Getting started with biodiversity offsets
I have started to focus more intensely on compensation and biodiversity offsets in 2008 with the BIOKOM-project: “Approaches to Compensation for Impacts on Biological Diversity” (however I have been involved in Environmental Impact Assessment, Strategic Environmental Assessment and German Impact Mitigation Regulation before).
In the following years if have continued to do research and give policy advice on biodiversity offsets. With biodiversity offsets (at least as a term) being relatively new and thus very few information available only a couple of years ago, the situation now has completely changed. However, despite a growing number of highly valuable research projects, reports and high level papers, I have the feeling that practice is leaving academia and the theoretical discussion on biodiversity offsets behind.
Developing a research subject for my PhD
Inspired by the multitude of biodiversity offsetting approaches worldwide, the inherent complexity of the concept of biodiversity offsets and the growing information overload, I have been interested in regulatory and voluntary offsetting schemes since 2009. However, as I realized, these are not two distinct categories (“black and white”) but instead represent the two ends of a continuum. I have made this interesting field the research subject of my PhD and am working out a typology of biodiversity offsets with regard to the degree of voluntariness. This is the first issue. The second issue that I am dealing with is the ongoing (and increasing?) controversy on biodiversity offsets as more and more examples are implemented on the ground. Therefore, I am also doing a critical analysis, examining PROs and CONs of biodiversity offsets. Combining these two issues the working title of my PhD reads as follows:
“Between regulation and voluntary engagement: a critical analysis and typology of biodiversity offsets”
This Biodiversity Offsets Blog and my PhD
This Biodiversity Offsets Blog is largely based on my PhD research (and of course my previous experience). The other way round, the insights and conclusions that I will gain from this Biodiversity Offsets Blog will also feed into my dissertation.
For a very rough outline of my PhD (in German) please have a look at: http://www.biodiversityoffsets.net/?attachment_id=656