BBOP Publications Library

Offsets, Salinity and Native Vegetation: Discussion Paper

This discussion paper examines whether, and how, the negative impacts of clearing native vegetation might be offset by separate actions that have positive impacts. Offset actions could include improving the management of existing native vegetation, restoring or regenerating an area of degraded vegetation, or revegetating a previously cleared area.

Managing NATURA 2000 Sites: The Provisions of Article 6 of the ‘Habitats’ Directive 92/42/CEE

The first chapter of Directive 92/43/EEC, comprising Articles 1 and 2, is entitled ‘Definitions’. This chapter sets out the aim of the directive which is to ‘contribute towards ensuring biodiversity through the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora in the European territory of the Member States to which the Treaty applies’ […]

Biodiversity Offsets: Views, Experience, and the Business Case – Executive Summary

Biodiversity1 offsets are conservation2 activities intended to compensate for the residual, unavoidable harm to biodiversity caused by development projects. Recent experience with regulatory regimes, such as wetland and conservation banking in the USA, tradable forest conservation obligations in Brazil and habitat compensation requirements in Australia, Canada and the EU, has been supplemented by growing interest […]

Les mesures compensatoires des atteintes à la biodiversité

Compensatory measures for impacts on biodiversity

Delphine Morandeau and Jean Plateau from the Ministère de l’Écologie, de l’Énergie, du Développement durable et de la Mer – En charge des Technologies vertes et des négociations sur le climat, presented to the working group on “Infrastructure and sustainable development” on April 15, 2010. The Sustainable Development Department of the Caisse des Dépôts brougtht […]

Biodiversity Offsets – A Further Update On The Law

An update on developments related to biodiversity offsets and environmental compensation in New Zealand. The author examines a number of key issues, previously the subject of considerable debate, now characterized as appearing to have been settled, through the decisions taken by the Environment Court and Boards of Inquiry on five cases.

Where is the avoidance in the implementation of wetland law and policy?

Abstract Many jurisdictions in North America use a ‘‘mitigation sequence’’ to protect wetlands: First, avoid impacts; second, minimize unavoidable impacts; and third, compensate for irreducible impacts through the use of wetland restoration, enhancement, creation, or protection. Despite the continued reliance on this sequence in wetland decision-making, there is broad agreement among scholars, scientists, policymakers, regulators, […]

Offsetting Environmental Impacts to Facilitate Mining

Increasing pressures on land, the environment and society from economic development have often resulted in conflicting and competing demands that are not always sustainable. Rio Tinto Coal Australia (RTCA) faced such a challenge to its proposed new open cut extension at the Warkworth Coal Mine in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. The existing mine […]

The Wetlands Policy of the Commonwealth Government of Australia

In 1995 the Biodiversity Group of Environment Australia (formerly the Australian Nature Conservation Agency), as the designated administrative authority for implementation in Australia of the Ramsar Convention, began the process of preparing this Policy. The Agency was responding to encouragement for signatory governments to develop such policy instruments, as a means of pursuing the global […]

Conservation Banking as a Market-Based Incentive for Recovery of T&E Species

Ecosystem Services theory, in practice: Supply and demand = financial value; However: ‘demand’ by private parties for ‘public goods’ is mediated primarily by law (to a lesser extent by strategy and ethics); Therefore: Financial value depends on policy and enforcement.

Encouraging Voluntary Initiatives for Corporate Greening

None of the usual options – the market, conventional regulatory authority and customary propriety – can meet the challenge of moving toward sustainability in a dynamic, globalizing political economy. At least they cannot do so as usually applied and haphazardly associated. Efforts to build a coherent and well integrated set of motivations for “voluntary initiatives” […]