Biocredit Investment Operations (BIO) — Tondwa Game Management Area Biodiversity Credit Pilot

Tondwa Game Management Area covers 440 km2 in Zambia's Kaputa District, forming part of a wetland and miombo-woodland corridor linking Nsumbu, Mweru Wantipa and Lusenga Plains National Parks around Lake Tanganyika. It sits within a recognised Key Biodiversity Area whose wildlife populations have declined due to limited government funding and law-enforcement capacity; the local community now holds formal biodiversity management rights, delivered in partnership with the NGO Conserve Global.

The Biocredit Investment Operations (BIO) project, funded with GBP 525,573 by the UK government's Darwin Initiative (Defra) for April 2023-March 2026, is led by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) together with Conserve Global, Tondwa Conservation Ltd and, on a parallel pilot site in Uganda's Albertine Rift, EcoTrust Uganda. The credit methodology was developed by project partner ValueNature (since merged into Credit Nature), which defines one credit — called a Nature Investment Certificate — as a 10-year agreement to conserve or restore one hectare of habitat within the reserve, structured so that most revenue flows to the local community.

As of 2026 this remains a pilot: no independently verified before/after biodiversity outcomes or completed credit sales have been published for Tondwa. Project partners have publicly discussed an ambition to scale biodiversity crediting across roughly 300,000 hectares spanning the Zambia and Uganda sites, contingent on enabling government policy and buyer demand still being developed — a useful reminder that funded design and a defined credit unit are not yet the same thing as proven, verified conservation impact.

Read the full analysis: https://www.darwininitiative.org.uk/project/DAR30007/