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

Abstract

The interpretation and use of biodiversity offsets in planning and development is a contentious issue because they rarely encompass each of the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development. While currently agreed best practice for biodiversity offsets includes consideration of scope, scale, location, timing and duration, and monitoring, current literature on these components does not consider all aspects of sustainable development. Furthermore, much of the current agreed best practice focusses on the design of biodiversity offsets, without consideration of ongoing management or end-of-life. This manuscript reviews current best practice for biodiversity offsets, giving consideration to the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development. In particular, we report that consideration of cost and risk is key and the use of planning frameworks, bonds and advanced offsets could mitigate these risks and allow for long-term success. Following this approach, a holistic model for design, implementation and ongoing management of direct biodiversity offsets that balances all aspects of sustainable development is presented.

Investigating societal attitudes toward marine ecosystem restoration

“…This latter result is consistent with the idea of a mitigation hierarchy common in many modern planning regimes, which dictates that given the potential loss of biodiversity due to a specific project, action should first be taken to avoid or minimize negative impacts, second to undertake on-site restoration, and lastly to offset biodiversity loss to ensure that there is no net-loss (Jacob et al 2018). Potential sources of aversion to mitigating losses through equivalent restoration elsewhere include a nonsubstitutable sociocultural value associated with an ecosystem in a particular location (Gardner et al 2013;Abdo et al 2019), aversion to inequality given that restoration elsewhere may not compensate individuals who lose out on ecosystem services lost in a given location (Jacob et al 2016;Abdo et al 2019), and aversion due to the perceived commodification of natural capital (Vaissière et al 2017). It is important to note that it is not clear from the survey results as to whether the public would support offsetting practices should it not be possible to restore a damaged site insitu and future research is necessary to ascertain under what conditions the public is likely to support off-setting biodiversity loss in the marine sphere.…”