Aligning ecological compensation policies with the Post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework to achieve real net gain in biodiversity

Abstract

Increasingly, government and corporate policies on ecological compensation (e.g., offsetting) are requiring "net gain" outcomes for biodiversity. This presents an opportunity to align development with the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework's (GBF) proposed ambition for overall biodiversity recovery. In this perspective, we describe three conditions that should be accounted for in net gain policy to align outcomes with biodiversity recovery goals: namely, a requirement for residual losses from development to be compensated for by (1) absolute gains, which are (2) scaled to the achievement of explicit biodiversity targets, where (3) gains are demonstrably feasible. We show that few current policies meet these conditions, which risks undermining efforts to achieve the proposed Post-2020 GBF milestones and goals, as well as other jurisdictional policy imperatives to halt and reverse biodiversity decline. To guide future decisionmaking, we provide a supporting decision tree outlining net gain compensation feasibility.

England's statutory biodiversity metric enhances plant, but not bird nor butterfly, biodiversity

“…Worldwide, there are very few net gain policies that specify a rationale for the gain amount required (Simmonds et al, 2022) or trivial benefit to nature, thanks to small effect sizes even for significant relationships. England's net gain goal could be both more ambitious and transparent, for example aligned to the Global Biodiversity Framework objective of a tenfold reduction in extinction risk by 2050.…”

Can the implementation of net gain requirements in England's planning system be applied to health?

“…This ambition is part of a wider approach to natural capital, encompassing national and international frameworks accounting for assets and ecoservices derived from nature. 16,17 The transferability of narrower forerunners to ENG-such as biodiversity net gain (BNG), a requirement increasingly adopted by national governments 18 -merits discussion. 19 Our Personal View argues that parallels exist between the protection and improvement of nature and health, and that lessons from the operationalisation of BNG in the English planning system can inform the development of a com parable framework for health that could be applied in other national contexts, support ing international actions to bring health to the fore.…”

Analyzing the outcomes of China's ecological compensation scheme for development‐related biodiversity loss

“…Human overexploitation of land and natural resources has been identified as among the most substantial anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity loss (Maxwell et al, 2016; Newbold et al, 2016). As humanity endeavors to remain within a safe operating space defined by planetary boundaries (Díaz et al, 2019; Rockström et al, 2009), compensatory conservation has become a widely employed approach to reconciling potential losses caused by economic development with goals for nature (Damiens, Backstrom, & Gordon, 2021; Maron et al, 2018; Simmonds et al, 2022). Compensatory actions are the last steps of the biodiversity “mitigation hierarchy,” which should be implemented after the preventative steps of avoidance and minimization (Arlidge et al, 2018; Gardner et al, 2013; McKenney & Kiesecker, 2010).…”