Between 60% and 70% of soils in the European Union today are in poor health. On April 10, 2025, the European Commission, Parliament and Council reached a provisional agreement on the European Soil Resilience and Monitoring Directive. This text represents a regulatory turning point: for the first time, European soils are the subject of a common legal framework. But this turning point remains theoretical: the text proposes objectives without constraints, tools without methods, obligations without verifiability.At IRICE, we assert a simple position: there will be no soil policy without proof of ecological efficiency. And there can be no proof without reproducible, verifiable, transposable methods.

The World Economic Forum report published at the end of 2023 is unambiguous: biodiversity credits could become a structuring lever in environmental finance. But today, the market remains in its infancy, exposed to strong methodological criticism, and awaiting credible standards. At a time when public and private players are wondering what role they should play, one thing is clear: no credit can exist without a reliable method of measurement, verification and governance. This is precisely what IRICE offers with the Biodiversity Performance Score (BPS) and Effinature certification.

Local initiatives are multiplying to integrate biodiversity into urban planning: 3-30-300 rules, municipal pacts, monitoring platforms. These tools have one merit: they make a collective will visible. But as regulatory pressure intensifies, a question emerges: how can we move from commitment to proof?

Nature in the city has become a matter of course. But as local authorities multiply their commitments, feedback and pilot projects, a central question remains: what methods can guarantee the real ecological performance of an urban project, beyond mere intentions? In a context where urban biodiversity is becoming an ESG evaluation criterion, simple planting is no longer enough. Only enforceable certification can demonstrate what speeches stabilize.

Today, local authorities are at the forefront of the ecological transition. But while voluntary commitments are multiplying - platforms, pacts, objectives - one structuring question remains: how to assess, certify and demonstrate the real ecological performance of projects? Against a backdrop of rising regulatory expectations, ESG criteria and the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), urban biodiversity must now be based on evidence, not intentions. This is where Effinature comes in.

Published by IRICE - May 2025 Reference institute for independent certification of biodiversity performance in real estate, development and sustainable investment projects. The recent publication of Belgium's national biodiversity strategy for 2030 sends a clear signal on a European scale: biodiversity is becoming a structuring criterion in economic decision-making. For project promoters, investors, project owners and financial institutions, this development calls for a fundamental clarification: how can the real impact of a project on biodiversity be measured? And above all: how can we guarantee reliability, legibility and long-term comparability?