South Africa launches its first biodiversity offset bank.

South Africa recently launched the country's first biodiversity offset bank to support national environmental, social, and governance goals and promote inclusive sustainable economic growth. The project, officially known as the South African National Parks Biodiversity Offset Bank, was introduced during the South Africa National Biodiversity Offsets Conference hosted by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment of South Africa and the United Nations Development Programme on the 22nd and 23rd. Howard Hendricks, CEO of South African National Parks, explained that the bank's primary commodity is land. The South African National Parks will purchase land to establish protected areas and calculate the value of the land from a biodiversity perspective, converting it into biodiversity credit quotas. Developers can purchase these credit quotas to offset the environmental impacts of their projects.