To B(e)BOP or not to be BOB? – Do we need a Biodiversity Offset Blog besides the Business and Biodiversity Offset Program?

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To BeBOP or not to be BOBAdmit­tedly, I did exag­ger­ate a bit with the play on words in the title of the post and the pathos of the words unveils more sar­casm than an hon­est ques­tion. But as long as this blog exists I have felt the need to clar­ify the rela­tion between the long stand­ing suc­cess of the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Pro­gram (which cel­e­brates its 10th anniver­sary this year – happy birth­day BBOP!) and the new­bie, which is the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Bog (short: BOB). This feel­ing was encour­aged by sev­eral people’s remarks or ques­tions in this regard: Is another plat­form needed or use­ful beside BBOP and if yes, what would be the added value of it? How does it relate to the BBOP No Net Loss Dis­cus­sion Group on LinkedIn? How can such a plat­form be sus­tained in the long run? Now, these points have been loosely touched here and there on the blog and I will sum­ma­rize the main points in this post. Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek, September 22–28, 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 (the lat­ter to pre­vent to loose infor­ma­tion — as we know, that unfor­tu­nately every now and then things are being removed from the internet).

This week: Sep­tem­ber 22–28, 2014

This week (Sep­tem­ber 22–28, 2014) held a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent bio­di­ver­sity off­set news. First of all, two events on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and the no net loss ini­tia­tive of the EU took place in the UK and Ger­many.  Again, sev­eral arti­cles cov­ered bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in Aus­tralia: on the one hand, Sarah Macoun and Olivia Williamson argue how the pro­posed amend­ments to the Envi­ron­men­tal Off­sets Act 2014 con­tribute to remov­ing dupli­ca­tion asso­ci­ated with off­set con­di­tions imposed by Com­mon­wealth, State and local gov­ern­ment. On the other hand, the Con­ser­va­tion Coun­cil of the ACT Region states that the recently passed bio­di­ver­sity off­set leg­is­la­tion in the ACT will result in net loss of bio­di­ver­sity in the Can­berra region. Beside some BAU (busi­ness as usual) arti­cles from the UK, namely the “nightin­gales of Lodge Hill” (where a hous­ing devel­op­ment is planned) and Smithy Wood (in which a motor­way ser­vice sta­tion shall be built), and some exam­ples of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and mit­i­ga­tion bank­ing in the US, the most inter­est­ing point is prob­a­bly the advance­ment of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in Latin Amer­ica. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colom­bia, Mex­ico, Peru and Venezuela are the coun­tries with some kind of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting sys­tem, while Ecuador is study­ing how to imple­ment a mech­a­nism. This Newsweek closes with some bio­di­ver­sity off­set related videos I have found on YouTube and some crit­i­cism on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets, e.g. Kumi Naidoo claims that “we can­not accept so-called ‘for­est off­sets’ that allow the fos­sil fuel indus­try to con­tinue polluting”.

Con­tinue read­ing →

1000 visitors in 50 days!

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1000 visitors in 50 days
Yes­ter­day evening around 9 pm (GMT+1) the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog
wel­comed its 1000th vis­i­tor! Now, that was both really excit­ing and unex­pected for me. When I started this whole thing a cou­ple of weeks ago it was meant to be noth­ing more than my very per­sonal solu­tion to the need to struc­ture, orga­nize and com­ment the increas­ing infor­ma­tion and news on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets that are avail­able online. As I then thought, oth­ers might find this use­ful too, I put the blog online and started to let peo­ple know about its exis­tence 50 days ago, on August 13, 2014. Con­tinue read­ing →

Report on guidance for biodiversity compensation in Dutch businesses (BioCom Project)

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This is our first guest post, by Jolanda van Schaick from Dutch con­sul­tancy CREM!

The BioComProjectOur world­wide eco­nomic activ­i­ties have reper­cus­sions on bio­di­ver­sity. Plant and ani­mal species are dis­ap­pear­ing at an ever increas­ing rate and the nat­ural resources of our world are becom­ing scarcer. It is high time to do some­thing about it. The project ‘Bio­di­ver­sity Com­pen­sa­tion: Towards con­crete plans and guid­ance for busi­nesses’ pro­vides inspi­ra­tion, knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence. The results are pub­lished in ‘The Bio­Com Project’.

This report describes among oth­ers three com­pen­sa­tion plans that are tested in prac­tice. Addi­tion­ally, a prac­ti­cally applic­a­ble step-by-step plan was drawn up for pro­gres­sive com­pa­nies that wish to take action in the field of bio­di­ver­sity com­pen­sa­tion. Con­tinue read­ing →

Biodiversity offsets are bad — picture collection

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Pic­tures say more than words — and some of these are really mean. Does bio­di­ver­ity off­set­ting work this way? Crit­ics would say: yes, bio­di­ver­sity off­sets are bad. Any­way, the draw­ings point to some of the core prob­lems of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets — are we able to live with them or do we need to stop bio­di­ver­sity offsetting?

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Biodiversity Offsets Newsweek, September 15–21, 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 (the lat­ter to pre­vent to loose infor­ma­tion — as we know, that unfor­tu­nately every now and then things are being removed from the internet).

This week: Sep­tem­ber 15–21, 2014

This week (Sep­tem­ber 15–21, 2014) was rel­a­tively calm com­pared to the hus­tle and bus­tle of the past week. How­ever, I have found some inter­est­ing pieces of infor­ma­tion. The first is an arti­cle that draws a crit­i­cal anal­ogy between bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and Jenga tow­ers. And there are some more news from the con­tro­versy on the intor­duc­tion of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in the UK, namely the “nightin­gales of Lodge Hill” (where a hous­ing devel­op­ment is planned) and Smithy Wood (in which a motor­way ser­vice sta­tion shall be built). Fur­ther on, the teaser “Bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting can­not com­pen­sate for ‘old growth’ habi­tat loss” by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion points to a study by Cur­ran, M., Hell­weg, S. and Beck, J. (Is there any empir­i­cal sup­port for bio­di­ver­sity off­set pol­icy? Eco­log­i­cal Appli­ca­tions. 2014, 24(4): 617–632). And don’t miss this week’s car­toon by High Moon.

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No Net Loss Initiative – risk or chance for nature? Political session of the German green party left the issue biased

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No Net Loss Initiative_PostLast Fri­day I have been to a polit­i­cal ses­sion orga­nized by the Ger­man Green party (Die Grü­nen) of the Fed­eral Par­lia­ment (Bun­destag) in Berlin. Steffi Lemke, par­lia­men­tary exec­u­tive and speaker for nature con­ser­va­tion poli­cies for the Green party, invited experts and the inter­ested pub­lic to dis­cuss the cur­rent dis­cus­sion and devel­op­ment of the EU towards a No Net Loss Ini­tia­tive (see my pre­vi­ous post here).

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Newsletter of the Business and Biodiversity Offset Programme, September 2014

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BBOP Newsletter

It has been quite a while since the last newslet­ter of the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Pro­gramme. So, I was both happy and sur­prised when the lat­est newslet­ter came in last week. It is full of infor­ma­tion from the bio­di­ver­sity off­sets field that have emerged over the past months.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Seminar on Biodiversity Offsetting in Paris on September 30, 2014: “Biodiversity Offsetting and sustainable development: a right to destroy, a fool’s bargain or a tool for reconciliation?”

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A Ses­sion of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and Envi­ron­men­tal Eco­nom­ics Sem­i­nar is held in  Paris on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 30, 2014. It is enti­tled “Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set­ting and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment: a right to destroy, a fool’s bar­gain or a tool for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion?” Con­tinue read­ing →

Annual conference of the German Federal Association of Compensation Agencies held in Stuttgart, September 29–30, 2014

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The Ger­man Fed­eral Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­pen­sa­tion Agen­cies (Bun­desver­band der Flächenagen­turen BFAD) is hold­ing its annual con­fer­ence, this time in Stuttgart. The two Annual Conference of the German Federal Association of compensation Agenciesday event will focus on com­pen­sa­tion pools and eco-accounts and include both pre­sen­ta­tions (and dis­cus­sion) as well as an on site excur­sion to dif­fer­ent com­pen­sa­tion sites in the vicin­ity of Stuttgart. This year the high land use pres­sure and prob­lems for the avail­abil­ity of com­pen­sa­tion sites will be discussed.

Read more online or see the pro­gram: Pro­gram of the Annual Con­fer­ence of the Ger­man Fed­eral Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­pen­sa­tion Agencies