Today’s BBOP webinar postponed to December 10, 2014!

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Today’s BBOP webi­nar on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in the Ambat­ovy min­ing project in in Mada­gas­car was post­poned on short notice due to tech­ni­cal problems!

This coin­ci­dence is maybe not too bad (a new date and time have already been sched­uled) as the BBOP webi­nar was ini­tially sched­uled for the same time as the Green­way Plan­ning and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set­ting Webi­nar pre­sented by Ontario Nature today (see my pre­vi­ous post). So, we can finally lis­ten to both.

See the infor­ma­tion on the new date and time below. Please note that you have to reg­is­ter again using the link pro­vided below. For more infor­ma­tion on the webi­nar see my pre­vi­ous post.

When and how does the BBOP webi­nar take place?

Wednes­day, Decem­ber 10, 2014, 3 — 4 pm GMT
You can reg­is­ter via this new link. Upon reg­is­tra­tion you will receive a con­fir­ma­tion email with the link to the webi­nar (that will become active shortly before the pre­sen­ta­tion starts. You will be con­nected to audio using your computer’s micro­phone and speak­ers (VoIP). A head­set is rec­om­mended. Or, you may select Use Tele­phone after join­ing the Webinar.

 

Five offsets policies condensed into a single framework in Queensland, Australia — Amendments to Environmental Offsets Act 2014

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Queensland Panorama By MCaviglia mcaviglia.ch (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Recently, the Queens­land Par­lia­ment voted to pass the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and Other Leg­is­la­tion Amend­ment Bill 2014 (EPOLA Bill) as part of the Queens­land Government’s green­tape reduc­tion reforms. EPOLA makes changes to the Envi­ron­men­tal Off­sets Act 2014 (EO Act). Read below extracts from two com­ments by Clay­ton Utz Lawyers and Prop­erty Coun­cil of Aus­tralia that sum­ma­rize the major changes. Find fol­low­ing the Pdfs: Con­tinue read­ing →

Marine and terrestrial biodiversity offsets: so close and yet so far away — a comment by Céline Jacob

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This is a guest post by Céline Jacob, PhD Stu­dent on Marine and Coastal Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets at CREOCEAN — Cen­ter for Func­tional and Evo­lu­tion­ary Ecol­ogy in Mont­pel­lier (France). This com­ment 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 Céline’s rea­son­ing), please leave a reply below!

I remem­ber dis­cussing with some col­leagues why I was strug­gling to work on marine bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. Of course, the con­cep­tual frame­work of mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy applies both to ter­res­trial (by ter­res­trial I also take into account aquatic ecosys­tems and wet­lands) and marine ecosys­tems: con­cepts are the same, objec­tive of no net loss prin­ci­ple is pur­sued in both cases. Why both­er­ing me with this sub­ject when I can work on ter­res­trial off­sets on which a large amount of sci­en­tific arti­cles is avail­able, where I can get a few decades of feed­backs on imple­mented measures?

There are a num­ber of opportunities:

  • While wit­ness­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of the Marine Strate­gic Frame­work Directive…
  • While wit­ness­ing the pro­posal of the Direc­tive estab­lish­ing a frame­work for mar­itime spa­tial plan­ning and inte­grated coastal management…
  • While wit­ness­ing the devel­op­ment of the No Net Loss Ini­tia­tive, pro­mot­ing a wider no net loss approach to bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tem ser­vices to achieve the over­all objec­tive of the EU Bio­di­ver­sity Strategy…
  • We can’t set aside issues related to marine bio­di­ver­sity off­sets, wait­ing for bet­ter knowl­edge, bet­ter instru­ments, more incentives…

We are to use these oppor­tu­ni­ties and to take the steps needed to bridge the gap between marine and ter­res­trial bio­di­ver­sity off­sets imple­men­ta­tion and even go above and beyond. Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek, October 27 — November 2, 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: Octo­ber 27 — Novem­ber 2, 2014

This week (Octo­ber 27 — Novem­ber 2, 2014)  again some feed­back on the (recently closed) con­sul­ta­tion of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion on its planned No Net Loss Ini­tia­tive (see my pre­vi­ous posts) came up. Wouter Lang­h­out and Ariel Brun­ner from the NGO Birdlife out­lined why the EU will fail to deliver on ecosys­tem restora­tion and why bio­di­ver­sity off­sets don’t work. Fur­ther­more, a peti­tion Madi­son Dragna started a peti­tion against bio­di­ver­sity off­sets. Apart from that, there were sev­eral arti­cles related to bio­di­ver­sity off­sets from the US and Aus­tralia. This includes the  Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and Other Leg­is­la­tion Amend­ment Bill 2014(EPOLA) by the Queens­land Par­lia­ment. The amend­ments to the Off­sets Act make it manda­tory for an admin­is­ter­ing agency to con­sider any rel­e­vant off­set con­di­tions that are already imposed on an author­ity issued under another Act. New pro­vi­sions also clar­ify the process of how off­sets are to be deliv­ered. The US Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice is con­tem­plat­ing a pro­gram that would rec­og­nize con­ser­va­tion cred­its gen­er­ated in state pro­grams for any rare species, even if it’s not yet endan­gered. In his arti­cle “US Feds Should Give Credit For Sav­ing Unlisted Species, But Must Do It Right” Tim­o­thy Male of Mis­sion: Wildlife says it’s a great idea – but only if it’s done right.

Con­tinue read­ing →

BBOP webinar on Wednesday, November 26, 2014: Biodiversity offsets in the Ambatovy mining project in in Madagascar

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bbop-logoThis week the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Pro­gramme has announced its next BBOP webi­nar as part of the BBOP com­mu­nity of prac­tice (all pre­vi­ous webi­nars are archived there if you want to lis­ten to them later).

This time the focus is on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in the scope of the Ambat­ovy nickel-cobalt min­ing project  in Mada­gas­car. The Ambat­ovy project has been a pilot project of BBOP since 2006, and as such fol­lows the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Stan­dard as well as the IFC Per­for­mance Standards.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek, October 20–26, 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: Octo­ber 20–26, 2014

This week (Octo­ber 20–26, 2014) some feed­back on the (now closed) con­sul­ta­tion of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion on its planned No Net Loss Ini­tia­tive (see  my pre­vi­ous posts) came up, in par­tic­u­lar from sev­eral oppo­nents of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets, who set up a let­ter to Com­mis­sioner Potočnik to stop bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting. Some news on Aus­tralian bio­di­ver­sity off­set projects took a crit­i­cal view on the sub­ject, too. Per­haps most inter­est­ingly, a new book by Jane Gleeson-White enti­tled “Six Cap­i­tals: The Rev­o­lu­tion Cap­i­tal­ism Has to Have – or Can Accoun­tants Save the Planet?” lays out the case for account­ing for exter­nal­i­ties like fresh water, sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties, pro­duc­tive soil and a live­able cli­mate. It also analy­ses the grow­ing num­ber of method­olo­gies for nat­ural cap­i­tal account­ing, their his­tory, upsides and down­sides. Some of the mech­a­nisms for mit­i­gat­ing cor­po­rate impact are also called into ques­tions, such as bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting. Finally, two inter­est­ing ini­tia­tives are to be noted: the Bio­di­ver­sity a-z online glos­saries launched by UNEP and the Ini­tia­tive on Global Bio­di­ver­sity Impact Indi­ca­tors for Com­mod­ity Pro­duc­tion by the Sec­re­tariat of the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­sity.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Review of the Taninthayi Nature Reserve Project as a conservation model in Myanmar — new report by Pollard, Hlaing and Pilgrim

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UK-based con­sul­tancy “The Bio­di­ver­sity Con­sul­tancy” (TBC) has pub­lished a report enti­tled “Review of the Taninthayi Nature Reserve Project as a con­ser­va­tion model in Myan­mar” (authors: E. H. B. Pol­lard, Soe Win Hlaing and J. D. Pil­grim). The study was com­mis­sioned by the Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety – Myan­mar coun­try pro­gram and car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Myan­mar For­est Depart­ment. Thanks to Edward Pol­lard for shar­ing the infor­ma­tion. The full report can be down­loaded here and find the pdf here: Review of the Taninthayi Nature Reserve Project as a con­ser­va­tion model in Myan­mar.

Read also what TBC says about the study and the key lessons learned below.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Greenway Planning and Biodiversity Offsetting Webinar on November 26, 2014, presented by Ontario Nature (Canada)

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Ontario Nature is hold­ing a free webi­nar on Green­way plan­ning and bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting. This webi­nar will present two recently released Ontario Nature reports: Best Prac­tices Guide to Nat­ural Her­itage Sys­tems Plan­ning and Insights into Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set­ting in Ontario.

 Date: Wednes­day Novem­ber 26, 2014

Time: 3 — 4:30 p.m. (GMT)

Fee: FREE

Read more here and reg­is­ter online here. Con­tact Sarah Hedges for more infor­ma­tion: 416–444-8419 x241, sarahh@ontarionature.org Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity a-z — online glossaries launched by UNEP

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Try it out here and find some more infor­ma­tion copied below. See also what it says about bio­di­ver­sity off­sets (see fig­ure below).

About

The Bio­di­ver­sity A-Z pro­vides clear, con­cise and rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion about var­i­ous top­ics relat­ing to bio­di­ver­sity writ­ten and reviewed by experts. It is designed to be a use­ful ref­er­ence to all sec­tors includ­ing busi­ness, gov­ern­ment and envi­ron­men­tal agen­cies. The con­tent of the Bio­di­ver­sity A-Z is struc­tured around themes, each theme is divided into sev­eral cat­e­gories, and in some cases, fur­ther divided into sub-categories. Searches through­out the web­site can be fil­tered by themes, cat­e­gories or sub-categories.

The infor­ma­tion con­tained in the Bio­di­ver­sity A-Z is drawn from var­i­ous sources includ­ing the offi­cial doc­u­ments of inter­na­tional con­ven­tions, reports from a num­ber of rel­e­vant inter­na­tional organ­i­sa­tions, and aca­d­e­mic pub­li­ca­tions. Con­tinue read­ing →

Is the ecosystem service concept improving impact assessment? Evidence from recent international practice — new paper by Sales Rosa and Sánchez

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Josianne Clau­dia Sales Rosa and Luis E. Sánchez  have pub­lished a new paper on “Is the ecosys­tem ser­vice con­cept improv­ing impact assess­ment? Evi­dence from recent inter­na­tional prac­tice” in Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment Review (Vol­ume 50, Jan­u­ary 2015, Pages 134–142). You can assess the full paper online here and find the abstract copied below.

Abstract

Con­sid­er­ing ecosys­tem ser­vices (ES) could fos­ter inno­va­tion and improve envi­ron­men­tal and social impact assess­ment (ESIA) prac­tice, but is the poten­tial being ful­filled? In order to inves­ti­gate how ES have been treated in recent inter­na­tional prac­tice, three ques­tions are asked: (i) were the tasks of an ES analy­sis car­ried out? (ii) how is such analy­sis inte­grated with other analy­sis pre­sented in the ESIA? (iii) does ES analy­sis result in addi­tional or improved mit­i­ga­tion or enhance­ment mea­sures? These research ques­tions were unfolded into 15 aux­il­iary ques­tions for review­ing five ESIA reports pre­pared for min­ing, hydro­elec­tric and trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture projects in Africa, Asia and South Amer­ica. All cases incor­po­rated ES into ESIA to meet a require­ment of the Inter­na­tional Finance Corporation’s Per­for­mance Stan­dards on Envi­ron­men­tal and Social Sus­tain­abil­ity. It was found that: (i) in only three cases most tasks rec­om­mended by cur­rent guid­ance were adopted (ii) all reports fea­ture a ded­i­cated ES chap­ter or sec­tion, but in three of them no evi­dence was found that the ES analy­sis was inte­grated within impact assess­ment (iii) in the two ESIAs that fol­lowed guid­ance, ES analy­sis resulted in spe­cific mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures. Few evi­dence was found that the ES con­cept is improv­ing cur­rent ESIA prac­tice. Key chal­lenges are: (i) inte­grat­ing ES analy­sis in such a way that it does not dupli­cate other analy­sis; (ii) ade­quately char­ac­ter­iz­ing the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of ES; and (iii) quan­ti­fy­ing ES sup­ply for impact prediction.