Journal
TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTE OF BRITISH GEOGRAPHERS
Volume 46, Issue 2, Pages 255-269Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/tran.12434
Keywords
England; European Union; interviews; neoliberal conservation; offsetting; Spain
Categories
Funding
- US National Science Foundation [GSS-1461746]
- Maria de Maeztu Programme for Units of Excellence of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [CEX2019-000940-M]
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The past decade has seen fluctuations in biodiversity offsetting policy in the EU, Spain, and England. Despite being labeled as a failed policy by many observers, biodiversity offsetting continues to persist in certain regions and has shown signs of returning at the national level.
The past decade has been a dynamic one for biodiversity offsetting policy. Efforts to incorporate offsetting into the Convention on Biological Diversity as a compliance mechanism did not succeed. The expansion of offsetting outside of the Natura 2000 network in the European Union (EU), which looked all but inevitable in the early 2010s, was withdrawn in the face of unexpectedly strong opposition from environmental groups and the business sector. Highly publicised offsetting programmes in some EU countries have had mixed outcomes, and many observers describe offsetting as a failed policy. And yet four years of interviews and policy analysis in Brussels, Spain, and England suggest that reports of offsetting's death may be exaggerated. While the possibility of an overarching EU Directive aimed at harmonising offsetting policy and practice across the region's countries seems unlikely, in Spain, offsetting has returned to the national policy arena via adoption as an implementation tool within the national Green Infrastructure Strategy. Offsetting in England persists in a handful of counties as a locally situated development strategy, and seems to have returned at the national level despite its spectacular flame-out in 2014. This is not, after all, a high-profile failure of neoliberal environmental policy. Rather, we see offsetting's persistence as a result of policy refugia: the retreat to small but amenable jurisdictions where offsetting policies can wait out inclement policy conditions and then emerge to recolonise the policy landscape when conditions improve.
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