New report examines Biodiversity Offsets Case Study from Madagascar

Posted on by
Reply

Amrei von Hase, Andrew Cooke, Aris­tide Andri­a­narim­isa, Riv­olala Andri­amparany, Vanessa Mass, Robin Mitchell and Kerry ten Kate Have pub­lished a new report on the BBOP Ambat­ovy min­ing case study in Mada­gas­car enti­tled “Work­ing Towards No Net Loss and Beyond. Ambat­ovy, Mada­gas­car — A Case Study (2014)”.

You can down­load it from the BBOP library (thanks Patrick for shar­ing this infor­ma­tion). The doc­u­ment is avail­able online. For more infor­ma­tion see the abstract and some of the authors’ con­clu­sions below.

Abstract

Ambat­ovy joined the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pro­gramme (BBOP) in 2006 as a pilot project. In 2009, Ambat­ovy, together with BBOP, pub­lished a case study on the company’s bio­di­ver­sity man­age­ment and off­set work up to that point (avail­able at http://www.forest-trends.org/documents/fi les/doc_3118.pdf). The present doc­u­ment serves as an update on Ambatovy’s progress achieved since then and fol­low­ing a second-party eval­u­a­tion (pre-audit) against the BBOP Stan­dard on Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets (BBOP, 2012) and the Inter­na­tional Finance Corporation’s Per­for­mance Stan­dard 6 (IFC, 2012). For more detail and a his­tory of the company’s work in apply­ing the mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy and bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting, it is use­ful also to refer back to the 2009 orig­i­nal case study.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity offset markets: What are they really? An empirical approach to wetland mitigation banking — new paper by Vaissière and Levrel

Posted on by
1

Anne-Charlotte Vais­sière and Harol Lev­rel have pub­lished a new paper enti­tled “Bio­di­ver­sity off­set mar­kets: What are they really? An empir­i­cal approach to wet­land mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing” in Eco­log­i­cal Eco­nom­ics (Vol­ume 110, Feb­ru­ary 2015, Pages 81–88). Read more on the Jour­nal web­site (pay-walled). For more infor­ma­tion see also a related dis­cus­sion on LinkedIn (in the Bio­di­ver­sity Pro­fes­sion­als Group, you need to become mem­ber of the group to join the dis­cus­sion) and the authors’ con­clu­sions below.

Con­clu­sions

The goal of this paper was to inves­ti­gate the “mar­ket” nature of wet­land mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing. By study­ing a total of 16 cri­te­ria from three com­ple­men­tary approaches, the paper shows that the mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing sys­tem is akin in some respects to a mar­ket but that it is actu­ally a hybrid form halfway between mar­ket and hier­ar­chy. The mar­ket char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing sys­tem allow a cer­tain degree of auton­omy and self-adjustment between devel­op­ers and mit­i­ga­tion bankers, once the num­ber of allo­cated or required cred­its has been deter­mined by reg­u­la­tors. Issues of bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion have led the reg­u­la­tors respon­si­ble for the imple­men­ta­tion of the wet­land mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing sys­tem to take into account the com­plex­ity and geo­graphic speci­ficity of aquatic ecosys­tems. This means that there are mul­ti­ple mar­kets for wet­land off­sets, both geo­graph­i­cally (ser­vice areas) and in the types of traded goods (cred­its). Thus, we con­clude that the mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing sys­tem can­not be com­pared with a global mar­ket such as carbon.

Over­sim­pli­fy­ing the nature of the mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing sys­tem as a “mar­ket” has led to exces­sive crit­i­cism of this bio­di­ver­sity off­set. For instance, Walker et al. (2009) crit­i­cizes mar­kets ded­i­cated to nature as com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion devices, while Robert­son (2004) describes mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing as a risky neolib­eral approach to envi­ron­men­tal governance.

How­ever, these two papers do not pro­vide empir­i­cal evi­dence for these claims. More recent papers have given some empir­i­cal details to clar­ify the risks of this sys­tem (Ben­Dor et al., 2011; Robert­son and Hay­den, 2008; Robert­son, 2009). The present paper should help to iden­tify theop­por­tu­ni­ties and the risks of the mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing sys­tem using rec­og­nized the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works, such as the fea­tures of hybrid forms as given by the new insti­tu­tional eco­nom­ics framework.

Worldwide on-the-ground examples of Biodiversity Offsets — Koala Offset in South East Queensland

Posted on by
3

I am very happy to announce our first on-the ground bio­di­ver­sity off­set exam­ple that is the result of some intense work and exchange. It describes a species off­set for the Koala in Queens­land (Aus­tralia). While we have devel­oped the struc­ture together, Alan Key from Aus­tralian con­sul­tancy Earth­trade, has pro­vided all the con­tent and illus­tra­tions. Many thanks Alan for your time and com­mit­ment. This is a valu­able resource! Hope­fully, oth­ers will fol­low. Please get back with any ideas for exam­ples that could be pre­sented here on the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog (for more infor­ma­tion see also my pre­vi­ous post). I am happy to sup­port longer or shorter exam­ples. Don’t hes­i­tate to com­ment on the sug­gested struc­ture and please do also get in touch if you are miss­ing an impor­tant issue that you would like to be included in this (and pos­si­ble other) exam­ple! Your feed­back is greatly appre­ci­ated! Please leave a reply below!

Exam­ple of a dry Euca­lypt for­est — habi­tat for Koala

Sum­mary

Fol­low­ing, the case of an Aus­tralian bio­di­ver­sity off­set is pre­sented, which was trig­gered by the clear­ing of Koala habi­tat at the impact or project site, i.e. a species off­set for the Koala which is listed as an endan­gered ani­mal of national sig­nif­i­cance under the EPBC Act. The devel­oper was con­di­tioned to com­pen­sate for the loss of 67.14 ha of habi­tat crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of the Koala, by secur­ing and man­ag­ing a min­i­mum of 161.11 ha of Koala habi­tat. The details were spec­i­fied in an Off­set Area Man­age­ment Plan (OAMP). The off­set is a legal arrange­ment between three par­ties being the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sented by the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment (DoE), the Devel­oper and, in this instance, a pri­vate land­holder on whose prop­erty the off­set will be secured in per­pe­tu­ity. A con­sul­tancy sup­ports and car­ries out the plan­ning of the off­set. The OAMP is the legal agree­ment between the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment and the devel­oper. The land­holder is bound by a legal con­tract with the devel­oper with regards the mon­e­tary pay­ment amount and sched­ule, for imple­ment­ing the agreed man­age­ment actions within the OAMP, which is bound legally to the prop­erty and is there­fore bind­ing on cur­rent and future owners.

In this case, the land­holder rec­og­nized the prop­erty needed reha­bil­i­tat­ing due to the clear­ing of tim­ber and over­graz­ing of the prop­erty over an extended period result­ing in a degraded ecosys­tem, weed inva­sion and habi­tat degra­da­tion. A base­line assess­ment of the canopy, shrub and ground lay­ers of the open Euca­lypt for­est ecosys­tem (by using the Bio-condition Method­ol­ogy as devel­oped by the Queens­land Herbar­ium) found a con­di­tion of medium with regards the qual­ity of the for­est. The over­all goal is there­for to improve the con­di­tion to a good con­di­tion along with increas­ing the num­ber of habi­tat and for­age trees for the Koala pop­u­la­tion. The man­age­ment regime pro­posed for the off­set area is to enhance the level of pro­tec­tion afforded to exist­ing koala habi­tat through exclu­sion of land man­age­ment prac­tices that are incom­pat­i­ble to achiev­ing a net gain in koala habi­tat qual­ity. Fur­ther, key threat­en­ing processes which could inter­fere with the recov­ery of koala as described by the Draft EPBC Act refer­ral guide­lines for the vul­ner­a­ble koala are to be actively man­aged to result in a net gain in koala habi­tat qual­ity in time.

With a through process, under­stand­ing of the tech­ni­cal, legal and finan­cial processes and vari­ables and the deter­mi­na­tion from the start of the process as to the out­comes required by each of the par­ties involved, off­sets can be nego­ti­ated and secured within a rea­son­able period of time and be legally and finan­cially respon­si­ble to the par­ties involved.

Con­tinue read­ing →

New Poll: Do you think it is pos­si­ble to mea­sure the suc­cess of bio­di­ver­sity offsets?

Posted on by
9

Poll_success

As I have recently  sug­gested, I am launch­ing a new poll on the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog. Thanks to all who have con­tributed to shap­ing this in the related LinkedIn dis­cus­sion.

As a result the OUTCOME or SUCCESS of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets have been iden­ti­fied as a cru­cial fac­tor (that also deter­mines the cred­i­bil­ity and reli­a­bil­ity of offsets).

Like the last poll, this one con­sists of two related ques­tions. Please vote on both of them and leave a com­ment below for any fur­ther expla­na­tion. Thanks! Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity offsets: practice and promise — paper by Martin Fallding

Posted on by
Reply

Mar­tin Falld­ing has  pub­lished a paper enti­tled “Bio­di­ver­sity off­sets: Prac­tice and promise” in Envi­ron­men­tal and Plan­ning Law Jour­nal (Vol­ume 31 Part 1, 2014). He exam­ines off­sets form a Aus­tralian per­spec­tive, look­ing at pol­icy and prac­tice espe­cially in the state of New South Wales. Read more on the Jour­nal web­site (pay-walled). You may also access the full paper here or find a pdf fol­low­ing: Bio­di­ver­sity offsets_practice and promise For more infor­ma­tion see also a related pre­sen­ta­tion and the abstract below.

Abstract

Bio­di­ver­sity off­sets are a tool to com­pen­sate for bio­di­ver­sity losses, and to pro­tect and main­tain bio­di­ver­sity val­ues in alter­na­tive loca­tions. Off­sets nor­mally apply where bio­di­ver­sity loss can­not be avoided, mit­i­gated or min­imised in devel­op­ment pro­pos­als, and rep­re­sent an often con­tro­ver­sial decision-making inno­va­tion at the inter­sec­tion of sci­ence, law, pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics. Bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion under­pins eco­log­i­cally sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and has become an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion in land-use plan­ning. This arti­cle out­lines what off­sets are, how they work, and iden­ti­fies issues for their appli­ca­tion into the future. It pro­vides back­ground on how off­sets have evolved and reviews pol­icy and prac­tice in Aus­tralia, espe­cially in New South Wales. Bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting prac­tice across Aus­tralia is incon­sis­tent, com­plex and con­fus­ing. The arti­cle dis­cusses the appli­ca­tion of off­set prin­ci­ples, leg­isla­tive and pol­icy frame­works, and links to land-use plan­ning processes. Improve­ments to cur­rent off­set­ting approaches are also suggested.

Be aware of Malware and bad links — did the Biodiversity Offsets Blog get corrupted?!

Posted on by
1

Last night I got an alarm­ing e-mail that it might be pos­si­ble that some kind of mal­ware was installed on a pri­vate com­puter via down­load­ing a file from the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog!

malware

Now, this is a very spe­cific blog that — despite its world­wide audi­ence — might be neg­lec­table in terms of absolute num­bers (there are cur­rently around fourty vis­i­tors per day which I think is already great). So, I didn’t expect any secu­rity issues and of course, I had taken pre­ven­tive mea­sures, too. Any­way, it is not hun­dred per­cently sure whether there was a prob­lem with the site and whether there pos­si­bly still is. But as I don’t want you to take any risk and pos­si­bly cause incon­ve­niences, please be alerted.

Experts out there?

If any­one can help me how to solve this — either you have another idea what I should do or think that I have done every­thing pos­si­ble, please do tell me!

Here’s what I’ve done so far to ana­lyze and fix the problem:

Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity offsetting: what are the challenges, opportunities and research priorities for animal conservation? new paper by Evans et al.

Posted on by
Reply
modified after: http://milliontrees.me/2011/06/22/fortress-conservation-the-loss-of-recreational-access

mod­i­fied after: http://milliontrees.me/2011/06/22/fortress-conservation-the-loss-of-recreational-access

D. M. Evans, R. Altwegg, T. W. J. Gar­ner, M. E. Gomp­per, I. J. Gor­don, J. A. John­son and N. Pet­torelli have pub­lished a paper enti­tled “Bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting: what are the chal­lenges, oppor­tu­ni­ties and research pri­or­i­ties for ani­mal con­ser­va­tion?” in Ani­mal Con­ser­va­tion (2014, edi­to­r­ial, pp. 1–3). The authors conclude:

We believe Gard­ner et al. (2013) pro­vide a use­ful con­cep­tual frame­work of the offset-related con­di­tions and design activ­i­ties nec­es­sary to eval­u­ate efforts to achieve NNL con­ser­va­tion out­comes. How­ever, we also acknowl­edge that the sci­en­tific knowl­edge gaps are sig­nif­i­cant and that much more research is needed to ensure that bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting schemes do ben­e­fit ani­mal con­ser­va­tion. To over­come the above-mentioned issues, con­struc­tive, crit­i­cal engage­ment is required between con­ser­va­tion sci­en­tists and deci­sion mak­ers, which could be facil­i­tated by build­ing more inter­dis­ci­pli­nary pro­grams that allow more trans­parency and com­mon under­stand­ing of con­cepts and issues among stake­hold­ers. It will then be pos­si­ble to give bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting projects ade­quate scrutiny and move them from being a largely sym­bolic pol­icy to a use­ful tool that can rec­on­cile nature con­ser­va­tion and resource development.

You can access the full paper here or find a pdf fol­low­ing: Bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting and ani­mal conservation

New report on payments for ecosystem services (in French) — Du Sud au Nord: regards croisés sur les Paiements pour Services Environnementaux

Posted on by
Reply

PseCDC Biodiversité’s Mis­sion Economie de la Bio­di­ver­sité has pub­lished a report on pay­ments for ecosys­tem ser­vices, enti­tled “Du Sud au Nord: regards croisés sur les Paiements pour Ser­vices Envi­ron­nemen­taux”. The report (in French) was issued in Novem­ber 2014 in the “LES CAHIERS DE BIODIV’2050:INITIATIVES” series.  It builds on the results of the “Pesmix” work­shop, held in Mont­pel­lier, 11–13 June 2014. You can con­sult the report online or see the pdf fol­low­ing: Paiemens pour Ser­vices envi­ron­nemen­taux For a brief overview see the out­line below –rang­ing from def­i­n­i­tions to legal and pol­icy impli­ca­tions as well as the eco­nomic dimen­sion and lia­bil­ity questions.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Cactus status post #6

Posted on by
1

Seen the actual num­bers (of pages text and cen­time­ters cac­tus respec­tively) you might sus­pect that these are the result of bright New Year’s res­o­lu­tions — how­ever, I am not so much into this kind of exter­nally imposed self-motivation. But time is run­ning and I need to push hard if I want to have a draft ready by the end of this year. Don’t know about the cac­tus’ inter­nal moti­va­tions or whether the plant is just enjoy­ing to con­tem­plate me work­ing and the win­terly sur­round­ing ;o).

2015, Jan­u­ary Update:

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

European Commission publishes study on specific design elements of biodiversity offsets: Biodiversity metrics and mechanisms for securing long term conservation benefits

Posted on by
Reply

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has com­mis­sioned a study on spe­cific design ele­ments of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets: Bio­di­ver­sity met­rics and mech­a­nisms for secur­ing long term con­ser­va­tion ben­e­fits. The report and has been pre­pared by Matt Ray­ment, Rupert Haines, David McNeil, Mavourneen Con­way, Gra­ham Tucker and Eve­lyn Under­wood (at ICF Con­sult­ing Services).

You can access the full report on the web­site of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and find the the abstract copied below. See also a recent press release by FERN which raises con­cern about a this report on bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting being com­mis­sioned before the con­clu­sion of the Euro­pean Commission’s con­sul­ta­tion on No Net Loss.

Abstract

Bio­di­ver­sity off­sets have been iden­ti­fied as an essen­tial com­po­nent of an EU No Net Loss ini­tia­tive. Off­sets will con­tribute to achiev­ing the EU’s strat­egy to halt the loss of bio­di­ver­sity by 2020, pro­vid­ing they are care­fully designed to achieve mea­sur­able and suf­fi­cient con­ser­va­tion ben­e­fits and to main­tain these in the long term. This study researches the require­ments and options of spe­cific design ele­ments of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets, with a view to imple­ment­ing and oper­a­tional­is­ing the EU No Net Loss ini­tia­tive by 2015. It reviews inter­na­tional best prac­tice of design­ing off­set met­rics and estab­lish­ing mech­a­nisms for ensur­ing long term con­ser­va­tion ben­e­fits and explores the imple­men­ta­tion issues that could be faced in the EU. It is clear that dif­fer­ent off­set met­rics and dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of mech­a­nisms will be appro­pri­ate in dif­fer­ent EU coun­tries and in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions and loca­tions. As such an EU off­set pol­icy should allow for a bal­ance to be struck between sys­tems that are suit­ably pre­scrip­tive to estab­lish com­mon min­i­mum stan­dards for main­te­nance of long-term ben­e­fits, and sys­tems that are real­is­tic and achiev­able and can be main­tained over time.