Journal
BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
Volume 178, Issue -, Pages 2-10Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2014.07.006
Keywords
Compensation; No net loss; Oil and gas; Out of kind; Residual impacts; Restoration
Funding
- Natural Environmental Research Council CASE award
- Fauna and Flora International
- thematic programme in Wildlife and Forestry at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
- Natural Environment Research Council [985363] Funding Source: researchfish
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Biodiversity offsets are interventions that compensate for ecological losses caused by economic development, seeking 'no net loss' (NNL) of biodiversity overall. Calculating the ecological gains required to achieve NNL is non-trivial, with various methodologies available. To date, there has been no comparison among methodologies for a common case study. We use data on industrial impacts in Uzbekistan to provide such a comparison. We quantify losses from 40 years of gas extraction, using empirical data on vegetation impacts alongside estimates of disruption to mammals. In doing so, we implement a novel technique by estimating spatial 'functional forms' of disturbance to calculate biodiversity impacts. We then use a range of offset methodologies to calculate the gains required to achieve NNL. This allows a crude comparison of the potential biodiversity outcomes of in kind offsets (here, vegetation restoration) with out of kind offsets (protecting fauna from poaching). We demonstrate that different methods for calculating the required offset activities result in divergent outcomes for biodiversity (expressed in habitat condition x area, or 'weighted area'), and different trajectories in biodiversity outcomes over time. An Australian method is currently being considered for adoption in Uzbekistan, but we show that it would require careful adjustments to achieve NNL there. These findings highlight that the method used to quantify losses and gains strongly influences the biodiversity outcomes of offsetting, implying that offsets generated using different methodologies are not transferable between jurisdictions. Further, conservation gains from out of kind offsets may outweigh those from strict in kind NNL interpretations. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available