Biodiversity banking

Biodiversity banking, also known as biodiversity trading or conservation banking, mitigation banks, compensatory habitat, set-asides, biodiversity offsets, is a process by which biodiversity loss can be reduced by creating a framework which allows biodiversity to be reliably measured, and market based solutions applied to improving biodiversity. Biodiversity banking provides a means to place a monetary value on ecosystem services. Typically this involves land protection, restoration, an/or enhancement. Biodiversity banking is often applied so that there is no "net loss of a particular biodiversity feature."

"Biodiversity offsets are designed to compensate for residual environmental damage caused by development after avoidance, minimization, and mitigation of environmental impacts have been considered and implemented. The goal of offsets is to compensate for the loss of biodiversity at one location with conservation gains elsewhere."

In the United States a "mitigation banking" process applies to impacts on wetlands. It requires that developers firstly avoid harm to wetlands, but if harm is considered unavoidable, then wetland habitat of similar function and values must be "protected, enhanced or restored" to compensate for those that will be damaged. The process comes under the US Clean Water Act 1972 the US Army Corps of Engineers regulations and the commitment to "no net loss" of wetlands habitat.

Since about 2000 the term "species banking", sometimes called "conservation banking", has applied to impacts on species of special concern, typically those that are listed by state and federal agencies under the U.S. Endangered Species Act or its state-based equivalent. Similar to wetlands banks, conservation banks are designed as compensation for impacts to listed species or their habitat, ensuring a similar no net loss policy for these biodiversity resources.

Compensation for impacts to a stream riparian zone may also be required in relation to the linear distance of lost stream functions resulting from stream bank structures (e.g., concrete or rip rap), sedimentation, channelization, dredging or similar activities.

Two biodiversity banking schemes operating in Australia are the New South Wales BioBanking scheme, which commenced in 2008, and the Victorian Native Vegetation Management Framework scheme. Both schemes apply particularly to developers, where biodiversity values will be reduced through land clearing and building development. The framework requires developers to source biodiversity credits through a market mechanism to offset biodiversity loss.

Listed species, critical habitat, wetlands and stream habitat are all components of biodiversity ecosystem services. Taken collectively, they may be referred to as "biodiversity banks".

In Alberta, Canada, ABMI researchers use the the oil sands industry of Alberta as case study in their paper in which they evaluated the commonly used and costly ecological equivalency-based biodiversity offset in terms of economic and ecological performance with more flexible alternative offset systems. They used ABMI's "empirically derived index of biodiversity intactness to link offsets with losses incurred by development." They evaluated ecologically equivalent areas in regards to vegetation types and regional conservation priorities such as the recovery of the boreal woodland caribou and the Dry Mixedwood natural subregion in the oil sands region. They found that flexible alternative systems like the priority-focused offsetting networks, cost 2-17 times less than the ecological equivalency-based biodiversity offset

vegetation cost 2–17 times more than priority-focused networks.

See also

• Biodiversity
• Mitigation banking
• Conservation in Australia
• Environmental issues in Australia
• Economics of biodiversity
• Ecosystem services
• Satoyama
• Biodiversity offsetting

Further reading

• Bayon, Ricardo; Fox, Jessica; Carroll, Nathaniel (2007). Conservation and Biodiversity Banking A Guide to Setting Up and Running Biodiversity Credit Trading Systems. Earthscan. ISBN 978-1-84407-471-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

• NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change
• ABC Breakfast Carbon markets to provide lessons for global trade in biodiversity
• ABC Saturday Extra Biodiversity banking part one
• ABC Saturday Extra Biodiversity banking part two
• DEFRA definition and discussion of biodiversity offsetting
• Conservation Banking profile on database of Market Governance Mechanisms