• The state of Washington launched its cap-and-invest program on Jan. 1, 2023, and is working to connect its carbon market from Nov. 2, 2023.

• The Climate Commitment Act directs Ecology to seek linkage agreements with other jurisdictions, and California and Québec have operated a linked carbon market since Jan. 1, 2014.

• Under a linked cap-and-invest program, Washington, California, and Québec would participate in joint allowance auctions and thus share a unified allowance price.

• Please see the Cap-and-Invest Linkage Criteria: Preliminary Analysis Report for more information.

  
  
  

Partnership for Biodiversity Accounting Financials (PBAF):  The PBAF Standard v2023 Assessment of Dependencies on ecosystem services provides guidance for financial institutions to assess their dependencies on ecosystem services, which can feed into TNFD's LEAP approach and CSRD and GRI disclosures. It complements other parts of the PBAF Standard published in 2022 and aims to identify potential direct/indirect dependencies on ecosystem services, as well as report on assessment results.

Financial institutions can use a dependency assessment to identify material dependencies on ecosystem services and potential risks. Current tools and data available allow for assessments of potential dependencies and physical risks, while more detailed assessments will be possible when more data become available. Transparency by data providers and tool developers on the methodologies and data used is key to enable correct interpretation and comparison of results.

Key Biodiversity Metrics and Models

• Mean Species Abundance (MSA): from the GLOBIO model, quantifying the abundance of native species at a given site in its current state compared to their abundance in an undisturbed reference state.

  • Indicator of ecosystem intactness: a good proxy to measure resilience of ecosystem services.

  • See GLOBIO 4: scenario-based biodiversity modelling to evaluate changes in terrestrial biodiversity intactness, as measured in the MSA , resulting from three of the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) combined with different levels of climate change or representative concentration pathways (RCPs).

• Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric

• ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure) and the Ecosystem Integrity Index (EII)

• Biodiversity Indicators: The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)

• WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter: See Tutorial below