Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies

Abstract

The development and private sectors are increasingly considering “biodiversity offsets” as a strategy to compensate for their negative impacts on biodiversity, including impacts on great apes and their habitats in Africa. In the absence of national offset policies in sub-Saharan Africa, offset design and implementation are guided by company internal standards, lending bank standards or international best practice principles. We examine four projects in Africa that are seeking to compensate for their negative impacts on great ape populations. Our assessment of these projects reveals that not all apply or implement best practices, and that there is little standardization in the methods used to measure losses and gains in species numbers. Even if they were to follow currently accepted best-practice principles, we find that these actions may still fail to contribute to conservation objectives over the long term. We advocate for an alternative approach in which biodiversity offset and compensation projects are designed and implemented as part of a National Offset Strategy that (1) takes into account the cumulative impacts of development in individual countries, (2) identifies priority offset sites, (3) promotes aggregated offsets, and (4) integrates biodiversity offset and compensation projects with national biodiversity conservation objectives. We also propose supplementary principles necessary for biodiversity offsets to contribute to great ape conservation in Africa. Caution should still be exercised, however, with regard to offsets until further field-based evidence of their effectiveness is available.

Conservation: Stop misuse of biodiversity offsets

“…Arrangements can be driven by a project's proponents, to generate social licence to operate, or by the lending requirements of funding organizations. For example, an expert panel assembled by the World Bank -which helps to fund large development projects in poor countries -proposed that the Loma Mountains National Park in Sierra Leone be established to offset the damage to forest caused by the completion of the country's Bumbuna dam in 2009 5 .…”

Regional Action Plan for the Conservation of Western Lowland Gorillas and Central Chimpanzees 2015–2025

“…The approach will likely improve the protection of areas important for great apes in extractive-use zones. Such informed land-use planning may also help in establishing interventions and activities as aggregated offsets to compensate for the impacts of multiple extractive projects (see Kormos et al 2014).…”

Plan d’action régional pour la conservation des gorilles de plaine de l’Ouest et des chimpanzés d’Afrique centrale 2015–2025

“…L'approche améliorera probablement la protection des zones importantes pour les grands singes dans les aires d'extraction. Cette planification avisée offre la possibilité d'établir des interventions et des activités sous forme de dédomma-gements collectifs pour compenser les impacts de plusieurs projets d'extraction (voir Kormos et al 2014).…”