Achieving biodiversity benefits with offsets: Research gaps, challenges, and needs

Abstract

Biodiversity offsets are becoming increasingly common across a portfolio of settings: national policy, voluntary programs, international lending, and corporate business structures. Given the diversity of ecological, political, and socio-economic systems where offsets may be applied, place-based information is likely to be most useful in designing and implementing offset programs, along with guiding principles that assure best practice. We reviewed the research on biodiversity offsets to explore gaps and needs. While the peer-reviewed literature on offsets is growing rapidly, it is heavily dominated by ecological theory, wetland ecosystems, and U.S.-based research. Given that majority of offset policies and programs are occurring in middle- and low-income countries, the research gaps we identified present a number of risks. They also present an opportunity to create regionally based learning platforms focused on pilot projects and institutional capacity building. Scientific research should diversify, both topically and geographically, in order to support the successful design, implementation, and monitoring of biodiversity offset programs.

Biodiversity Offset Program Design and Implementation

“…Approaches to the latter provide a framework to analyze offset programs as an effective instrument in combining development with conservation. This also contributes to research concerning socio-economic conditions and regulatory frameworks enabling effective offsets [6].…”

“…Many scholars have discussed biodiversity offsets [6][7][8][9][10]. Effective offsets must counterbalance the impacts of a project, bring measurable long-term benefits, and produce desired results [11].…”

“…Although some have come up with evaluation frameworks [15] and partial evaluations of offset programs [16,17], a "a need for "proof of concept" and successful implementation remains" [18] (p. 393). Many authors have pointed out that the success of offsets is unclear [6,11,19,20]. Different opinions on offsetting are reflected in the literature: Spash (2015) argues that the economic concepts applied in offsetting legitimize habitat destruction instead of preventing it [21].…”

Moving from biodiversity offsets to a target‐based approach for ecological compensation

“…While in its totality, target‐based ecological compensation represents a novel alternative to the prevailing biodiversity offsetting paradigm, its component parts are familiar, with most aspects of existing standards remaining applicable (BBOP, ; Gardner et al., ; Gelcich, Vargas, Carreras, Castilla, & Donlan, ; IUCN, ). A target‐based system involves changes only to the final step of the well‐established mitigation hierarchy, primarily relating to the sizing of compensatory requirements.…”

Biodiversity Offsets Can Be a Valuable Tool in Achieving Sustainable Development Developing a Holistic Model for Biodiversity Offsets That Incorporates Environmental, Social and Economic Aspects of Sustainable Development

“…This does not, however, provide an assessment of other cultural and community use/non-use values, which can only be assessed indirectly through community consultation. As such, biodiversity offset monitoring programs should assess ecological performance along with social and governance performance (Gelcich, Vargas, Carreras, Castilla & Donlan, 2017). This already occurs in some jurisidctions, such as France, where the development of biodiversity offsets requires negotiation with relevant stakeholders to ensure their interests are considered (Guillet & Semal, 2018).…”