Biotope is hiring a Chief of Project for the implementation of the mitigation hierarchy (based in Conakry, Guinea)

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biotopeFrench envi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tancy Biotope is hir­ing a Chief of Project for the imple­men­ta­tion of the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy in Guinea. Flu­ency in French and Eng­lish is a must.

Loca­tion: Conakry, Guinea

Time­frame: 4 years, start­ing Sep­tem­ber 2015

clos­ing date for appli­ca­tion: not specified

For more infor­ma­tion see the fol­low­ing short descrip­tion (in French) or see the full job offer and con­tact details here.

Recrute­ment: Un(e) Chef de Pro­jets / Assis­tant Tech­nique «con­ser­va­tion de la bio­di­ver­sité» — H/F — CDI

Biotope recherche un Chef de Pro­jet expéri­menté pour con­duire une mis­sion d’assistance tech­nique en Guinée (Conakry) dans le cadre d’un pro­jet multi-pays (Guinée, Ouganda, Mozam­bique, Mada­gas­car) sur l’application de la séquence «éviter –réduire –com­penser» aux pro­jets pou­vant entrainer des impacts sur la bio­di­ver­sité, et en parte­nar­iat avec l’ONG locale Guinée Ecolo­gie. Ce pro­jet sera mené pen­dant 4 ans par la Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety, en parte­nar­iat avec Biotope et For­est Trends. Le poste inclut égale­ment le développe­ment de l’activité d’expertise, d’ingénierie et de con­seil de Biotope en Guinée et en Afrique de l’Ouest

Plus d’informations sur la posi­tion et la façon d’appliquer peut être trouvé ici.

What is biodiversity offsetting? simple 5 min-animation explaining the basic principles and functioning

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what is biodiversity offsetting FFIFlora and Fauna Inter­na­tional have pre­pared a short (less than 5 min) ani­ma­tion explain­ing the impact of human con­sump­tion on nature as well as the basic prin­ci­ples and func­tion­ing of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. The video is sim­ply and nicely illus­trated. To watch it online, click below. And read also what FFI says about it: Con­tinue read­ing →

Job offer on biodiversity offsets at University of Queensland, Australia

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job UQThanks to Mar­tine Maron for shar­ing this recent job offer for a post­doc at Uni­ver­sity of Queens­land, Australia.

Post­doc­toral Research Fel­low Posi­tions: National Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence Pro­gramme – Threat­ened Species Recov­ery Hub

We are seek­ing highly moti­vated Post­doc­toral Research Fel­lows (up to five posi­tions) to be part of an excit­ing team com­mit­ted to improv­ing the out­comes of Australia’s threat­ened species and eco­log­i­cal com­mu­ni­ties.  The roles will involve spe­cific outcome-oriented research related to a range of projects focus­ing on: cost effec­tive bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting; threat­ened plants con­ser­va­tion list­ing and pri­ori­ti­sa­tion; threat­ened species mon­i­tor­ing and envi­ron­men­tal accounts; ecosys­tem mod­el­ling; pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of threat erad­i­ca­tion and species rein­tro­duc­tion; spa­tial plan­ning; and threat­ened species man­age­ment, par­tic­u­larly inva­sive predators.

Appointed Post­doc­toral Research Fel­lows will be required to work on one or more of the above top­ics to develop solu­tions that will meet the research pri­or­i­ties of the Threat­ened Species Recov­ery Hub.

More infor­ma­tion includ­ing the appli­ca­tion process (online) can be found here:

http://jobs.uq.edu.au/caw/en/job/497781/postdoctoral-research-fellow

Appli­ca­tions close: 25 Sep 2015 (11:55 PM) E. Aus­tralia Stand

Biodiversity Offsets are all-around at the 27th International Congress for Conservation Biology ICCB-ECCB 2015

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French food break

I am at ICCB-ECCB (27th Inter­na­tional Con­gress for Con­ser­va­tion Biol­ogy) in Mont­pel­lier (France) this whole week (I have blogged about this some weeks ago). That’s a tremen­dous gath­er­ing of more than 2000 con­ser­va­tion sci­en­tists and bio­di­ver­sity experts from all over the world and a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­nity to exchange views. So far, I have met numer­ous peo­ple work­ing on or inter­ested in dis­cussing bio­di­ver­sity off­sets — both in my own sym­po­sium (Bio­di­ver­sity man­age­ment and devel­op­ment: chal­lenges, oppor­tu­ni­ties and new direc­tions) and spread all over the var­i­ous sessions.

I will cover some of my obser­va­tions (as well as my per­sonal insights or take home mes­sages) in a blog post, soon. This will also include a sum­mary as well as the pre­sen­ta­tions that were part of the sym­po­sium. For the moment I’ll leave it there and sim­ply share some visual impres­sions of the con­gress and surroundings.

Visit also the ICCB 2015 web­site for more infor­ma­tion on the sci­en­tific pro­gram and check out twit­ter for the lat­est news and numer­ous per­sonal observations…

What is the Business Case for Biodiversity Offsets? — my new paper in SQ — raising the sustainability quotient

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Some time ago I have been asked by Divya Narain if I could con­tribute an arti­cle to the lat­est issue on busi­ness and bio­di­ver­sity of “SQ — rais­ing the sus­tain­abil­ity quo­tient” –the bul­letin of the Bom­bay Cham­ber of Com­merce and Industry.

I sug­gested to write some­thing about the busi­ness case for bio­di­ver­sity off­sets (includ­ing some extracts from my PhD). I am happy to announce that SQ is now avail­able online (open access). You can down­load the full ver­sion directly on the web­site of the Bom­bay Cham­ber of Com­merce and Indus­try and find the abstract to my arti­cle below.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Devel­op­ing Busi­nesses for Bet­ter Envi­ron­men­tal Stew­ard­ship — a guest post by Derrick Wilkinson on market based instruments

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This is  a guest post by Der­rick Wilkin­son who is an econ­o­mist and direc­tor of the UK based con­sul­tancy DG Wilkinson.

This guest post is the expres­sion of the author’s thoughts and expe­ri­ences and as such is acknowl­edged as a fruit­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­cus­sion on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. If you want to react or clar­ify your own posi­tion (under­pin or dis­prove), please leave a reply below!

Source: Research Group Ecosys­tem Ser­vices (http://www.ecosystemservices.de/project)

I have been work­ing on the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous market-based solu­tions to envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems for some 10 years now, includ­ing some detailed work on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets — espe­cially the sup­ply of off­set sites. While the poten­tial ben­e­fits of such approaches seem to me to be sub­stan­tial, the lack of rig­or­ous eco­nomic analy­sis and/or devel­op­ment of the busi­ness case seems to me to be a major omis­sion in the debate. A few years ago I wrote this, and would be inter­ested in any com­ments read­ers may have.

Devel­op­ing Busi­nesses for Bet­ter Envi­ron­men­tal Stewardship

Over the past few decades envi­ron­men­tal­ists have pro­duced a great wealth of evi­dence of a grow­ing range of envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems. As a con­se­quence, they have often advo­cated a moral case to encour­aged peo­ple to behave dif­fer­ently; appealed to their “bet­ter nature”. We have heard calls to respect the inher­ent val­ues in nature and to improve inter­gen­er­a­tional equity; to “save the planet”. Despite this, vir­tu­ally all the grow­ing body of indi­ca­tors show con­tin­ued dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the nat­ural envi­ron­ment. It is increas­ingly obvi­ous that this strat­egy is inad­e­quate on its own.

Although many in the envi­ron­men­tal­ist com­mu­nity remain sus­pi­cious, more recently it has been increas­ingly recog­nised that a busi­ness case for more envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able behav­iour, can also be made; that by appeal­ing to people’s self-interest rather than to their sense of moral­ity and/or the com­mon good, a range of envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems can be suc­cess­fully addressed. From this, three addi­tional approaches are being devel­oped: the val­u­a­tion of ecosys­tem ser­vices to the econ­omy and for indi­vid­ual busi­nesses; the devel­op­ment and inte­gra­tion of nat­ural cap­i­tal account­ing to enable bet­ter resource and envi­ron­men­tal risk man­age­ment; and the devel­op­ment of novel mar­kets for the deliv­ery of spe­cific envi­ron­men­tal outcomes.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Cactus status post #12

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That’s been another very intense month. I wrote and restruc­tured a lot and also had a meet­ing (or you may call it eval­u­a­tion) with the advi­sory board of my PhD project: I was quite pro­duc­tive and things went rather well and they will now decide on fund­ing for final six months — crazy when the end of such a long jour­ney comes in sight… I now also have to deal with some organ­i­sa­tional stuff, e.g. where to pub­lish my the­sis and I am look­ing for a sec­ond advi­sor.

The cac­tus is still doing good — now in com­pany with some more suc­cu­lents (sadly the cucum­ber plant almost died of some illness).

July update:

Cac­tus: 70 cm / PhD: 305 pages

2015, June:

Cac­tus: 66 cm / PhD: 205 pages

2015, May:

Cac­tus: 61 cm / PhD: 181 pages

2015, April:

Cac­tus: 53 cm / PhD: 171 pages

2015, March:

Cac­tus: 49 cm / PhD: 153 pages

2015, Feb­ru­ary:

Cac­tus: 47 cm / PhD: 145 pages

2015, Jan­u­ary:

Cac­tus: 42 cm / PhD: 139 pages Con­tinue read­ing →

NATUE ALERT — last three days of the public consultation as part of the ‘fitness check’ for EU nature legislation (Birds Directive, Habitats Directive)

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#NATUREALERTFor the past three months the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has held a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion as part of the ‘fit­ness check’ for EU nature leg­is­la­tion (Birds Direc­tive, Habi­tats Direc­tive — BHD). the BHD and related Natura 2000 net­work are a unique tool of envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy that has gained enor­mous impor­tance for the pro­tec­tion of species and habi­tats through­out Europe!

That is why I per­son­ally (and for my insti­tute) responded to the online con­sul­ta­tion, despite the fact that I was not very happy with the merely mul­ti­ple choice ques­tions (that are indeed quite spe­cific). Unfor­tu­nately there is only lit­tle room for com­ments (but there is!). Now, as the last three days of the con­sul­ta­tion are on, I am highly encour­ag­ing you to have your say on this. You can do that either directly on the web­site of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion (that requires some think­ing to go through, note that there is a shorter 14 ques­tion ver­sion for the gen­eral pub­lic avail­able and an extended ver­sion for experts you are asked to answer or not after fill­ing in the first ques­tions) or you can use the “Nature alert” plat­form that has been estab­lished by a union of sev­eral big nature con­ser­va­tion NGOs in Europe. This is a great ini­tia­tive where you can defend the BHD and our nat­ural envi­ron­ment in a sim­ple and con­vinc­ing way (like the almost half a mil­lion sig­na­to­ries so far!).

Which way you choose — can’t say this too often — please get active and have your say now! (con­sul­ta­tion closes July 24, 2015)

Last but not least this is also very rel­e­vant for the field of impact mit­i­ga­tion and com­pen­sa­tion, in par­tic­u­lar with regard to Art. 6 of the Habi­tats Direc­tive which requires appro­pri­ate assess­ment of impacts and related com­pen­sa­tion measures!

Find some more tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion on the con­sul­ta­tion pasted below as well as my com­ment that I have included in my par­tic­i­pa­tion. Con­tinue read­ing →

Conference “Biodiversity Offsetting for Mining, Infrastructure and Urban Development”, 22–23 July, Sydney (Australia)

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biooffsettting conference3From tomor­row on a two-day con­fer­ence will exam­ine the future of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting in Aus­tralia. The con­fer­ence enti­tled “Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set­ting for Min­ing, Infra­struc­ture and Urban Devel­op­ment” will focus  on the com­plex and chal­leng­ing task of bal­anc­ing bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion out­comes with social and eco­nomic pri­or­i­ties – espe­cially for min­ing, infra­struc­ture and urban devel­op­ment com­pa­nies look­ing to develop or expand projects. Fur­ther­more, the con­fer­ence will address recent changes to bio­di­ver­sity off­set pol­icy, build­ing a plat­form for knowl­edge shar­ing to improve off­set deliv­ery around Australia.

Find more infor­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence agenda, the work­shops offered, the speak­ers, the venue, the part­ners and spon­sors online. You can also down­load the brochure.

See also infor­ma­tion on the venue and the agenda below — a large vari­ety of speak­ers, includ­ing gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives (Miranda Lello, John Sei­del), Dr. Phil Gib­bons from Aus­tralian National Uni­ver­sity as well as sev­eral busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives and consultants.

Happy to hear from any­one who attends the con­fer­ence about your obser­va­tions! Con­tinue read­ing →

Looking for a second reviewer/advisor for my PhD on Voluntary Biodiversity Offsets — any ideas?

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modified after Kelly 2014 (http://phdskills.blogspot.de/2014/01/manage-your-phd-supervisor.html)

mod­i­fied after Kelly 2014 (http://phdskills.blogspot.de/2014/01/manage-your-phd-supervisor.html)

I have just had another meet­ing with the advi­sory board of my PhD

-  work­ing title: “Between reg­u­la­tion and vol­un­tary engage­ment: devel­op­ment of a typol­ogy of vol­un­tary bio­di­ver­sity off­sets using an expert and inter­net based (netno­graphic) research approach” -

In this meet­ing I have pre­sented the cur­rent state of my work. As things are pro­gress­ing I am hope­fully head­ing towards the final six months of very dense PhD work. With that in mind I need to take care of sev­eral orga­ni­za­tional issues. Most impor­tantly I am look­ing for a sec­ond reviewer/advisor for my the­sis. The ideal per­son should

  • know about/research on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and
  • have post­doc­toral research/teaching expe­ri­ence i.e. a pro­fes­sor (not nec­es­sar­ily) or similar.

The fol­low­ing tasks would be required:

  • read my dis­ser­ta­tion (English)
  • mark my dis­ser­ta­tion (includ­ing a detailed evaluation/review)
  • travel to Dres­den for one day to take part in my defense (travel costs covered)

I would be very glad about any hints or rec­om­men­da­tions whom I might approach in this regard! Please share your ideas! Thanks in advance!