Autonomous biodiversity credits on the horizon?

Joseph Millard , Samira Barzin, Peter McCann, Lynn V. Dicks

Biodiversity credits are being pushed as a means to fund nature conservation. Much of the debate around credits has concerned additionality, leakage, and permanence, and the extent to which biodiversity can be captured in an individual unit. As AI models continue to develop, however, technology could create a new kind of loss-of-control problem for biodiversity credits. In this Perspective, we express a concern that agentic AI could lead to the development of high-risk autonomous credits, where nation states cede control of nature restoration to the price of digital assets that are paid out with no human in the loop. We define an autonomous credit as a financial asset for nature quantified remotely through an agentic AI combined with a spatial finance model and real-time programmatic payment. Such autonomous credits do not yet exist, but appear to be in development. We highlight three technological step changes that signal autonomous credits are on the horizon, and then suggest three approaches that might help mitigate loss-of-control and maximise the benefits of credit technology. Given the development of agentic AI, where autonomous credits are connected to the critical infrastructure of food production and finance, these credits will need guardrails.