Additionality

Characterization of the project's need for biodiversity crediting

General additionality of this methodology must be demonstrated by applying the decision tree that appears in the current version of the Cercarbono's Biodiversity Certification Programme Protocol and covers financial, normative, and regulatory surplus additionality scenarios, to demonstrate that the biodiversity conservation is directly related to the project activity(ies) and not an external source.

The additionality of actions measured by methodology in particular is simplified to enable IP and LC inclusion.

This methodology judges outcomes from the perspective of other species. Humans may make marginal improvements in degraded ecosystems, and certainly, for severely degraded ecosystems this can easily be a 200%-fold, or 300%-fold improvement. However, restored ecosystems can never be fully available to the complete variety of native species in the way that undisrupted ecosystems are.

Thus, for projects occurring in high-biodiversity, high-threat ecosystems, additionality is inherent in the Ecosystem characterization and Value normalization. For example, any intact ecosystem on an IUCN red list, or biodiversity hotspot ecosystem is inherently additional due to its threatened status.

The Integrity calculations in this methodology are meant to establish acceptable proof of a conserved ecosystem. Thus instead of providing evidence for a change, they provide reasonable evidence of no change which is inherently additional in a threatened ecosystem.

In the context of conservation, where external sources have validated that an ecosystem is under threat, additionality merely needs to demonstrate that the project maintains the presence of biodiversity and that activities are not duplicated by other sources.