I had blogged about it ear­lier how happy I am to receive the EIA Study Award of the Ger­man Soci­ety for Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assessment.

The big day had finally come Thurs­day, 30 Novem­ber and I was enjoy­ing both an inter­est­ing EIA con­gress with lots of inspir­ing talks from prac­ti­tion­ers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, sci­en­tists and admin­is­tra­tion. But of course, my per­sonal high­light was the offi­cial award cer­e­mony. Thanks to the jury for choos­ing my work for this prize and espe­cially thanks to Prof. Sabine Baum­gart for a fan­tas­tic lau­da­tion (some­times I couldn’t believe she was speak­ing about me and my work ;o)). And again, heart­ful thanks to all of you for your sup­port and con­tri­bu­tion to this work and the warm words and con­grat­u­la­tions that I have received so far.

After upload­ing the Ger­man offi­cial press release, I now want to share the Eng­lish ver­sion of the press release with you. For whom this may be a bit too for­mal, find below also some pho­tographs :o)

Offi­cial press release on the EIA study award

Mar­i­anne Darbi, research assis­tant at the Leib­niz Insti­tute of Eco­log­i­cal Urban and Regional Devel­op­ment (IOER), has received the EIA Study Award 2016 for her dis­ser­ta­tion on the mit­i­ga­tion of envi­ron­men­tal impacts. With a prize of up to € 5,000, the award goes to out­stand­ing research in the field of envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment (EIA). It was awarded by the Ger­man Soci­ety for Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment (UVP-Gesellschaft) end of Sep­tem­ber. Mar­i­anne Darbi had con­vinced the inde­pen­dent jury with a global typol­ogy of mea­sures to com­pen­sate for bio­di­ver­sity loss.

In her research, Mar­i­anne Darbi has dealt with the so-called bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. This term cov­ers mea­sures designed to com­pen­sate for the adverse effects of impacts on the envi­ron­ment, such as con­struc­tion or infra­struc­ture projects. Accord­ing to this approach, the loss of bio­di­ver­sity in one place is off­set by mea­sures to increase bio­di­ver­sity else­where. In addi­tion to legally reg­u­lated mea­sures, a large num­ber of vol­un­tary com­pen­sa­tion approaches are cur­rently being devel­oped. “This mul­ti­tude of new mea­sures is not only a pos­i­tive one, as a con­tro­versy has devel­oped that some­times even blocks the pro­tec­tion of bio­log­i­cal diver­sity,” explains Mar­i­anne Darbi. “With my work, I wanted to pro­vide a sys­tem­ati­za­tion that makes a reli­able assess­ment of dif­fer­ent com­pen­sa­tion mea­sures possible.”

This approach has been suc­cess­ful, illus­trated by var­i­ous exam­ples of legally reg­u­lated and vol­un­tary com­pen­sa­tion mea­sures. Mar­i­anne Darbi describes more than 70 case stud­ies in her dis­ser­ta­tion, locates them geo­graph­i­cally, intro­duces the pecu­liar­i­ties. She has devel­oped a typol­ogy of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets based on an inten­sive lit­er­a­ture research and through con­tact with a world­wide net­work of experts and prac­ti­tion­ers. On the one hand, the diver­sity and com­plex­ity of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets world­wide is demon­strated. On the other hand, the typol­ogy makes the dif­fer­ent approaches more com­pa­ra­ble, suc­cess fac­tors and obsta­cles can be derived, the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of the dif­fer­ent types of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets become clear.

The jury praised the the­matic depth and breadth of the dis­ser­ta­tion as well as the clearly struc­tured approach, the reflected pre­sen­ta­tion of the results as well as the good visu­al­iza­tion which con­tributed to the understanding.

The EIA Study Award is granted every two years for out­stand­ing the­ses in the field of pre­cau­tion­ary envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and plan­ning. The prize is awarded by the Ger­man Soci­ety for Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment (UVP-Gesellschaft) in var­i­ous cat­e­gories and is endowed with a total of up to EUR 5,000. The UVP Soci­ety has been pro­mot­ing envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion as a spe­cial­ist asso­ci­a­tion for over 25 years and all plan­ning and man­age­ment instru­ments required for this purpose.

Con­tact at the Leib­niz Insti­tute of Eco­log­i­cal Urban and Regional Devel­op­ment:
Dr. Mar­i­anne Darbi, phone: (0351) 46 79–223, e-mail: M.Darbi [im] ioer.de

Fur­ther information:

In the course of her dis­ser­ta­tion (enti­tled “Between reg­u­la­tion and vol­un­tary com­mit­ment — Devel­op­ment of a typol­ogy of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets using an inter­net and expert based approach”), Mar­i­anne Darbi has cre­ated the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog, a world­wide plat­form for infor­ma­tion and exchange on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and the mit­i­ga­tion hierarchy.

Some pho­tos from the award ceremony