Will offsets save or sink Protected Areas? — New paper by Pilgrim and Bennun

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This is a guest post by The Bio­di­ver­sity Con­sul­tancy, a UK-based con­sul­tancy spe­cial­ized in bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. This  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 , please leave a reply below!

At the recent World Parks Con­gress in Syd­ney, a lively dis­cus­sion ses­sion focused on a new paper by John Pil­grim and Leon Ben­nun (from The Bio­di­ver­sity Con­sul­tancy). Pub­lished in the jour­nal Con­ser­va­tion Let­ters, this view­point arti­cle exam­ines the issue of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in Pro­tected Areas (PAs). Increas­ingly, off­sets are being seen as an inno­v­a­tive financ­ing mech­a­nism for PAs – an approach wel­comed by cash-strapped Gov­ern­ments that are strug­gling to meet pro­tected area goals. It is also viewed pos­i­tively by devel­op­ers, who gain a clear route to trans­fer man­age­ment respon­si­bil­ity, assur­ance of long-term out­comes and high-profile  deliv­ery of com­pen­sa­tion.
But is this appar­ent ‘win-win’ all it seems? Con­tinue read­ing →

The value of valuing nature — new discussion on LinkedIn

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does it help to put a price on natureDaniel Moura  has started a new dis­cus­sion in the Bio­di­ver­sity Pro­fes­sion­als Group on LinkedIn on the value of valu­ing nature. This is based on a recent arti­cle pub­lished in the research news sec­tion of the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge (UK), enti­tled “Does it help con­ser­va­tion to put a price on nature?”

“There is a risk that tra­di­tional con­ser­va­tion strate­gies ori­ented toward bio­di­ver­sity may not be effec­tive at pro­tect­ing the eco­nomic ben­e­fits of an ecosys­tem, and vice-versa”

There is a risk that tra­di­tional con­ser­va­tion strate­gies ori­ented toward bio­di­ver­sity may not be effec­tive at pro­tect­ing the eco­nomic ben­e­fits of an ecosys­tem, and vice-versa — See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/does-it-help-conservation-to-put-a-price-on-nature?goback=%2Egde_3667510_member_5943673003509321730#sthash.B109HJWQ.dpuf
There is a risk that tra­di­tional con­ser­va­tion strate­gies ori­ented toward bio­di­ver­sity may not be effec­tive at pro­tect­ing the eco­nomic ben­e­fits of an ecosys­tem, and vice-versa — See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/does-it-help-conservation-to-put-a-price-on-nature?goback=%2Egde_3667510_member_5943673003509321730#sthash.B109HJWQ.dpuf

argues Pro­fes­sor Bill Adams of the University’s Depart­ment of Geog­ra­phy. This is def­i­nitely another inter­est­ing piece of work and dis­cus­sion around the “hot topic” of how we value and man­age bio­di­ver­sity (and bio­di­ver­sity loss!), i.e. intrin­sic vs. eco­nomic value respectively.

Pro­fes­sor Bill Adams of the University’s Depart­ment of Geog­ra­phy — See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/does-it-help-conservation-to-put-a-price-on-nature?goback=%2Egde_3667510_member_5943673003509321730#sthash.B109HJWQ.dpuf

Here’s the link to the dis­cus­sion (to join the dis­cus­sion you need to become mem­ber of the group).

To directly access the arti­cle, please see here or find a pdf below:

Does it help con­ser­va­tion to put a price on nature_

Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek, November 10–16, 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: Novem­ber 10–16, 2014

This week (Novem­ber 10–16, 2014) was rel­a­tively calm as regards bio­di­ver­sity off­sets news. Per­haps most inter­est­ing to note are two pieces of infor­ma­tion from research. The first is a law student’s research paper on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets under New Zealand’s pri­mary plan­ning leg­is­la­tion – the Resource Man­age­ment Act 1991 (RMA). The paper argues that while the cur­rent approach to off­sets under the RMA is sub-optimal, recent devel­op­ments of the law per­tain­ing to national pol­icy state­ments pro­vide an oppor­tu­nity to use bio­di­ver­sity off­sets as part of imple­ment­ing an envi­ron­men­tal bot­tom line for bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tem func­tion loss. The sec­ond is a report enti­tled “Can market-based instru­ments make a dif­fer­ence?” which was elab­o­rated in the scope of the “invalu­able” project. In another arti­cle the Research Coun­cil of Nor­way is encour­ag­ing research activ­i­ties that draw closer con­nec­tions between cli­mate and bio­di­ver­sity. Two other arti­cles are more con­cerned about likely neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts: The first claims Russ­ian author­i­ties are pro­ceed­ing with two major con­struc­tion projects in pro­tected areas, despite poten­tial con­se­quences includ­ing UNESCO sanc­tions and deadly wal­rus stam­pedes. The sec­ond arti­cle fears that the UK’s Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set­ting pro­posal is too simplistic.

  Con­tinue read­ing →

BBOP webinar TODAY, Thursday, December 4, 2014: Moving targets and comparing offset methodologies

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bbop-logoI know, it’s a bit short notice, but there is another BBOP webi­nar being held in an hour’s time from now. This week the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pro­gramme has announced its next BBOP webi­nar as

This time the topic is: “Some are more equal than oth­ers: dif­fer­ent bio­di­ver­sity off­set method­olo­gies applied to one case study”. Joe W. Bull, Impe­r­ial Col­lege Lon­don, will present the research and find­ings from two recent papers: “Com­par­ing bio­di­ver­sity off­set cal­cu­la­tion meth­ods with a case study in Uzbek­istan” and “Con­ser­va­tion when noth­ing stands still: mov­ing tar­gets and bio­di­ver­sity off­sets”.

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).

Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity Offsets Technical Study Paper — new IUCN report out

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IUCN has pre­sented the lat­est report by its Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Tech­ni­cal Study Group at the IUCN World Parks Con­gress (12 - 19 Novem­ber 2014 in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia). Lead authors Kerry ten Kate and John Pil­grim together with var­i­ous con­tribut­ing authors have writ­ten more than sixty pages of very dense infor­ma­tion rang­ing from the con­text and exist­ing prac­tice and pol­icy to ques­tions of mea­sur­ing, man­ag­ing and mon­i­tor­ing bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. You can access the full report here (open access) and find the pdf below:

ten Kate and Pilgrim_2014_Biodiversity Off­sets Tech­ni­cal Study Paper

Read also the authors’ con­clu­sions on how to sup­port best prac­tice bio­di­ver­sity offsets.

Con­tinue read­ing →

CALL FOR ISSUE PAPERS — RESPONSIBLE NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMIES IN AFRICA

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This is a guest post by Joël Houdet, Senior Research Fel­low at African Cen­tre for Tech­nol­ogy Stud­ies (ACTS), Johan­nes­burg (South Africa). For any fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Joël directly. 

Call for issue papers: Respon­si­ble Nat­ural Resource Economies in Africa. The African Cen­ter for Tech­nol­ogy Stud­ies (ACTS) is invit­ing papers in sev­eral the­matic areas for the Respon­si­ble Nat­ural Resources Economies (RNRE) programme.

Abstract sub­mis­sion is open until Decem­ber 15, 2014

Four the­matic areas

  1. Nat­ural cap­i­tal / ecosys­tem account­ing & val­u­a­tion for improved pub­lic and pri­vate poli­cies, decision-making and practices.
  2. Sus­tain­able land-use plan­ning and decision-making in Africa.
  3. Trade agree­ments, for­eign invest­ments and cor­po­rate account­abil­ity in Africa.
  4. Over­com­ing the resource curse: nat­ural resources and eco­nomic development.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Policy Development for Environmental Licensing and Biodiversity Offsets in Latin America — new paper by Villarroya, Barros and Kiesecker

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Ana Vil­lar­roya, Ana Christina Bar­ros and Joe Kiesecker have pub­lished a new paper on “Pol­icy Devel­op­ment for Envi­ron­men­tal Licens­ing and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets in Latin Amer­ica” in PLOS ONE. You can access the full paper here  (open access) and find the abstract copied below.

Read also more here: BIODIVERSITY OFFSETTING ADVANCES IN LATIN AMERICA AMIDST CONTROVERSY, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2014, by Emilio Godoy (see alsohere and here and here) Con­tinue read­ing →

Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies — new paper by Kormos et al

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Rebecca Kor­mos, Cyril F. Kor­mos, Tatyana Humle, Annette Lan­jouw, Helga Rainer, Ray Vic­turine, A. Mit­ter­meier, Anthony B. Rylands, Mamadou S. Diallo and Eliz­a­beth A. Williamson have pub­lished a new paper on “Great Apes and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Projects in Africa: The Case for National Off­set Strate­gies” in Meth­ods in PLOS ONE. You can access the full paper here  (open access) and find the abstract copied below.

Read also more here: Bio­di­ver­sity off­sets need a national strat­egy, Novem­ber 5, 2014, by Katie New­ton (see also here and here and here) Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek, November 3–9, 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: Novem­ber 3–9, 2014

This week (Novem­ber 3–9, 2014) a bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting work­shop, held in Lon­don by CIEEM, attracted a lot of inter­est (see also my pre­vi­ous post). The grow­ing inter­est in the issue of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets was also vis­i­ble from the lat­est news from Acad­e­mia. A paper by Kor­mos et al (pub­lished open access on PlosOne) on “Great Apes and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Projects in Africa” was reviewed and cited sev­eral times – lead­ing to the con­clu­sion that “bio­di­ver­sity off­sets need a national strat­egy”. Apart from this, the jour­nal NATURE pub­lished a spe­cial issue enti­tled “Pro­tect­ing the planet”. This deals with the dis­cus­sion on nat­ural cap­i­tal and most impor­tantly analy­ses the gaps in cur­rent nature con­ser­va­tion prac­tice and dis­cus­sion (to put it sim­ply eco­nomic vs. intrin­sic val­u­a­tion of nature). It cumu­lates in “A call for inclu­sive con­ser­va­tion” by Heather Tallis and Jane Lubchenco, who claim “work­ing together”. Other news focus on eco­log­i­cal con­nec­tiv­ity in Aus­tralia, the restora­tion of Malaysia’s (state of Sabah) wildlife and Sheritt’s Ambat­ovy min­ing project in Mada­gas­car (win­ning a sus­tain­able busi­ness award).

 

Con­tinue read­ing →

Cactus status post #4

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Cac­tus and PhD have both slowed down a lit­tle (at least in quan­ti­ta­tive terms, i.e. in terms of pages or cen­time­ters grown).

I have had another meet­ing of my PhD Advi­sory Com­mit­tee this week where I pre­sented and dis­cussed interim results — things went on quite pos­i­tive and promising…

Novem­ber Update:

Cac­tus: 37 cm / PhD: 94 pages

Octo­ber update:

Cac­tus: 35,5 cm / PhD: 90 pages

Sep­tem­ber:

Cac­tus: 33 cm / PhD: 83 pages

August:

Cac­tus: 30 cm / PhD: 53 pages