Credible biodiversity offsetting needs public national registers to confirm no net loss

Kujala, Heini; Maron, Martine; Kennedy, Christina M.; Evans, Megan C.; Bull, Joseph W.; Wintle, Brendan A.; Iftekhar, Sayed M.; Selwood, Katherine E.; Beissner, Kahli; Osborn, Dave; Gordon, Ascelin

doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2022.05.011

Cited by 30 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Regarding biodiversity conservation, it is not always possible to avoid the totality of losses -considering the population and footprint growth already mentioned -and offsetting usually appears as the only practicable action. In these cases, the main goal is to deliver No Net Loss (NNL) of biodiversity [11], which means the damage will still happen, but there will be gains of the same magnitude elsewhere.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Offsetting: An Effective Practice or an Ego Strategy?

Gusi¹

2022

Curr Res Psychol Behav Sc

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With the expansion of environmental consciousness and the growth of nature loss awareness, people, governments, organizations and companies are devoted to achieve sustainable development. Businesses around the globe are facing the challenge of minimizing environmental impact, improving social responsibility, attending governance standards and, mostly, keeping the company financially stable. In order to achieve that goal, many are counting on offsetting schemes, most known as a way to compensate for biodiversity loss with environmentally positive initiatives. This article aims to analyze from an ESG perspective whether these initiatives effectively bring environmental benefits or are just a form of self-promotion and greenwashing. The study was conducted using bibliographic analysis, conceiving a small review on the subject matter. In conclusion, this article intends to serve as motivation for the debate and investigation of sustainable practices.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Offsetting: An Effective Practice or an Ego Strategy?

Gusi¹

2022

Curr Res Psychol Behav Sc

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“…Biodiversity offsetting systems continue to be rolled out globally (zu Ermgassen et al 2019b), yet, knowing if they are actually helping achieve this is deeply challenging. Offsetting systems around the world consistently fail to achieve basic criteria for enabling a robust understanding of their actual impacts (Kujala et al 2022). Ongoing monitoring of biodiversity offsets to ensure they are still performing their required ecological function is frequently neglected, and much information about the performance of offsets is not publicly available ).…”

Section: Challenges To Determining Whether Jurisdictional Offset Syst...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the impact of biodiversity offsetting on native vegetation

Ermgassen¹,

Devenish²,

Simmons³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Biodiversity offsetting is a globally-influential policy mechanism for reconciling trade-offs between development and biodiversity loss. However, there is little robust evidence of its effectiveness. We evaluated the outcomes of a jurisdictional offsetting policy (Victoria, Australia). Offsets under Victoria’s Native Vegetation Framework (2002-2013) aimed to prevent loss and degradation of remnant vegetation, and generate gains in vegetation extent and quality. We categorised offsets into those with near-complete baseline woody vegetation cover (“avoided loss”, 2702 ha) and with incomplete cover (“regeneration”, 501 ha), and evaluated impacts on woody vegetation extent from 2008-2018. We used two approaches to estimate the counterfactual. First, we used statistical matching on biophysical covariates: a common approach in conservation impact evaluation, but which risks ignoring potentially important psychosocial confounders. Second, we compared changes in offsets with changes in non-offset sites that were later enrolled as offsets, to partially account for self-selection bias (where landholders enrolling land may have characteristics associated with different management). Matching on biophysical covariates, we estimated that regeneration offsets increased woody vegetation extent by 1.9-3.6%/year more than non-offset sites (138-180 ha from 2008-2018), but this effect weakened with the second approach (0.3-1.9%/year more than non-offset sites; 19-97 ha from 2008-2018) and disappeared when a single outlier land parcel was removed. Neither approach detected any impact of avoided loss offsets. We cannot conclusively demonstrate whether the policy goal of ‘net gain’ was achieved because of data limitations. However, given our evidence that the majority of increases in woody vegetation extent were not additional (would have happened without the scheme), a net gain outcome seems unlikely. The results highlight the importance of considering self-selection bias in the design and evaluation of regulatory biodiversity offsetting policy. They also highlight the challenges of conducting robust impact evaluations of jurisdictional biodiversity offsetting policies.

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“…To identify where a target can be achieved most effectively, irreplaceability credits combine knowledge of how ecological assets are distributed throughout the market's jurisdiction, not just within sites associated with offset trading, and that information should be updated routinely to reflect their changing stocks. This is a potential challenge given monitoring have been cited as a key constraint to global action for many years (34), as well as prior attempts to organize biodiversity markets (15,16,35). However, a principle underpinning irreplaceability markets is that losses to development should not be sanctioned if they cannot be replaced, and in this context the value of ecological monitoring data gains new meaning.…”

Section: How Can We Avoid Previous Mistakes? Effective Asset Manageme...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The guarantee that conservation targets will be safeguarded and eventually achieved cannot be made if developers participation in offset trading is voluntary. The market regulator receives updates from monitoring sources to maintain oversight of each asset's progress toward targets at the market-scale, thereby determining local site irreplaceability scores and the credits required for trades (35). The regulator is also able to intervene in the economic efficiency of the market, for example by subsidizing restoration costs on farms to increase the market supply of irreplaceability credits.…”

Section: How Can We Avoid Previous Mistakes? Effective Asset Manageme...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic Nature Positive Markets

Буш

Simpson

Hanley

2023

Preprint

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Despite decades of global commitments, and increasingly urgent warning of environmental instability, the demand for land to support economic production is still increasing. Isolated and disorganized actions will not be enough to avert ecosystem failures. As many developers are already required to compensate for their ecological impacts through restoration, many see markets trading biodiversity credits as a financial mechanism to counteract degradation and drive investment in conservation. The challenge stems from a desire to recognize the multidimensional nature of biodiversity that contributes to ecosystem integrity without making suitable offsets intractable to supply. Instead, most regulators have opted to streamline ecological assessment, and undermine ecological rigour, in favour of promoting offset supply and economic efficiency. As a result, all evidence suggests offset trading programs have so far failed to mitigate losses, let alone support "nature positive" outcomes. To overcome this disconnect, and support more effective and equitable biodiversity markets, we propose credits be defined by the irreplaceability of a site, a metric long-established in the domain of systematic conservation planning. Irreplaceability avoids the limitations of like-for-like trading, reduces costs of offsetting to developers and society, ensures farmers willing to sell are fairly rewarded for loss of earnings, and that sites critical to achieving conservation goals are safeguarded. We developed an ecological-economic model of a biodiversity offset market to demonstrate irreplaceability guarantees no net loss of biodiversity and is the most efficient metric for guiding investment toward the recovery of Nature.

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Credible biodiversity offsetting needs public national registers to confirm no net loss

Cited by 30 publications

References 66 publications

Environmental Offsetting: An Effective Practice or an Ego Strategy?

Environmental Offsetting: An Effective Practice or an Ego Strategy?

Evaluating the impact of biodiversity offsetting on native vegetation

Systematic Nature Positive Markets

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