Laurence Barea has started a new discussion in the BBOP NO Net Loss Discussion Group on LinkedIn. The focus is on Biodiversity Offsets for Ecosystem Services.
The New Zealand Department of Conservation is interested in examples where offsets have been aimed specifically at ecosystem services, or where ES has been an explicit component of NNL. If you can share any examples that would be appreciated.
Critics of Biodiversity Offsets have a growing lobby, especially in the UK, where the government seems to rush wanting to push through the concept of Biodiversity Offsets, no matter at what expense and quality. As a result a number of biodiversity offset pilots that have been trialed are facing severe criticism and resistance, mostly by the local population and NGOs such as FERN. As a result, a strong opposition against Biodiversity Offsets has been formed.
So, not surprisingly, opponents against Biodiversity Offsets have also seen the No Net Loss Conference in the London Zoo (see my previous post “BBOP holds first No Net Loss Conference on Biodiversity Offsets, June, 3 – 4, 2014, London”: http://www.biodiversityoffsets.net/bbop-holds-first-no-net-loss-conference-biodiversity-offsets/) critically and have organised a counter event on the eve of the conference: Nature is not for sale! 2nd Forum on the Natural Commons on 2 June 2014 at the Regent’s Park Hub, London.
George Monbiot has presented a detailed (however mostly negative) analysis of his criticism on the Natural Capital Agenda (in the UK) including Biodiversity Offsets as one part of it at his annual lecture at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute. The transcript of his speech was published in his weekly column for The Guardian (see below). I will cite some of the main points of his reasoning.
Monbiot gives the following four arguments (with rising significance) against what he calls the “Natural Capital Agenda” underpinned with different examples, one of them being biodiversity offsets.
I am very happy to see more and more very extensive and highly valuable PhD studies emerge in the offsets field. One of the latest is by Michael Curran prepared at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland). The title of his work is “Compensating the biodiversity impacts of land use: Toward ecologically equal exchange in the North–South context”.
Michael was so kind to share the link to the full text (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39197900/PhD_Curran_Full_Electronic.pdf) and asked me to pass this on. For a brief insight, please find (a part of) the abstract of the thesis pasted below: Continue reading
Dave Poulton has started a new discussion in the BBOP NO Net Loss Discussion Group on LinkedIn. The focus is on experiences, approaches and policies or other jurisdiction of “Credit Stacking”, i.e. the recognition of more than one type of environmental service credit from a single project on a single piece of land.
Here’s the link to the discuscion (to join the discussion you need to become member of the group):
While I know that France has been making huge efforts to improve impact mitigation and foster biodiversity offsets I just came across some interesting websites by the French Ministry for the Environment (Ministère de l’écologie, du développement durable et de l’énergie) — thanks to Baptiste Regnery for pointing me to it.
In France, a big work has been recently conducted by the ministry which led to the “doctrine ERC” and the “lignes directrices”.The ERC concept, namely Eviter-Reduire-Compenser, can be seen as the “French version” of the mitigation hierarchy (Avoid-Minimize-Compensate). Continue reading
Follow-up section available on the website of the No Net Loss ConferenceI have just checked the website of the “To No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Beyond” Conference (London, 3–4 June 2014). There is now a whole follow-up section available that I am more than happy to share with you: http://bbop.forest-trends.org/events/no-net-loss/conclusions. This includes Continue reading
As announced in the BBOP No Net Loss Discussion group Mining and biodiversity offsets: A transparent and science-based approach to measure no-net-loss”.
Here’s the link to the article https://theconversation.com/does-offsetting-work-to-make-up-for-habitat-lost-to-mining-27699
And here’s the link to the discuscion on LinkedIn (to join the discussion you need to become member of the group) https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&item=5884940535981961218&type=member&gid=5078805&trk=eml-b2_anet_digest-null-2-null&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=2vgKITE9wqZ6g1
If you enter “biodiversity offsets” in Google the first results that you obtain are from the Business and Biodiversity Offset Program (BBOP). The BBOP platform (pronounced “beebop”) is in place since 2004 and has recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. It has engaged business, NGOs, administration and academia in developing quality standards and pilots for biodiversity offsets worldwide.
It is always worth to check the website at http://bbop.forest-trends.org/pages/biodiversity_offsets and especially the library section at http://bbop.forest-trends.org/documents/. Continue reading