Consultation of the EU on the No Net Loss Initiative (including biodiversity offsets) — Have your say today!

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UPDATE 20 Octo­ber 2014: The con­sul­ta­tion is now closed! I will keep you informed on the results and how the process is ongoing.

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has pub­lished an on-line con­sul­ta­tion on a future (2015) EU ini­tia­tive to halt bio­di­ver­sity loss. Most of you will already know this, but for some it may be new. The press­ing ques­tion is: who has responded to this con­sul­ta­tion so far?!

The con­sul­ta­tion opened in June and ever since fea­tured on my every­day to-do list. I bet that’s the same for many of you. I finally did it today (also encour­aged by this blog) and want to share my insights with you. The dead­line has been extended to 17 Octo­ber, but you don’t need to wait that long 😉

For those of you who are not famil­iar with the planned No Net Loss Ini­tia­tive I have briefly sum­ma­rized some back­ground infor­ma­tion below (What is the planned No Net Loss Initiative?).

For those of you who want to know what they must expect from the con­sul­ta­tion (how many ques­tions, what type of ques­tions, how much time do I need to answer the con­sul­ta­tion) I have sum­ma­rized some prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion on the con­sul­ta­tion. This is fol­lowed by a list of all ques­tions and some expla­na­tions of key terms that are pro­vided in the scope of the con­sul­ta­tion (mit­i­ga­tion hier­ar­chy, dri­vers of bio­di­ver­sity loss, bio­di­ver­sity offsets).

If you want to access the web­site of the con­sul­ta­tion directly, please visit http://ec.europa.eu/environment/consultations/nnl_en.htm. Con­tinue read­ing →

Worldwide on-the-ground examples of Biodiversity Offsets — your help is needed!

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On-the-ground exam­ples of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets are needed as evi­dence and illus­tra­tion for the dis­cus­sion on bio­di­ver­sity offsets

I am plan­ning to com­pile and present real on-the-ground exam­ples for bio­di­ver­sity off­sets (that should go to here).

Tree row_photo by Holger OertelList and indi­vid­ual cases

To do so, I have envis­aged two things: a very sim­ple list with world­wide on-the-ground exam­ples of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets (like the one I have started here) and indi­vid­ual cases that will be pre­sented in sin­gle posts.

Now, I know that while in some coun­tries this is a pretty sim­ple task (at least in quan­ti­ta­tive terms, don’t get me wrong) because only a few cases exist, in oth­ers like the US, Ger­many and Aus­tralia because of the mul­ti­tude of cases, it would be nei­ther fea­si­ble nor make any sense to try to give an overview on all of them. Con­tinue read­ing →

Cactus status post #1

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Social media finally has got me and I want to share every­thing 😉 No, seri­ously, a cou­ple of months ago, right after return­ing back to work from mater­nity leave I have “adopted” a mis­er­able look­ing cac­tus (to be true, it is not a cac­tus, but an Euphor­bia). Cactus 3And actu­ally it did like the cli­mate in our “glasshouse” office (my col­league and me are shar­ing a south-west cor­ner bureau on the 2nd floor with two glass facades). As a result it has grown quite a lot and does look quite good now. I kept jok­ing which of it grows faster — my PhD or the cac­tus? So I have decided to use this as an indi­ca­tor for the advance­ment of my work and will post the results and photo evi­dence reg­u­larly — for my own stats and to give you a smile maybe: I am kind of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting my work by fos­ter­ing the growth of the cactus… 😉

So, here’s the first photo!

Cac­tus: 30 cm / PhD: 53 pages

Comparing biodiversity offset calculation methods with a case study in Uzbekistan — new paper by Bull et al

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New paper on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets in Bio­log­i­cal Conservation

A new paper has been pub­lished by J. W. Bull, E. J. Milner-Gulland, K. B. Sut­tle and N. J. Singh in Bio­log­i­cal Con­ser­va­tion (Vol­ume 178, Octo­ber 2014, Pages 2–10): “Com­par­ing bio­di­ver­sity off­set cal­cu­la­tion meth­ods with a case study in Uzbek­istan”.

The paper is Open Access funded by Nat­ural Envi­ron­ment Research Coun­cil and can be accessed here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320714002663

For your con­ve­nience I have uploaded the file here: Bull et al_2014_Comparing bio­di­ver­sity off­set cal­cu­la­tion meth­ods with a case study in Uzbek­istan — Please feel free to share. For more infor­ma­tion see the abstract below.

Con­tinue read­ing →

New Zealand Biodiversity Offsets Guidance Released — new discussion on LinkedIn

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Lau­rence Barea has started a new dis­cus­sion in the BBOP NO Net Loss Dis­cus­sion Group on LinkedIn to announce that the Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion of the New Zealand Gov­ern­ment has issued a Guid­ance on Good Prac­tice Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set­ting in New Zealand, called “the Guidance” 😉

The New Zealand Gov­ern­ment released its Good Prac­tice Guid­ance on Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set­ting on the 7th of August. This non-statutory guid­ance is the result of a 3 year Cross Gov­ern­ment Depart­ment Research Pro­gramme that inves­ti­gated off­set­ting con­cepts and approaches in New Zealand. The guid­ance draws heav­ily from the BBOP guid­ance and places it in a New Zealand con­text, where in most cases, bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting is a vol­un­tary offering.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Early draft on a Typology of Biodiversity Offsets

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Inspired by the mul­ti­tude of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting approaches world­wide, the inher­ent com­plex­ity of the con­cept of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and the grow­ing infor­ma­tion over­load,Cascade of Biodiversity Offsets I have been inter­ested in the dis­tinc­tion between reg­u­la­tory and vol­un­tary off­set­ting schemes since 2009. How­ever, as I real­ized, these are not two dis­tinct cat­e­gories (“black and white”) but instead rep­re­sent the two ends of a con­tin­uum. I have made this inter­est­ing field the research sub­ject of my PhD and am work­ing out a typol­ogy of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets with regard to the degree of vol­un­tari­ness. This is an early draft on a Typol­ogy of Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets.
Con­tinue read­ing →

Brief definition of Biodiversity Offsets

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Def­i­n­i­tion of Bio­di­ver­sity Offsets

Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets are defined as “mea­sur­able con­ser­va­tion out­comes result­ing from actions designed to com­pen­sate for sig­nif­i­cant resid­ual adverse bio­di­ver­sity impacts aris­ing from project devel­op­ment after appro­pri­ate pre­ven­tion and mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures have been taken”. [BBOP 2009] Con­tinue read­ing →

Presentations by Marianne Darbi on Biodiversity Offsets and Impact Mitigation

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Here are some pre­sen­ta­tions that I have given since 2008 in the field of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and impact mit­i­ga­tion. Most of them are Eng­lish, how­ever some of them are Ger­man. And here is also the link to a webi­nar that I have given in the con­text of the No Net Loss Con­fer­ence (see my pre­vi­ous posts: BBOP holds first No Net Loss Con­fer­ence and No Net Loss Con­fer­ence Con­clu­sions and Sum­mary are out) — How is a Habi­tat Bank estab­lished and main­tained under the Ger­man Impact Mit­i­ga­tion Reg­u­la­tion. The exam­ple of the Burg­berg Zschaitz Habi­tat Bank in Sax­ony: http://vimeo.com/96334431 Con­tinue read­ing →

Clarifications on the different stages of the Mitigation Hierarchy — new discussion on LinkedIn

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Mboringong Fide­line has started a new dis­cus­sion in the BBOP NO Net Loss Dis­cus­sion Group on LinkedIn. The focus is on the dif­fer­ent stages of the Mit­i­ga­tion Hierarchy.

Hello All,
Please can i get some clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the tran­si­tion process as con­cerns the dif­fer­ent stages on the Mit­i­ga­tion Hier­ar­chy; that is when exactly does a com­pany move from one stage to the next. Also, can i get some clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how to cal­cu­late bio­di­ver­sity losses.
Thanks

Con­tinue read­ing →

Blogs on Biodiversity Offsets

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There are a num­ber of blogs on Bio­di­ver­sity off­sets out there in the inter­net if you google a bit. How­ever, as most of the infor­ma­tion on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets is rather frag­mented (with the exep­tion of the Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Off­set Program’s web pres­ence which con­tin­ues to be my major source of infor­ma­tion online, see my pre­vi­ous post http://www.biodiversityoffsets.net/introducing-business-biodiversity-offset-program-bbop/) you will prob­a­bly be hav­ing a hard time draw­ing the most valid infor­ma­tion out of this.

What is most appar­ent is that none of these blogs have a spe­cific focus on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets as this Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog aims for. Instead, bio­di­ver­sity off­sets usu­ally are one issue among many oth­ers related to envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and bio­di­ver­sity man­age­ment. It is quite obvi­ous that these blogs usu­ally orig­i­nate from coun­tries where bio­di­ver­sity off­sets are in prac­tice or under dis­cus­sion. Many of them have a focus on the UK where a lively and con­tro­ver­sial dis­cus­sion about Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets takes place on the planned intro­duc­tion of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets as a manda­tory scheme. Another char­ac­ter­is­tic of most blogs on bio­di­ver­sity off­sets is that they usu­ally express more or less harsh crit­i­cism of bio­di­ver­sity off­sets and are some­times used for cam­paign­ing against bio­di­ver­sity offsets.

Fol­low­ing I will give you an overview on exist­ing blogs of my knowl­edge (includ­ing some inter­net columns and web arti­cles) ranked on their rel­e­vance (please don’t nail me on this). Con­tinue read­ing →