Biodiversity banking: a strategic conservation mechanism

Abstract

Among the conservation initiatives, biodiversity banking is a strategic new concept that calls for advocacy by the researchers, conservationists, policy planners and business corporate houses to enhance the conservational behaviour of the stakeholders. The concept has dual benefits of restoration of livelihood support systems and conservation of biodiversity that provides ecological services and economic benefits to civil society. Currently, lack of defined guidelines with robust valuation and incentive mechanism for biodiversity banking has resulted in 'business as usual' situation especially in developing and under developed countries. There is need for re-defining the country level biodiversity banking guidelines for the effective private-government-stakeholder participation. Furthermore, the mechanism must consider using robust scientific database of inter-disciplinary nature and suitably adopt the modalities of successful case studies to overcome the flaws/risks. Biodiversity banking is a realizable concept in developing and resource poor countries as additional livelihood support system through the market of accrued ecosystem services linked to conservation behaviour of stakeholders.

Appraising offsets as a tool for integrated environmental planning and management

“…However, while acknowledging the aforementioned issues, we posit that offsets may still provide a suitable IEPM instrument (Margerum, 1997;Dietz and Adger, 2003). Moving forward, studies suggest that offsets might support the coordinated and strategic growth of quality protected habitats (Bayon and Jenkins, 2010;Alvarado-Quesada et al, 2014;Doole et al, 2014), while offering a means to increase environmental planning and protection investments (Kiesecker et al, 2009;Kumaraswamy and Udayakumar, 2011;Quintero and Mathur, 2011). This study looks to explore some of the potential for offsets-enabled IEPM.…”

Using offsets to mitigate environmental impacts of major projects: A stakeholder analysis

“…Arguably, despite these problems, offsets have an important role to play in future sustainable developments (Dietz and Adger, 2003) with opportunities to apply offsets principles, criterion and indicators in policies (BBOP, 2012b); expand offsets usage (Bayon and Jenkins, 2010;Alvarado-Quesada et al, 2014;Doole et al, 2014); and, potentially increase private and public investment for environmental conservation (Kiesecker et al, 2009;Kumaraswamy and Udayakumar, 2011;Quintero and Mathur, 2011). Collectively, these directions present as potential opportunities for developing offsets policies and programs.…”

“…As noted earlier, this approach would reinforce common and scientifically founded offsetting practices that would also sponsor stakeholder participation and proposal transparency through to final submission (DACT3 , Table S1). This collaboration renders opportunities for the integration of administrative, scientific and traditional (local/indigenous) knowledge, with national-level environmental management improvements (Kumaraswamy and Udayakumar, 2011). Noting that stakeholders lamented the lack of a current federal offsets register, developers would lodge their offsets proposal in a publically accessible NOR (DACT4 , Table S1) (see Fig.…”

Managing the Risk of Biodiversity Leakage from Prioritising REDD+ in the Most Carbon-Rich Forests: The Case Study of Peat-Swamp Forests in Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…Potential incentives falling under this third recommendation also include biodiversity offsetting or other (non-carbon-based) payment for environmental services (PES) schemes, which can provide alternative or supplementary finance alongside REDD+ to protect forests [2, 21, 22]. We anticipate that many of the policy development and research needs for establishing an effective REDD+ system would also be directly applicable to other non-carbon PES schemes (e.g.…”