Why bartering biodiversity fails

Abstract

Regulatory biodiversity trading (or biodiversity "offsets") is increasingly promoted as a way to enable both conservation and development while achieving "no net loss" or even "net gain" in biodiversity, but to date has facilitated development while perpetuating biodiversity loss. Ecologists seeking improved biodiversity outcomes are developing better assessment tools and recommending more rigorous restrictions and enforcement. We explain why such recommendations overlook and cannot correct key causes of failure to protect biodiversity. Viable trading requires simple, measurable, and interchangeable commodities, but the currencies, restrictions, and oversight needed to protect complex, difficult-to-measure, and noninterchangeable resources like biodiversity are costly and intractable. These safeguards compromise trading viability and benefit neither traders nor regulatory officials. Political theory predicts that (1) biodiversity protection interests will fail to counter motivations for officials to resist and relax safeguards to facilitate exchanges and resource development at cost to biodiversity, and (2) trading is more vulnerable than pure administrative mechanisms to institutional dynamics that undermine environmental protection. Delivery of no net loss or net gain through biodiversity trading is thus administratively improbable and technically unrealistic. Their proliferation without credible solutions suggests biodiversity offset programs are successful "symbolic policies," potentially obscuring biodiversity loss and dissipating impetus for action.

The Biodiversity Offsetting Dilemma: Between Economic Rationales and Ecological Dynamics

“…These findings have led to an extensive academic debate on the relevance of such tools for biodiversity conservation [60,61]. On technical concerns, some studies revealed particular problems in relation to spatial issues and restoration results [62,63].…”

“…The risk is that these failures may lead to underestimating ecological impacts, with the resulting incomplete or poor definition of equivalent offsets. From that perspective, BO may result in net loss of biodiversity, being unlikely to achieve NNL of biodiversity [61]. …”

Conservation and concealment in SpeciesBanking.com, USA: an analysis of neoliberal performance in the species offsetting industry

“…As noted in several recent papers, restrictions in policy and research towards ecological measures amenable to commoditisation may constrain both ecological understanding and conservation outcomes (Peterson et al 2009;Vira & Adams 2009;Walker et al 2009;Norgaard 2010). The creation of conservation credits such as species credits as 'standard, noncontroversial' units to be sold on conservation markets, for example, requires that complex ecological processes and functions become simplified into 'proxy indicators' that can easily be traded (Robertson 2009, p. 4).…”

Spatial Conservation Prioritization in Data-Poor Areas of the World

“…Assume that this loss is to be compensated via offsetting by habitat restoration. At this stage, the examination of uncertainties reveals that habitat restoration is by no means guaranteed to succeed (Suding 2011), that clearing of natural or semi-natural vegetation might be best avoided (Gibbons & Lindenmayer 2007), and that offset measures have frequently failed to successfully compensate for lost habitats (Moilanen et al 2009b;Walker et al 2009). So, what kinds of strategies could be robust?…”

“…Stokstad 2008;Walker et al 2009). Assume, for example, that a development project causes immediate and complete loss of, say, natural-state rain forest.…”