About the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Newsweek

If you are inter­ested in envi­ron­men­tal com­pen­sa­tion and bio­di­ver­sity off­sets, there are cer­tainly good news: there is now a whole bunch of infor­ma­tion from dif­fer­ent sources, loca­tions and view­points pub­licly avail­able (some­thing which wasn’t this easy only a cou­ple of years ago). Now, as has been pointed out (see here) the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog aims to com­pile and some­what struc­ture this infor­ma­tion. But there is not only a wealth of sources already out there on the inter­net, but also new sources are con­tin­u­ously being added. I am fol­low­ing and col­lect­ing the news via Scoop.it and cover the most trend­ing ones in posts on the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog. Nev­er­the­less, not all news can be cov­ered (at least not yet) and there­fore the “Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Newsweek” will list up the head­lines of the past week, together with the links and PDFs of the arti­cles or news.

This week: Novem­ber 17–23, 2014

This week (Novem­ber 17–23, 2014) a mul­ti­tude of news has cov­ered a few very inter­est­ing top­ics. One of these is the IUCN Worlds Park Con­gress (Novem­ber 12–19, 2014). This event takes place every ten years and brings world­wide con­ser­va­tion experts together to share knowl­edge, reflect on progress and set the agenda for pro­tected areas con­ser­va­tion for the com­ing decade. Of course, bio­di­ver­sity off­sets – and their rela­tion to or applic­a­bil­ity in pro­tected areas — were dis­cussed in Syd­ney. Fur­ther­more, this week there were sev­eral off­set related news from the US, namely the new Wet­land Restora­tion Plan announced by the Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources of the state of Wis­con­sin and sev­eral on-the-ground projects. While the gov­ern­ment of the state of Mary­land (US) is likely to deny a large hydropower dam facil­ity, two arti­cles from Aus­tralia focus on approval or exten­sion of two large min­ing projects. Apart from some (almost usual) news from the UK (includ­ing the col­umn of George Mon­biot in which he denounces the crit­i­cal decline of wildlife), a lot more inter­est­ing arti­cles and view­points can be found: First, two arti­cles elab­o­rate on the role of envi­ron­men­tal funds and sec­ond, two exam­ples of cor­po­rate bio­di­ver­sity off­set projects (one from Canada and one from Hun­gary) are to be noted. Finally, despite its lack­ing con­tent, the response by Kar­menu Vella to the con­cerns over bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting in the scope of the recent EU con­sul­ta­tion (Let­ter to the Com­mis­sion regard­ing bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting) has to be men­tioned. Other news include the pub­li­ca­tion of the report “B@B Work­stream 1: Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Account­ing for Busi­ness: Guide to select­ing an approach” by the Euro­pean Commission.

 

IUCN Worlds Parks Congress

World Parks Con­gress: set­ting the agenda for pro­tected areas and bio­di­ver­sity man­age­ment, Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Inter­na­tional Coun­cil on Min­ing & Metals

Habi­tats of 140 Aus­tralian threat­ened species not pro­tected, WWF study finds, Novem­ber 17, 2014, by Oliver Milman

Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets in the US

Wis. DNR Announces New Wet­land Restora­tion Plan, Novem­ber 23, by Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources

State could deny key Conowingo per­mit, Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Tim­o­thy B. Wheeler

A Conservationist’s Take on the Know­land Park Con­tro­versy, Novem­ber 17, by Ali­son Hawkes

High-speed rail offi­cials say con­struc­tion will be a net pos­i­tive for the envi­ron­ment, Novem­ber 21. 2014, by Allen Young

 Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets in Australia

Envi­ron­men­tal nod for Mount Bruce’s 70Mt/y iron-ore mine, Novem­ber 18. 2014, by Esmarie Swanepoel

Much-needed step for­ward: Rio Tinto, Novem­ber 18, by Sin­gle­ton Argus

News on the bio­di­ver­sity off­set con­tro­versy in the UK

Rochester byelec­tion Labour Can­di­date linked to Lodge Hill Devel­op­ers, Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Miles King

We need a new law to pro­tect our wildlife from crit­i­cal decline, Novem­ber 21, 2014, by George Mon­biot (see also here)

 Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets and envi­ron­men­tal funds

Can Envi­ron­men­tal Funds Improve The Bio­di­ver­sity Per­for­mance Of Extrac­tive Indus­tries In Africa? Novem­ber 18, 2014, by Fran­cis Vorhies

Honda funds skink habi­tat at Oxford preschool, Novem­ber 17, 2014, Press Release by  Envi­ron­ment Canterbury

Cor­po­rate bio­di­ver­sity off­sets examples

Sun­cor — Can we raise the bar on envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance? Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Sun­cor (YouTube video)

Can we raise the bar on envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance? Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Suncor

Roche — ALD — WWF Joint Off­set­ting Pro­gram, Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Roche, Youtube video (2:23 min)

EU con­sul­ta­tion on the planned No Net Loss Initiative

Response by Kar­menu Vella to the Let­ter to the Com­mis­sion regard­ing bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting, Novem­ber 20, 2014, by Kar­menu Vella

Other bio­di­ver­sity off­set news

Juris­dic­tional For­est Off­sets: Cal­i­for­nia Dreamin’? Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Frances Seymour

The report “B@B Work­stream 1: Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Account­ing for Busi­ness: Guide to select­ing an approach” is the out­come of the work con­ducted on the NCA Work­stream of the B@B Plat­form between Novem­ber 2013 and Octo­ber 2014, Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Euro­pean Commission

Restora­tion of Lake Sagsjön con­tin­ues (in pic­tures), Novem­ber 19, 2014, by Boris Barov

PDFs of the Articles/Links

To pre­vent to loose infor­ma­tion find the Pdfs of the arti­cles or news below — as we know, that unfor­tu­nately every now and then things are being removed from the internet.

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_A Conservationist’s Take on the Know­land Park Controversy

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Business at Bio­di­ver­sity Work­stream 1_Natural Cap­i­tal Accounting

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Can Envi­ron­men­tal Funds Improve The Bio­di­ver­sity Per­for­mance Of Extrac­tive Indus­tries In Africa

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Habitats of 140 Aus­tralian threat­ened species not pro­tected, WWF study finds

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Honda funds skink habi­tat at Oxford preschool

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Maryland could deny Exelon key per­mit to reli­cense Conowingo Dam

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Much-needed step forward_ Rio Tinto

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Response by Kar­menu Vella to the Let­ter to the Com­mis­sion regard­ing bio­di­ver­sity offsetting

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Restoration of Lake Sagsjön con­tin­ues (in pictures)

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Rochester byelec­tion Labour Can­di­date linked to Lodge Hill Developers

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_We need a new law to pro­tect our wildlife from crit­i­cal decline

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_Wisconsin Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources announces new wet­land restora­tion plan

Newsweek 17–23 Novem­ber 2014_World Parks Congress_ set­ting the agenda for pro­tected areas and bio­di­ver­sity management

Newsweek 17–23 November_Environmental nod for Mount Bruce’s 70Mt_y iron-ore mine