KEY ISSUES IN BIODIVERSITY OFFSET LAW AND POLICY. A Comparison of Six Jurisdictions — new report by Dave Poulton

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Some time ago I have been asked by Dave Poul­ton to review a chap­ter on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets under the Ger­man Impact Mit­i­ga­tion Reg­u­la­tion. So I am more than happy to inform you that Dave’s report enti­tled “KEY ISSUES IN BIODIVERSITY OFFSET LAW AND POLICY A Com­par­i­son of Six Juris­dic­tions” is now pub­licly avail­able. Thanks Dave for putting this together!

The six juris­dic­tions exam­ined include:

  • British Colum­bia (Canada)
  • Canada (fish­eries)
  • Ger­many
  • New Zealand
  • US (wet­lands)
  • Vic­to­ria (Aus­tralia, native vegetation)

You can access the full report online and see the con­clu­sion and sum­mary of rec­om­men­da­tions copied below. Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity and Conservation Offsets: A Guide for Albertans (Canada) — new paper by Dave Poulton

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Thanks to Dave Poul­ton for shar­ing his lat­est paper enti­tled “Bio­di­ver­sity and Con­ser­va­tion Off­sets: A Guide for Alber­tans”. The paper was pre­pared at the Cana­dian Insti­tute of Resources Law.

You can access the full paper online and see the intro­duc­tion copied below. Con­tinue read­ing →

Job offer on biodiversity offsets: Senior Principal Consultant at the Biodiversity Consultancy, Cambridge (UK)

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The biodiversity consultancyThe Cam­bridge based envi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tancy The Bio­di­ver­sity con­sul­tancy is look­ing for a Senior Prin­ci­pal Con­sul­tant to join their team.

The Bio­di­ver­sity Con­sul­tancy (TBC) works with finan­cial, indus­try, gov­ern­ment and NGO sec­tors in pro­vid­ing con­ser­va­tion sci­ence and envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment exper­tise to meet the com­plex bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tem ser­vice risks faced by indus­try and  recog­nised by stake­hold­ers. See a short job descrip­tion and a link to the full job advert below. Con­tinue read­ing →

New report on strengthening the implementation of the mitigation hierarchy by Hayes et al.

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strengthening the mitigation hierarchyThanks to Genevieve Hayes and Samir Whitaker from BirdLife for shar­ing their lat­est report on the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy. Over a period of 9 months the team (BirdLife Inter­na­tional, United Nations Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­gramme – World Con­ser­va­tion Mon­i­tor­ing Cen­tre (UNEP-WCMC), Royal Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Birds (RSPB), Fauna and Flora Inter­na­tional (FFI) and the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge) have worked on a CCI Col­lab­o­ra­tive Fund project titled ‘Strength­en­ing imple­men­ta­tion of the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy: man­ag­ing bio­di­ver­sity risk for con­ser­va­tion gains’ – the aim and focus of the research has been on improv­ing under­stand­ing and col­lat­ing prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence on the Avoid stage of the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy, to bet­ter inform how it should be ‘done’. The research stage of the project is now com­plete and the final report is avail­able, based on which they will soon begin the next phase: engage­ment and sup­port for the imple­men­ta­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of the Avoid stage.

You can access the full report online and see the report overview and sum­mary copied below. Con­tinue read­ing →

Newsletter of the Business and Biodiversity Offset Programme, May 2015

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BBOP Newsletter

BBOP newslet­ters are usu­ally a great resource car­ry­ing a wealth of infor­ma­tion. Since the last newslet­ter came in in Sep­tem­ber 2014 (see my post) the one that came in some days ago has been waited for.  It includes sec­tions on

  • BBOP News,
  • pub­li­ca­tions and tools,
  • pol­icy devel­op­ments and
  • upcom­ing events.

The full newslet­ter will be avail­able soon on the BBOP web­site. I have extracted some infor­ma­tion for you below — how­ever most of the infor­ma­tion has already been cov­ered on the Bio­di­ver­sity Blog in other posts over the months (this is a great val­i­da­tion of the work that I put into this :o)).

Con­tinue read­ing →

Peru develops a framework for No Net Loss

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The Gov­ern­ment of Peru has been devel­op­ing a national frame­work for No Net Loss of bio­di­ver­sity, which cul­mi­nated in the release of a Min­is­te­r­ial Res­o­lu­tion on bio­di­ver­sity com­pen­sa­tion dur­ing the UNFCCC dur­ing the COP20 in Decem­ber 2014 in Lima. The gov­ern­ment now aims to imple­ment its com­pen­sa­tion guide­lines and a multi-year roadmap to imple­ment the Resolution.

In early 2014 a spe­cial­ized agency called SENACE (Ser­vi­cio Nacional de Cer­ti­fi­ca­cion Ambi­en­tal) was estab­lished to ensure sus­tain­able invest­ments for large scale projects. The agency forms part of the national sys­tem of EIAs (SEIA). The agency is hosted by the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment but includes a Board with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Econ­omy & Finance, Min­istry for Mines and Energy, Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Min­istry of Pro­duc­tion and Min­istry of Health. For­est Trends jointly with GIZ and other donors are closely work­ing with SENACE to build capac­ity of this new agency which will have some 100 employ­ees. The Min­istry is also work­ing closely with a civil soci­ety plat­form (which includes WCS, CCF and SPDA) on imple­ment­ing the road-map which is already test­ing pilot projects for No Net Loss in dif­fer­ent ecosys­tems and sec­tors in Peru. The­ses pilots will ulti­mately inform and develop the met­rics and nec­es­sary guide­lines referred to in the Min­is­te­r­ial Resolution.

This infor­ma­tion was retrieved from the lat­est (May 2015) BBOP Newslet­ter.

 

 

World Bank Environmental and Social Safeguards Review update

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Phase 2 of the World Bank envi­ron­men­tal and social safe­guards review closed on 1 March, 2015. More than 2,500 pages of feed­back were received from the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the first draft frame­work of the Bank’s social safe­guard poli­cies. Under the pro­posed struc­ture, Envi­ron­men­tal and Social Stan­dards (ESSs 1– 10), ESS6 focuses on “Bio­di­ver­sity Con­ser­va­tion and Sus­tain­able Man­age­ment of Liv­ing Nat­ural Resources”.

The pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion feed­back is now under review with the pur­pose of revis­ing the draft frame­work. An ini­tial review of com­ments on ESS6 indi­cates that a con­sis­tent mes­sage has been the need to clar­ify that off­sets are a last resort in the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy, as well as a strong pref­er­ence to pre­vent off­sets in Crit­i­cal Habi­tat. In addi­tion, respon­dents stated the need for log­ging and hydropower projects to adhere to the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy as well as projects in other sectors.

The review team plans to present a sec­ond draft of the Envi­ron­men­tal and Social Frame­work to the Com­mit­tee on Devel­op­ment Effec­tive­ness (CODE) of the World Bank’s Board of Exec­u­tive Direc­tors this sum­mer. A third round of con­sul­ta­tions will be ini­ti­ated after dis­cus­sions of the sec­ond draft with CODE. The Safe­guards Review web­site pro­vides addi­tional infor­ma­tion, such as a video and tran­script of the World Bank/IMF Spring Meet­ings’ dis­cus­sion on the pro­posed Envi­ron­men­tal and Social Frame­work; a World Bank pre­sen­ta­tion on the con­sul­ta­tions and con­sid­er­a­tions for mov­ing for­ward; and a study com­par­ing the safe­guard poli­cies of the World Bank and other Mul­ti­lat­eral Devel­op­ment Banks.

This infor­ma­tion was retrieved from the lat­est (May 2015) BBOP Newslet­ter.

Note that you find require­ments (for bor­row­ers) regard­ing off­sets (e.g. off­set man­age­ment plan) related to OP 4.01 Impact Assess­ment and 4.04 Nat­ural Habi­tats in the study men­tioned above.

 

Biodiversity Law (including biodiversity offsets) under Development in France

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French bio­di­ver­sity pol­icy has been evolv­ing and strength­en­ing since 1976, when the “Law on Nature Pro­tec­tion”, pro­vided the first men­tion of the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy and stip­u­lated that all devel­op­ments required an EIA.

More recent guid­ance on the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy pub­lished by the Min­istry of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in 2013 stated that if resid­ual impacts remain after avoid­ance and min­i­miza­tion steps, com­pen­sa­tion is manda­tory in the case of dam­age result­ing in “major envi­ron­men­tal issues”.

Ear­lier this year a new law on bio­di­ver­sity (Pro­jet de loi pour la recon­quête de la bio­di­ver­sité, de la nature et des paysages) entered the leg­isla­tive pipeline in France and was approved by the National Assem­bly, includ­ing the adop­tion of an impor­tant arti­cle on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and an arti­cle intro­duc­ing a Not Net Loss / Net Gain prin­ci­ple.

Con­tinue read­ing →

2014 IUCN World Parks Congress launches dialogue on biodiversity offsets

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IUCN World Parks CongresssHeld once every 10 years, the 2014 World Parks Con­gress in Novem­ber 2014 attracted 6,000 par­tic­i­pants from 170 coun­tries, and secured more than 70 new major con­ser­va­tion com­mit­ments, includ­ing Gabon’s promise to pro­tect 23% of its coast­line, and the Elion Foun­da­tion and UNCCD’s pledge to plant 1.3 bil­lion trees along the his­toric Silk Route. Hosted by Aus­tralia, the Con­gress explored eight dif­fer­ent themes and four cross-cutting issues, and fea­tured World Leader Dia­logues and hun­dreds of side events.

The out­comes of the Con­gress are cap­tured in the Promise of Syd­ney, which rec­og­nizes the impor­tant role of Indige­nous Peo­ples’ in the com­mu­nity and the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sented by new tech­nolo­gies to advance pro­tected areas con­ser­va­tion. More specif­i­cally, the Promise acknowl­edges the need to invest in nature’s solu­tions — sup­ported by pub­lic pol­icy, incen­tives, tools and safe­guards — that help to halt bio­di­ver­sity loss, and mit­i­gate and respond to cli­mate change.

IUCN’s Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity team hosted 32 ses­sions in the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Pavil­ion and at other venues, many of which were directly rel­e­vant to bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and the appli­ca­tion of the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy. Con­tinue read­ing →

“Natural Capital: valuing our planet” — new book by Dieter Helm

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Natural capital valuing the planetPro­fes­sor Dieter Helm, Chair­man of the Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Com­mit­tee, has released ‘Nat­ural Cap­i­tal – valu­ing our planet’, a book pub­lished by Yale Uni­ver­sity Press and fol­low­ing closely the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Com­mit­tee in its recent report to the UK gov­ern­ment.

GDP, the con­ven­tional mea­sure of eco­nomic growth, does not involve a proper bal­ance sheet, and the future con­se­quences of deplet­ing nat­ural cap­i­tal are ignored, such that deplet­ing nat­ural assets typ­i­cally leads to an increase in GDP.

At the heart of this book is an asset-based sus­tain­able nat­ural cap­i­tal rule: pass­ing on to the next gen­er­a­tion a set of assets at least as good as the ones we inher­ited requires a num­ber of con­di­tions to be met and a line in the sand to be drawn — the aggre­gate level of nat­ural cap­i­tal should not decline. This requires that nat­ural cap­i­tal is incor­po­rated in national and cor­po­rate accounts, mea­sured, and val­ued to make sure that the aggre­gate rule is not broken.

To meet the aggre­gate rule, the eco­nomic rents from deplet­ing non-renewables should be set aside in a fund, which is poten­tially very big, cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve nat­ural capital.

Pro­fes­sor Helm rec­om­mends three poli­cies nec­es­sary to imple­ment the nat­ural cap­i­tal approach to eco­nomic pol­icy: com­pen­sa­tion; envi­ron­men­tal taxes, sub­si­dies and per­mits; and the pro­vi­sion of nat­ural cap­i­tal pub­lic goods, includ­ing pro­tected areas, parks and nature reserves.

Con­tinue read­ing →