L'émergence du marché de la compensation des zones humides aux États-Unis : impacts sur les modes d'organisation et les caractéristiques des transactions

Abstract

International audienceIn the United States, the Clean Water Act requires compensatory measures for aquatic ecosystems damaged by development projects. From the 90’s to improve the quality of the system, we have seen the emergence of a market system to supervise the transactions related to the implementation of actions for compensation. The theoretical framework of neo-institutional economics states that the choice of the organization of a transaction is based on the minimization of transaction costs. These costs are related to the coordination mechanisms that are specific to each type of organization and which efficiency – in terms of transaction costs – depends on the characteristics of the transaction : asset specificity, uncertainty and frequency of the transactions.Transactions related to compensation involve a significant investment in natural capital – the aquatic ecosystem – to produce an environmental gain equivalent in quality and quantity, to the losses related to the damage. The application of the neo-institutional theory to the study of these transactions allows us to show that these transactions have original characteristics that require organizational modes of hybrid forms. The desire to include the compensation in a trading system involves an alignment of the characteristics of transactions with a risk reduction of the specificity of natural capital. Therefore it is necessary to maintain a strong regulatory system to ensure the quality of the compensation

The Biodiversity Offsetting Dilemma: Between Economic Rationales and Ecological Dynamics

“…Moreover, due to the possibility of offsetting for multiple impacts via the same environmental gain, asset specificity is decreased [50]. Thus, as biodiversity offsets are not sized and carried out according to one specific ecological impact, the ecological equivalence between biodiversity losses and gains is supposed to be weaker than in direct offsets.…”

“…In this case, developers generally use service providers and experts to conduct their offsets, but this increases the financial costs of offsets measures. However, the level of expertise needed is highly dependent on the NNL goals and on the type of compensatory measure targeted [50]. For instance, preservation measures (i.e., purchasing an existing natural area in order to preserve it) require lower levels of expertise and knowledge than restoration or creation actions [50].…”

“…For the regulatory bodies responsible for the enforcement and monitoring of BO, offsets carried out through the direct approach generate high transaction costs too. This approach requires regulatory bodies to control and monitor as many offset projects as development projects, which generates significant transaction costs and makes it difficult to enforce offsetting liabilities [49,50]. In the USA, this inefficiency of the direct offsets system led to the implementation of the banking mechanism in early 1990s in response to these economic and ecological flaws [13].…”

“…However, the level of expertise needed is highly dependent on the NNL goals and on the type of compensatory measure targeted [50]. For instance, preservation measures (i.e., purchasing an existing natural area in order to preserve it) require lower levels of expertise and knowledge than restoration or creation actions [50]. However, the implementation of BO requirements through preservation actions raises strong concerns among scholars and conservationists in relation to the issue of the additionality of compensatory measures to meet the NNL goal [14].…”

“…Even though regulatory bodies spend time setting up an offsetting bank, once the bank is operational, less time and work are required to check and monitor offsets than with direct offsets, due to economies of scale. Thus, regulatory bodies can ensure better control and monitoring of offsets, leading to better enforcement of environmental regulations [50]. As for bank operators, even though they bear the transaction costs tied to offsets, they can achieve cost-effective implementation of offsets by taking advantage of the economies of scale resulting from large offsetting projects [68].…”