The Fair Credits approach

We are an inter-disciplinary team of academics based in Australia, the UK and Europe with extensive experience of working in applied conservation around the world. We have collaborated with international organisations, national and state governments, NGOs and the private sector in competitively-funded research. Our interests centre on ensuring local communities are empowered to participate in an equitable and just manner in conservation and resource management programs that affect them directly and indirectly.

We acknowledge the potential advantages and pitfalls for local communities engaged in carbon and biodiversity credit schemes. We believe that ensuring principles of fairness, equity and justice underpin mechanisms of benefit distribution arising from credit sales is a fundamental element of high integrity credit schemes.

We want to make a constructive contribution towards establishing high integrity credits as a cornerstone of trading schemes. We believe that a framework of principles built on global experience of payment for ecosystem services programs offers a means to achieve this objective.

The Fair Credits Standard is based on a systematic review of over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles representing case studies from over 50 countries worldwide and was published in a leading academic journal in mid 2025. The framework of principles representing these case studies can be viewed at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2025.101724 and a full copy of the article including supplementary materials can be supplied on request.

The Fair Credits Standard utilises this framework to establish a set of criteria defining best practice in how local rights owners can participate in an equitable and just manner and receive a fair and appropriate share of the revenues derived from credit sales. Our Standard is available to evaluate any carbon or biodiversity credit scheme, either terrestrial or marine, and can be tailored to specific requirements if needed. .