Today the 5th Inter­na­tional Eco­Sum­mit was opened in Corum Con­gress Cen­ter in Mont­pel­lier (France). There will be a few pre­sen­ta­tions on impact assessment/mitigation and bio­di­ver­sity off­sets — most notably a ses­sion on “Euro­pean per­spec­tives and global chal­lenges on achiev­ing no net loss of bio­di­ver­sity in the con­text of devel­op­ment” that I am orga­niz­ing together with Wolf­gang Wende (IOER) and Fabien Quétier (Biotope) — look­ing very much for­ward and hope­fully share the pre­sen­ta­tions with you afterwards.

For the moment you can also refer to the ses­sion infor­ma­tion and line-up of speak­ers below.

A few impres­sions from the first day of the 2016 EcoSummit

45      Euro­pean per­spec­tives and global chal­lenges on achiev­ing no net loss of bio­di­ver­sity in the con­text of development

With bio­di­ver­sity being lost at unprece­dented rate, there is grow­ing con­cern on how to mit­i­gate the unavoid­able impacts of devel­op­ment projects. Along­side with the pro­mo­tion of goals of ‘no net loss’ or ‘net gain’, bio­di­ver­sity off­sets are increas­ingly used to coun­ter­bal­ance these impacts. While off­set frame­works have been put in place in sev­eral coun­tries world­wide (e.g. Ger­many, the US, Aus­tralia, Canada, Brazil), the sub­ject has risen onto the polit­i­cal agenda of the Euro­pean Union in the past years, most notably via the pro­posed No Net Loss Ini­tia­tive, but also in sev­eral mem­ber states (e.g. France, Spain, the UK and Swe­den). This ses­sion aims to bring together the lat­est devel­op­ments from sci­ence, pol­icy and prac­tice from EU mem­ber states and inter­na­tional expe­ri­ence in address­ing the global chal­lenges raised by bio­di­ver­sity off­set poli­cies and their imple­men­ta­tion, includ­ing social, eco­nomic and polit­i­cal aspects as well as tech­ni­cal and sci­en­tific aspects.