Author(s): Martine Maron, Ascelin Gordon, Brendan G. Mackey, Hugh P. Possingham & James E. M. Watson

Title: Con­ser­va­tion: Stop mis­use of bio­di­ver­sity offsets

Year: 2015

Pages: 401–403

Pub­li­ca­tion type: open access jour­nal arti­cle (comment)

Lan­guage: English

Source: http://www.nature.com/news/conservation-stop-misuse-of-biodiversity-offsets-1.18010

Extract:

It is rea­son­able, and often desir­able, for off­sets to fund new pro­tected areas and their man­age­ment. But these offset-funded pro­tected areas must be tal­lied sep­a­rately — and along­side the losses that trig­ger them.

A more robust sys­tem for eco­log­i­cal account­ing is fea­si­ble, as demon­strated by REDD+, the United Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change poli­cies for reduc­ing emis­sions from defor­esta­tion and for­est degra­da­tion. REDD+ offers incen­tives for devel­op­ing coun­tries to con­serve trees and reduce the growth in global greenhouse-gas emis­sions. Although the details of REDD+ mech­a­nisms and fund­ing are still being devel­oped, the sig­na­to­ries have agreed on the need to estab­lish real­is­tic base­line rates of for­est loss from which to cal­cu­late emis­sions reduc­tions (seego.nature.com/gofoch).

With care, off­sets can help to rec­on­cile devel­op­ment and con­ser­va­tion. But if they allow gov­ern­ments to renege on their com­mit­ments by stealth, bio­di­ver­sity off­sets could cause more harm than good.