This week the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pro­gramme has announced its next BBOP webi­nar as part of the BBOP com­mu­nity of prac­tice (all pre­vi­ous webi­nars are archived there if you want to lis­ten to them later).

This time the focus is on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in the scope of the Ambat­ovy nickel-cobalt min­ing project  in Mada­gas­car. The Ambat­ovy project has been a pilot project of BBOP since 2006, and as such fol­lows the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Stan­dard as well as the IFC Per­for­mance Standards.

When and how does the BBOP webi­nar take place?

Some infor­ma­tion on the BBOP webinar

Here’s what the BBOP Sec­re­tariat says about the upcom­ing webinar:

The Ambat­ovy nickel-cobalt min­ing project is located in the east­ern region of Mada­gas­car. The project com­prises sev­eral com­po­nents includ­ing an open pit mine (cov­er­ing 18 km2) located in quasi-primary for­est, a 220 km pipeline that trans­fers ore to the plant-site located near the port city of Toa­masina, a tail­ings facil­ity and a port expan­sion for the impor­ta­tion of raw mate­ri­als and expor­ta­tion of met­als. The project is cur­rently at the begin­ning of the oper­a­tions phase although for­est clear­ance will con­tinue for sev­eral years.

Project con­struc­tion began in 2007 and was com­pleted in 2012. Metal pro­duc­tion and expor­ta­tion has com­menced and will con­tinue for a 27-year duration.

Mada­gas­car is a global hotspot for bio­di­ver­sity, with excep­tion­ally high degrees of endemism, and, at the same time, a high level of threat. The Ambat­ovy mine lies in a high-biodiversity region at the south­ern tip of a large sec­tion of rem­nant east­ern rain­for­est cor­ri­dor. To the north-east of the mine lies the Ankeniheny-Zahamena for­est cor­ri­dor (CAZ), while to the east lie the Toro­to­ro­fotsy wet­land (a Ram­sar site) and the Man­ta­dia National Park. Con­nect­ing the mine forests to the CAZ and Man­ta­dia is an area of intact for­est known as the Analamay-Mantadia for­est cor­ri­dor (CFAM). Ambat­ovy aims to achieve no net loss, and prefer­ably a net gain, of bio­di­ver­sity. The Ambat­ovy project has been a pilot project of BBOP since 2006, and as such fol­lows the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Stan­dard as well as the IFC Per­for­mance Standards.

Andrew Cooke (Envi­ron­ment Man­ager) and Riv­olala Andri­amparany (Bio­di­ver­sity Coor­di­na­tor) will present the project.