For a week now spring is in full bloom here in Dresden. This gives me so much energy that I feel busy as a bee. And the cactus too pushes some new sprouts — maybe it feels inspired by the tulips it is in company with ;o)
April Update:
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
As a regular reader of the Biodiversity Offsets Blog you have seen multiple contributions by Carlos Ferreira on this blog which clearly mark his expertise in the field of biodiversity offsets. It is therefore great to note that his doctoral thesis which he has completed at the University of Manchester (2013) is now available as full text (pdf). It is entitled “Performativity and pluralities of biodiversity offsetting experiments: Towards a synthesis of economy as instituted process and economy as performativity”.
For more information you can download the thesis here or find a pdf here and see the abstract below:
Ferreira_2013_Performativity and pluralities of biodiversity offsetting experiments Continue reading
Commercial agriculture and forestry could have a net positive impact on biodiversity – say the authors of a recent report. Thanks to Fabien Quetier for informing me about one of the latest IUCN reports entitled “No Net Loss and Net Positive Impact Approaches for Biodiversity. Exploring the potential application of these approaches in the commercial agriculture and forestry sectors”. You can find the full report and the executive summary online. See also an extract form the executive summary pasted below. Continue reading
The OECD has held a workshop on biodiversity offsets on 6–7 November 2013 at the OECD Headquarters. The workshop examined the technical and analytical issues related to their effective design and implementation with an aim to derive insights on and examples of good practice.
The workshop brought together government, the private sector, IGO’s, NGO’s, and other experts and practitioners, so as to exchange experience and lessons learned on the key opportunities and challenges associated with biodiversity offset schemes.
The workshop is very well documented and you can access the Agenda, Powerpoint presentations and Participants list. For an overview see the full list of sessions, speakers and presentations below.
The Biodiversity Offsets Blog is making the rounds — thanks to the team at Mercados de Medio Ambiente for covering the Biodiversity Offsets Blog today in a blog post via one of our recent articles — the guest post contributed by Alan Key on a Koala Offset in South East Queensland. I am very happy to contribute to the opinion section of Mercados de Medio Ambiente. See the full article translated into Spanish (thanks, Paz! Great work!) here.
Read more about Mercados de Medio Ambiente — a Spanish Platform (both in Spanish language and based in Spain) for the exploration and information on market-based instruments for the conservation of nature, with support provided from the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Industria, Energia y Turismo).
Image credit: Pixabay
Recently I found a post on Hot Air (A Client Earth blog) which asks: Does biodiversity offsetting make nature a commodity? In her article Agata Szafraniuk comments on the EU No Net Loss Initiative and gives some conclusions from the related public consultation. Read more here and see some of her conclusions below (needless to say that here line of reasoning is mostly opposed to biodiversity offsets). Continue reading
This is a guest post by Divya Narain, Learning manager at Environmental Management Center in Mumbai, India.
This comment has previously been published on Divya’s Blog. It 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 Megan’s reasoning), please leave a reply below!
More than three years ago, I wrote a policy paper exploring the business case for biodiversity offsets in India. Since then, the international discourse on biodiversity offsets has evolved at a feverish pace. At this point, it is important to look at the developments in policy and practice surrounding biodiversity offsets internationally and their implications for India. Continue reading
There’s another BBOP webinar upcoming in two days time from now, i.e. Thursday (or Wednesday evening for the US and related time zones).
This time the topic is: “Biodiversity Offsetting Practice — Western Sydney, Australia”. Tom Grosskopf and Derek Steller from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage will set out the policy context, describe the offsetting tools used and show the outcomes of the program.
As usual the webinar is part of the BBOP community of practice (all previous webinars are archived there if you want to listen to them later).
Some time ago, I have announced that the news category that I have created for the Biodiversity Offsets Blog, entitled “Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek”, would be replaced by another tool. Not so much different (same style and structure), this new tool is entitled “Biodiversity Offsets Newsmonth”. As you may guess, the concept stays the same, only the timeframe changes — from weekly to monthly. I decided to do so for several reasons: First, information didn’t always get in “on time” and there were often interesting news I heard of some time after the week the actually referred to (yes, even the internet has its response time!). Second, I didn’t always manage to do this on time, but clear routines are important for this. And third, and most importantly, if anyone wants to go through this in retrospective it is far more annoying to click through 52 posts for one year than to search only twelve, but more extensive, though. Hope this will help as a useful documentation tool.
If you are interested in environmental compensation and biodiversity offsets, there are certainly good news: there is now a whole bunch of information from different sources, 
locations and viewpoints publicly available (something which wasn’t this easy only a couple of years ago). Now, as has been pointed out (see here) the Biodiversity Offsets Blog aims to compile and somewhat structure this information. But there is not only a wealth of sources already out there on the internet, but also new sources are continuously being added. I am following and collecting the news via Scoop.it and cover the most trending ones in posts on the Biodiversity Offsets Blog. Nevertheless, not all news can be covered (at least not yet) and therefore the “Biodiversity Offsets Newsmonth” lists up the headlines of the past month, together with the links and PDFs of the articles or news.
This is the first Newsmonth in 2015 (and the first ever). Two interesting papers have been published: the first is an empirical analysis of biodiversity offset markets at the case of wetland mitigation banking by Anne-Charlotte Vaissière and Harold Levrel and the second is a paper that describes the development of the Australian environmental offsets policy at federal level (by Katherine Miller et al.). Furthermore, the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Program published an updated report on the Ambatovy case study (Madagascar).
A vast majority of news originates from Australia, including information on legal and policy related issues and mostly related to biodiversity offsets for specific development projects in the mining sector.
Another key aspect was the EU No Net Loss Initiative. The results of the related public consultation were made publicly available online, together with another study on biodiversity metrics and mechanisms for securing long term conservation benefits of biodiversity offsets. The temporary close issuing of these two raised concern (e.g. by NGO FERN): “European Commission’s biodiversity offset report shows it is deaf to the concerns of EU citizens”.
There were single news from the US, the UK and most interestingly from Uganda (“Why we must preserve environment in the oil region”).
Furthermore, some light was shed on the ongoing loss of biodiversity and last but not least, an interesting article suggested to consider “Moral offsetting”, whereas another prosaic text described habitat relocation and biodiversity offsets from the perspective of animals (The Wild Wood and the Railway).
Cactus is back on track. However, seems like both of us have multiple responsibilities or distractions at the moment… With regard to the “voluntariness” chapter I am working on Voluntary Environmental Approaches and Corporate Responsibility at the moment.
March Update:
Cactus: 49 cm / PhD: 153 pages
2015, February:
Cactus: 47 cm / PhD: 145 pages
2015, January:
Cactus: 42 cm / PhD: 139 pages
December:
Cactus: 39 cm / PhD: 106 pages
November:
Cactus: 37 cm / PhD: 94 pages
October:
Cactus: 35,5 cm / PhD: 90 pages
September:
Cactus: 33 cm / PhD: 83 pages
August:
Cactus: 30 cm / PhD: 53 pages