(Last) Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek, December 8–31, 2014

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About the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Newsweek

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, Biodiversity Offsets Newsweekloca­tions 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 Newsweek” will list up the head­lines of the past week, together with the links and PDFs of the arti­cles or news.

This week(s): Decem­ber 8–31, 2014

This is the last Newsweek of 2014 (I can’t believe, we’re already in March and head­ing to Spring – at least in my geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion). It is some­what spe­cial and dif­fer­ent for two rea­sons: first, it is going to be the last of its kind (hold your tears, it’ll be replaced by a slightly dif­fer­ent tool very soon ;o)) and sec­ond it mir­rors bio­di­ver­sity off­set related news not only from one week, but actu­ally three (there was not so much around Christ­mas and the end of the year). Apart from these two spe­cial fea­tures, this Newsweek is a rather com­mon one with regard to the top­ics. Most inter­est­ingly, another BBOP webi­nar took place, this time on the Ambat­ovy min­ing project in Mada­gas­car (which is also one of the BBOP pilots). And two pub­li­ca­tions are impor­tant to note: the first is a paper on the chal­lenges, oppor­tu­ni­ties and research pri­or­i­ties of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting for ani­mal con­ser­va­tion and the sec­ond is a report enti­tled “Who should value nature?” which has entailed a  dis­cus­sion on LinkedIn. Apart from that, there were more news from Aus­tralia (mostly related to projects), the UK and the US and also a book review on bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting on Youtube.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Perverse incentives risk undermining biodiversity offset policies — new paper by Gordon et al

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Ascelin Gor­don, Joe Bull, Chris Wilcox and Mar­tine Maron have pub­lished a new paper enti­tled “Per­verse incen­tives risk under­min­ing bio­di­ver­sity off­set poli­cies” in Jour­nal of Applied Ecol­ogy (Feb­ru­ary 2015). Read more on the Jour­nal web­site (pay-walled). For more infor­ma­tion see also a the sum­mary below.

 

Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity Offsets Blog on Cow Burps — A UK-based environmental economics blog

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The Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog is mak­ing the rounds — thanks to the team at Cow Burps for shar­ing a link and some infor­ma­tion on the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog today in a blog post. Read more here.

Read more about Cow Burps — a UK-based envi­ron­men­tal eco­nom­ics blog here and have a look at their inter­est­ing posts on Bio­di­ver­sity, Nat­ural Cap­i­tal and much more.

Cowburps

Cactus status post #7

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After hav­ing remea­sured twice, I am sur­prised to note that the cac­tus has grown no less than five cen­time­ters! My writ­ten work on the con­trary has been sub­ject to tex­tual revi­sion and I have come closer to fin­ish my “vol­un­tari­ness” chapter.

Feb­ru­ary Update:

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

Comparing biodiversity offset methodologies — new paper by Bull

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Joe Bull has  pub­lished a new paper enti­tled “Com­par­ing bio­di­ver­sity off­set method­olo­gies. Diver­gence in secur­ing ‘no net loss’” in Deci­sion Point (No 85, Feb­ru­ary 2015). You can read the full arti­cle on the Jour­nal web­site (open access). For more infor­ma­tion see also some of the author’s con­clu­sions below.

 The con­se­quences of divergence 

All of these rea­sons for the diver­gence in out­comes link back ulti­mately to the phi­los­o­phy behind off­set­ting, and how this varies between dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions. Whilst some soci­eties might allow out-of-kind off­set­ting for prac­ti­cal rea­sons, oth­ers might sim­ply deem it inap­pro­pri­ate or even poten­tially immoral; part of the rea­son for the recent fuss about off­set­ting in the UK media.

Alter­na­tively, some social or insti­tu­tional con­texts might favour a more pre­scrip­tive approach (I get the impres­sion from col­leagues there that this would be the case in Uzbek­istan), whereas oth­ers value the free­dom to inter­pret pol­icy individually.

In any case, the find­ings high­light that the method used to quan­tify losses and gains strongly influ­ences the bio­di­ver­sity out­comes of off­set­ting, which is inter­est­ing in itself. In turn, this may imply that off­sets gen­er­ated using dif­fer­ent method­olo­gies are not directly trans­fer­able between juris­dic­tions. The lat­ter con­clu­sion is not purely aca­d­e­mic, as there have been mum­blings for some time now about the poten­tial for trans-jurisdictional (eg, inter­na­tional) bio­di­ver­sity off­set credit trades.

The potential for biodiversity offsetting to fund effective invasive species control — new paper by Norton and Warburton

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“20120801Schwetzinger Hardt08” by AnRo0002 — Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons — http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20120801Schwetzinger_Hardt08.jpg#mediaviewer/File:20120801Schwetzinger_Hardt08.jpg

David A. Nor­ton and Bruce War­bur­ton have pub­lished a new paper enti­tled “The poten­tial for bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting to fund effec­tive inva­sive species con­trol” in Con­ser­va­tion Biol­ogy (Vol­ume 29, Issue 1, pages 5–11, Feb­ru­ary 2015). Read more on the Jour­nal web­site (pay-walled). For more infor­ma­tion see also a the abstract below.

 

Abstract

Com­pen­sat­ing for bio­di­ver­sity losses in 1 loca­tion by con­serv­ing or restor­ing bio­di­ver­sity else­where (i.e., bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting) is being used increas­ingly to com­pen­sate for bio­di­ver­sity losses result­ing from devel­op­ment. We con­sid­ered whether a form of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting, enhance­ment off­set­ting (i.e., enhanc­ing the qual­ity of degraded nat­ural habi­tats through inten­sive eco­log­i­cal man­age­ment), can real­is­ti­cally secure addi­tional fund­ing to con­trol bio­log­i­cal invaders at a scale and dura­tion that results in enhanced bio­di­ver­sity out­comes. We sug­gest that bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting has the poten­tial to enhance bio­di­ver­sity val­ues through fund­ing of inva­sive species con­trol, but it needs to meet 7 key con­di­tions: be tech­ni­cally pos­si­ble to reduce inva­sive species to lev­els that enhance native bio­di­ver­sity; be afford­able; be suf­fi­ciently large to com­pen­sate for the impact; be adapt­able to accom­mo­date new strate­gic and tac­ti­cal devel­op­ments while not com­pro­mis­ing bio­di­ver­sity out­comes; acknowl­edge uncer­tain­ties asso­ci­ated with man­ag­ing pests; be based on an explicit risk assess­ment that iden­ti­fies the cost of not achiev­ing tar­get out­comes; and include finan­cial mech­a­nisms to pro­vide for in-perpetuity fund­ing. The chal­lenge then for con­ser­va­tion prac­ti­tion­ers, advo­cates, and pol­icy mak­ers is to develop frame­works that allow for durable and effec­tive part­ner­ships with devel­op­ers to real­ize the full poten­tial of enhance­ment off­sets, which will require a shift away from tra­di­tional preservation-focused approaches to bio­di­ver­sity management.

The development of the Australian environmental offsets policy: from theory to practice — new paper by Miller et al

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Humus­Cow­boy at en.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) oder CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wiki­me­dia Commons

KATHERINE L. MILLER, JAMES A. TREZISE, STEFAN KRAUS, KIMBERLEY DRIPPS, MEGAN C. EVANS, PHILIP GIBBONS, HUGH P. POSSINGHAM and MARTINE MARON have pub­lished a new paper enti­tled “The devel­op­ment of the Aus­tralian envi­ron­men­tal off­sets pol­icy: from the­ory to prac­tice” in Envi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion (2015). Read more on the Jour­nal web­site (pay-walled). For more infor­ma­tion see also a the sum­mary below.

Con­clu­sions

Envi­ron­men­tal off­set­ting involves com­pen­sat­ing for the resid­ual adverse impacts of an action on the envi­ron­ment by gen­er­at­ing an equiv­a­lent ben­e­fit else­where. As the preva­lence of envi­ron­men­tal off­set­ting grows, so does the chal­lenge of trans­lat­ing no-net-loss goals to work­able pol­icy. From 2011–2012, the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment devel­oped an Envi­ron­men­tal Off­sets Pol­icy and an accom­pa­ny­ing met­ric (the Off­sets Assess­ment Guide) to sup­port deci­sion mak­ing about off­set require­ments under the Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion and Bio­di­ver­sity Con­ser­va­tion Act 1999. Through exten­sive stake­holder con­sul­ta­tion and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with aca­d­e­mic researchers, the Guide was devel­oped with the aim of account­ing appro­pri­ately for eco­log­i­cal equiv­a­lence in a trans­par­ent and flex­i­ble man­ner. This paper out­lines the Aus­tralian Government’s envi­ron­men­tal off­set pol­icy devel­op­ment process, and describes the approach adopted for eval­u­at­ing the suit­abil­ity of pro­posed off­sets in meet­ing the pol­icy goals. The Guide explic­itly esti­mates the extent to which an off­set will improve the tar­get biota and/or avert future losses, the degree of con­fi­dence that the off­set will be imple­mented suc­cess­fully, and the time it will take to deliver a con­ser­va­tion ben­e­fit. Since imple­men­ta­tion of the Envi­ron­men­tal Off­sets Pol­icy and the Guide, there has been a shift in focus from esti­mat­ing off­set require­ments based on sim­plis­tic area ratios, toward directly eval­u­at­ing the com­po­nents of an off­set action that deter­mine its envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance. Achiev­ing a bal­ance between sci­en­tific robust­ness and pol­icy work­a­bil­ity is an ongo­ing chal­lenge. The Envi­ron­men­tal Off­sets Pol­icy and Guide rep­re­sent an impor­tant step towards con­sis­tency and trans­parency in envi­ron­men­tal off­set decision-making.

 

Case studies of biodiversity offsetting: voices from the ground — a critical briefing note from Friends of the Earth

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Friends of the Earth rep­re­sent some of the strongest crit­ics to Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets both as a con­cept and in prac­tice. They have pre­pared a short brief­ing note enti­tled “Case stud­ies of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting: voices from the ground” includ­ing a crit­i­cal view on sev­eral bio­di­ver­sity off­set cases from the UK, France and Aus­tralia. Read more here and find a short intro­duc­tion pasted below. Con­tinue read­ing →

Example for a Biodiversity Offset Strategy by BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance

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Jointly owned with Mit­subishi Devel­op­ment Pty Ltd, BHP Bil­li­ton Mit­subishi Alliance (BMA) is Australia’s largest coal miner and exporter, and the world’s largest sup­plier to the sea borne cok­ing coal mar­ket. BMA’s mines are located in the coal rich Bowen Basin of Cen­tral Queens­land. The US$3.4 bil­lion Caval Ridge Mine was opened in Octo­ber 2014 in a joint cer­e­mony with Tony Abbott MP, Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia. A short (5 page) out­line of a bio­di­ver­sity off­set strat­egy is avail­able online. Accord­ing to this doc­u­ment the bio­di­ver­sity off­set strat­egy is cur­rently being devel­oped by BMA to address the objec­tives of both the cur­rent State and Com­mon­wealth leg­isla­tive bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting requirements.

Who should value nature — new report by Dario Kenner

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Dario Ken­ner (Why Green Econ­omy?) has pub­lished a new report enti­tled “Who should value nature? Sus­tain­able busi­ness ini­tia­tive — out­side insights”.

You can access the report online and find a pdf fol­low­ing: Kenner_2014_Who-should-value-nature. For more infor­ma­tion please see the related arti­cle and the exec­u­tive sum­mary below.

Exec­u­tive sum­mary

Do you know how to mea­sure the value of the fresh water you drink every day or the car­bon diox­ide cap­tured by the Ama­zon rain­for­est? Is it even pos­si­ble to cal­cu­late a mon­e­tary fig­ure for these things? And if nature is going to be val­ued across the world who should do it: accoun­tants, gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies or communities?

Nat­ural cap­i­tal has been defined as ‘the world’s stocks of nat­ural assets which include geol­ogy, soil, air, water and all liv­ing things’.The logic behind the nat­ural cap­i­tal approach is that by plac­ing an eco­nomic value on nature (often mon­e­tary) we will start to pro­tect it. Instead of receiv­ing things like pol­li­na­tion and cli­mate reg­u­la­tion for ‘free’ we will fac­tor the environment’s value into our deci­sion mak­ing because we will know how much it’s ‘worth’.

But should we be doing this? Many of us can agree that nature has an intrin­sic value. Is it now time to go a step fur­ther and place an eco­nomic value on nature? Crit­ics say nature’s intrin­sic value is price­less and argue mon­e­tary val­u­a­tion will leave envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion at the mercy of mar­ket forces as nature is traded and spec­u­lated on.

The big focus of cur­rent debates on nat­ural cap­i­tal is if we should value nature and how to do it. While these largely abstract debates are cru­cial there’s another ques­tion that is very rarely asked: who should value nature? As the exclu­sive inter­views in this report show this is an impor­tant ques­tion with no clear answers. Con­tinue read­ing →