on projects, creating a market where companies purchase “biodiversity units” to offset ecological impacts
• The European Commission is considering a similar market-based model to address biodiversity, inspired by the UK’s approach

🔭 The context: Unlike the UK’s compliance-driven biodiversity credit market, most global efforts remain voluntary, limiting their reach
• While the UK scheme incentivizes nearby ecosystem restoration, critics argue it commodifies nature and may be hard to enforce without centralized monitoring
• EU leaders, however, see potential in a market-driven approach to mitigate biodiversity loss, as demonstrated in the UK

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: By pricing nature, this model could make biodiversity conservation financially viable for private investors and help slow environmental degradation
• Concerns remain over “greenwashing” and whether this complex system can truly capture nature’s value or risk standardizing it into credits

⏭️ What's next: The European Commission is expected to provide further details at the upcoming UN biodiversity conference, though EU leaders will need to convince stakeholders to make such markets effective and mandatory
• The UK’s ongoing experiment will be a key case study as nations evaluate viable strategies for protecting ecosystems

💬 One quote: “This is a mechanism that will create thousands and thousands of hectares of impact for nature, but it will cost the government effectively nothing,” said Peter Bachmann of Gresham House

📈 One stat: Nearly 3,400 tree species in South America are at risk due to habitat loss, emphasizing the urgency of biodiversity conservation efforts globally

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