Methodology Toolkit

People may be familiar with carbon offsets, where the unit being measured - tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted or sequestered - is the same world-wide. However, no two hectares of biodiversity are identical and there is no single, accepted methodology to quantify the impacts of development and value of offsetting conservation outcomes. How can impacts on biodiversity be quantified and how can developers, governments and local communities tell how much conservation is needed to compensate for it? Planning biodiversity offsets raises many questions, such as what kind of conservation activities are appropriate, where these should be, who should carry them out and how one can be sure they are truly lead to additional conservation outcomes.

The BBOP is developing guidance on designing and implementing biodiversity offsets by preparing a practical, "how to" toolkit which we will make widely available to industry, policy makers, development agencies, conservation organizations, financial institutions and others. Since biodiversity offsets offer business benefits as a voluntary management tool, companies are keen to ensure that their voluntary efforts are regarded as socially acceptable and scientifically credible. For this reason, private sector representatives have asked for BBOP multi-stakeholder partnership of experts to help design and implement biodiversity offsets to provide credibility, practicality and political support for the approach.

The International Advisory Committee and pilot partners are preparing tools that can be used broadly to explore, facilitate and establish biodiversity offsets. The toolkit will contain:

· Methodologies and guidelines: Key methodologies and guidelines to: choose biological and socio-economic indicators to show net gain or no net loss of biodiversity; quantify impacts of proposed developments on biodiversity; quantify conservation benefits of offset projects; and establish priorities and appropriate locations for biodiversity offsets. The Toolkit will compare and synthesize these and offer guidance on choosing and applying them. The pilot projects will use the tools in their design and implementation. The Advisory Committee will use lessons from the pilots to refine the tools before publication.

· Case studies: Participants in each pilot project will prepare a case study that describes: the nature of the project; how they assessed the project's impact; the associated biodiversity offset; the rationale for the offset and the methodologies used; how they established the offset's scope, scale and conservation priorities; how they identified and involved stakeholders; the results to date; successes and failures; and the lessons learned.

· Conclusions: The program partners will agree on and prepare Key Conclusions reached by program participants on biodiversity offsets; Principles for the goals, basis and appropriate context for biodiversity offsets; and Recommendations on how to design and implement biodiversity offsets, using the methodologies and guidelines. The program Conclusions could feed into any processes that emerge for developing project standards.

In mid 2008, the BBOP will initiate a process of consultation on the various elements of the Methodology Toolkit.