The creation of compensatory habitat—Can it secure sustainable development?

Morris, Roger; Alonso, I.; Jefferson, R.; Kirby, K. J.

doi:10.1016/j.jnc.2006.01.003

Cited by 83 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…These policy questions (and others raised by [2,18,42,[63][64][65]) must be resolved by government in this rapidly evolving field if the confidence in security of offsets, be they required under regulation or voluntary, is to be maintained.…”

Section: Legal and Institutional Barriers To Implementing Offsetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development by Design in Western Australia: Overcoming Offset Obstacles

Fitzsimons

Heiner

McKenney

et al. 2014

Land

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Section: Legal and Institutional Barriers To Implementing Offsetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development by Design in Western Australia: Overcoming Offset Obstacles

Fitzsimons

Heiner

McKenney

et al. 2014

Land

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“…In simpler terms, offsets are specific projects designed to counterbalance, compensate, or make up for the disturbance of land, ecosystems and habitat, which occurs as many businesses engage in their productive activities. The idea is to counterbalance biodiversity loss through enhancing the state of biodiversity on-site or elsewhere (see Morris et al, 2006;Gibbons & Lindenmayer, 2007;McKenney and Kiesecker, 2009;Madsen et al, 2011).…”

Section: Conceptual Foundations Of Biodiversity Offsetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While substantive offset schemes have been implemented in several developed countries, case studies of vibrant offsetting schemes in Africa are not in abundance (Morris et al, 2006;BBOP, 2009). Madsen et al (2011) state that in Africa, most countries are still exploring or developing biodiversity offsets policies and little progress has been made in terms of the implementation of these emerging policies.…”

Section: Biodiversity Offsets In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We argue in this paper that these challenges have to be overcome first before the offset agenda can firmly take root in Africa. Some of the immediate concerns raised in most of the published literature relate to issues such as the reputation problems associated with poor outcomes and metrics, how best to design the offset initiative, its costs and timing, its application to different business sectors, and the eventual sequence of implementation (see Morris et al, 2006;Gibbons & Lindenmayer, 2007;Bayon, 2011;Madsen et al, 2011;Suding, 2011).…”

Section: Challenges For Offsetting In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Restoring degraded landscapes: Assessing the utility of biodiversity offsets for the business sector in Africa

Chikozho

Jongh

2014

International Journal of African Renaissance Studies - Multi-,

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Increasing pressure for the conversion of tropical and sub-tropical wetlands and forests to alternative land-uses raises the possibility that biodiversity offsets will increasingly take centre-stage in biodiversity conservation planning and ecosystem restoration discourses. This paper explores the major discourses on and utility of biodiversity offsets in the African context with a view to identifying and articulating some of the challenges and opportunities evident in attempts to operationalize the concept in practice. The paper establishes that as intuitively pleasing as they have become in recent years, with potentially large benefits expected to be derived from offset initiatives, several significant hurdles need to be overcome for them to become well-established practice in Africa. For instance, some observers have argued strongly that, in practice, land-use and wetland mitigation in most countries, has come nowhere near achieving the goal of 'no-net-loss'. There are also enduring questions surrounding the credibility of the formulae used to calculate net-losses and net-gains in biodiversity offset schemes. In the light of these and other outstanding questions, the paper concludes that biodiversity offsets may seem simple but are much more complex to design and implement to the extent that they become really convincing as a conservation tool for businesses in Africa.

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“…The habitats being created are typically novel ones with plant and animal communities characteristically different from naturally occurring communities (Anderson 1995). Relatively few experimental studies have, however, been implemented on habitat creation in terrestrial environments, even though many projects have been performed to create compensatory habitats (Morris et al 2006). Nevertheless, factors determining the expected patterns of vegetation succession are not known thoroughly enough to make reliable predictions (Vesk et al 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variability of soil enzyme activities and vegetation succession following boreal forest surface soil transfer to an artificial hill

Niemi¹,

Pöyry²,

Heiskanen³

et al. 2014

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A landfill site in southern Finland was converted into urban green space by covering it with a layer of fresh forest humus transferred from nearby construction sites. The aim was to develop the 70 m high artificial hill into a recreational area with high biodiversity of flora and fauna. Forest humus was used as a source of organic matter, plant roots, seeds, soil fauna and microorganisms in order to enable rapid regeneration of diverse vegetation and soil biological functions. In this study we report the results of three years of monitoring of soil enzyme activity and plant species compositional patterns. Monthly soil samples were taken each year between June and September from four sites on the hill and from two standing reference forests using three replicate plots. Activities of 10 different enzymes, soil organic matter (SOM) content, moisture, pH and temperature of the surface layer were monitored. Abundances of vascular plant species were surveyed on the same four hill sites between late May and early September, three times a season in 2004 and 2005. Although the addition of organic soil considerably increased soil enzyme activities (per dw), the activities at the covered hill sites were far lower than in the reference forests. Temporal changes and differences between sites were analysed in more detail per soil organic matter (SOM) in order to reveal differences in the quality of SOM. All the sites had a characteristic enzyme activity pattern and two hill sites showed clear temporal changes. The enzyme activities in uncovered topsoil increased, whereas the activities at the covered Middle site decreased, when compared with other sites at the same time. The different trend

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The creation of compensatory habitat—Can it secure sustainable development?

Cited by 83 publications

References 29 publications

Development by Design in Western Australia: Overcoming Offset Obstacles

Development by Design in Western Australia: Overcoming Offset Obstacles

Restoring degraded landscapes: Assessing the utility of biodiversity offsets for the business sector in Africa

Variability of soil enzyme activities and vegetation succession following boreal forest surface soil transfer to an artificial hill

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