Biodiversity Offsets ― European Perspectives on No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

This book deals with the new concept of biodiversity offsets. The aim of offsetting schemes is to achieve no let loss or even net gain of biodiversity. Offsets obey a mitigation hierarchy and reflect the precautionary and polluter-pays principle in regard to project impacts.

Readers gain insights into current debates on biodiversity policies, with top experts outlining theoretical principles and the latest research findings. At the same time the focus is on practical application and case studies. Today there is a lively international discussion among practitioners and scientists on the optimal legal framework, metrics and design of habitat banks to ensure the success of biodiversity offsets and to minimise the risks of failure or misuse. Contributing to the debate, this volume presents the activities and practices of biodiversity offsetting already implemented in Europe in selected EU member states, and the lessons that can be learnt from them. Readers may be surprised at how much experience already exists in these countries. A further aim of the book is to offer grounded insights on the road ahead, and foster a more intensive and fruitful discussion on how offsetting can be extended and improved upon, so that it becomes a key and effective component of Europe’s biodiversity conservation policy framework.

Wolfgang WENDE is a landscape planner who has worked for the Technical University of Berlin and the Federal Environment Agency Germany. Since 2010 he has been a professor for urban development at the Technische Universitat Dresden and head of the landscape research area at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER), Dresden. He also has broad international experience, e.g. being a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore. For several years Wolfgang has promoted and supported biodiversity offsets, environmental impact assessment as well as landscape and urban planning tools emerging all over the world.

Graham TUCKER is an ecologist and environmental policy analyst, specializing in nature conservation policy issues in Europe. He has over 28 years’ professional experience, currently as head of the biodiversity programme at the Institute for European Environmental Policy and formerly as an environmental consultant and staff member at the BirdLife International secretariat. In recent years he has developed a particular interest in the challenge of achieving no net loss of biodiversity and has carried out several studies for the European Commission on the subject.

Fabien QUETIER is the technical director on No Net Loss and Net Gain solutions for biodiversity at BIOTOPE. Through over a decade of interdisciplinary research on the vulnerability of biodiversity and ecosystem services to land-use change, he has acquired strong know-how in interfacing ecological knowledge and methods with socio-economic issues in support of decisions concerning natural resource and land-use management and policy. At BIOTOPE, he advises private and public decision makers on the implementation of the mitigation hierarchy to projects and programs, and in the design of biodiversity policies, worldwide. Fabien also carries out research on technical and organizational issues for biodiversity management, with a particular focus on mitigation and offsetting.

Matt RAYMENT is an environmental economist and independent consultant with more than 25 years’ experience in the evaluation and appraisal of public policy, and a particular interest in biodiversity. He has completed several studies on the design and implementation, costs and benefits of biodiversity offsets and no net loss initiatives, for the European Commission and UK government.

Marianne DARBI is a landscape planner, environmental scientist and consultant with long experience in the field of impact assessment and environmental compensation ("biodiversity offsets"), as well as planning and environmental research, biodiversity and ecosystems, the green economy and environmental markets ("habitat banks"). She is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Conservation Biology at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Leipzig. Marianne is working at the interface of science, policy and society in diverse contexts of nature and biodiversity conservation in Germany, the EU and internationally. In her Doctorate Thesis carried out at the Technische Universitat Dresden and the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development she examined different types of voluntary biodiversity offsets.