Some time ago IUCN launched its Draft Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pol­icy for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and com­ments. Shar­ing this with you is on my to-do-list for quite a while and time is run­ning. Before it’s too late (appar­ently the con­sul­ta­tion web­site still exists and con­sul­ta­tion should be open until 15 Sep­tem­ber 2015) I’ll now share this with you. The con­sul­ta­tion process is not quite handy — you need to down­load the draft and read it, then down­load a (WORD) form, fill it in an email it back. The good thing is that it is also avail­able in French and Span­ish (besides Eng­lish). For more infor­ma­tion see below.

Back­ground and con­sul­ta­tion process

As a response to the chal­lenges asso­ci­ated to bio­di­ver­sity off­sets, IUCN Mem­bers adopted Res­o­lu­tion 110 at the World Con­ser­va­tion Con­gress 2012, which man­dated the Direc­tor Gen­eral to estab­lish a work­ing group to develop an IUCN gen­eral pol­icy on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. A tech­ni­cal study paper was pre­pared in the first phase of this process, which informed the devel­op­ment of the Draft Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pol­icy. Fol­low­ing a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the draft pol­icy, which is now under­way, the Pol­icy Work­ing Group is expected to final­ize the draft pol­icy for con­sid­er­a­tion by the IUCN Coun­cil meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

How to participate

IUCN invites you to pro­vide input on the draft bio­di­ver­sity off­sets pol­icy by tak­ing the fol­low­ing steps:

1. Read the Overview of the IUCN Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pol­icy Process. (See French ver­sionand Span­ish ver­sion.)
2. Read the Draft IUCN Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pol­icy. (See French ver­sion and Span­ish ver­sion.) Please note that you are not required to com­ment on the entire draft pol­icy doc­u­ment . Any input, even on select parts of the doc­u­ment, is wel­come. You are also encour­aged to cir­cu­late these doc­u­ments widely through your net­works, although we do ask, where fea­si­ble, that you pro­vide one set of com­ments per organization.
3. Share your com­ments by using this form. (See French ver­sion and Span­ish version.)

Source: IUCN — Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Consultation