The Impact of Biodiversity Offsets
on Protected Areas
Leon Bennun • BBOP webinar, 30 July 2015
Three issues
1. Additionality
2. Equivalence
3. Permanence
Biodiversity offsets: new finance for
Protected Areas?
World Bank
2015:
Biodiversity
Offsets in
Mozambique A Roadmap for
Implementation
National Parks
National Reserves
Coutadas
Forest Reserves
Using the existing PA network for
biodiversity offsets in Mozambique
• “Network of coordinated, aggregated
offsets already created
• Existing protected areas have buy-in from
stakeholders
• Avoids equity issues in assigning new
areas for conservation
• Helps guarantee permanence (ensures
long-term outcome)
• Focuses on conservation priorities.”
• [Reduces uncertainty and time lags]
Good for Government
• “PAs already identified to protect the most
important biodiversity in the country
• Already gazetted – no more formal process
• Structures and processes for finance,
management and monitoring established
• Community presence and access rights
already determined and addressed
• Helps fulfil national goals and international
commitments
• Projects can advance rapidly without
sacrificing environmental integrity nationally
• Economy can grow while conserving natural
assets – tourism potential & critical
ecosystem services.”
Good for business
“Quicker, simpler [& cheaper] to implement:
• Baseline biodiversity assessment already
done
• Already gazetted – ensures permanence
• Someone else does the management
• Established systems to channel funds and
monitor outcomes
• Community issues already addressed.”
• [High-profile and positive]
• [Helps level the playing field]
Good for local communities
• “Issues of presence and access rights to
biodiversity & ecosystem services already
determined and addressed
• No additional resettlement issues raised
• Greater funding for conservation areas
likely to improve relations with local
communities
• Mechanisms for benefit-sharing already
established.”
Good for biodiversity — ?
• Not necessarily
• Key question: are offsets in PAs additional?
• WPC participant: “If companies are
subsidising what people are expecting
governments to do, that is cost-shifting.
We should be funding our PAs better!”
Cost shifting: a real concern
• New funds could displace – not add to –
current or future funding for conservation.
• Not just a theoretical issue – e.g.
international development assistance and
military spending
• Governments are looking to offset funding
to support PAs
• Developed countries capping/cutting PA
funding, expecting offset funding to fill the
gap (e.g. Australia).
Nature 23 July 2015, 523: 401-403
Maron et al. 2015
• Governments must not meet existing
conservation targets using offset funds
• Offset “must yield conservation
benefits that would otherwise not
have occurred”
Commitment to preexisting agreements
maintained?
PA offset valid?
Yes
No
Yes
PAs funded by offsets, and
additional to agreed targets
Cost-shifting – offsets fund already
agreed actions
No
Justifiable withdrawal from
commitment (e.g. aid-dependent
nations)
Unjustifiable withdrawal from
commitment (e.g. by wealthy nations)
Maron et al. in prep.
This is not the perspective of CBD
Parties
CBD COP Decision XII/3 – financial targets
(e):
“Mobilize domestic financial resources from all
sources to reduce the gap between identified
needs and available resources at domestic
level, for effectively implementing by 2020
Parties’ national biodiversity strategies and
action plans.”
Strategy for Resource Mobilization, Target
4.2:
“Consider biodiversity offset mechanisms
where relevant and appropriate, while ensuring
that they are not used to undermine unique
components of biodiversity.”
Aichi Target 11 – six targets in one
“By 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and
inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal
and marine areas, especially areas of particular
importance for biodiversity and ecosystem
services, are conserved through effectively and
equitably managed, ecologically representative
and well-connected systems of protected areas
and other effective area-based conservation
measures, and integrated into the wider
landscape and seascape.”
Aichi Target 11 – area of PAs
UNEP-WCMC Protected Planet report 2014
Global trends in PA coverage
UNEP-WCMC Protected Planet report 2014
PAs worldwide are under-resourced and
struggling
• Global review of 4000 PAs finds 40% have major deficiencies in
management effectiveness (Leverington et al. 2010)
• Half of West African parks with management plans have no
money for implementation (Henschel et al. 2014)
• Great Barrier Reef Marine Park: 2012 strategic assessment finds
resources inadequate, management lagging behind cumulative
impacts
• Recent Parks Canada budget cuts reduced conservation
spending by 15%, 23% of conservation staff and 33% of
scientific staff retrenched
• 99% of Coral Triangle MPAs not effectively managed (Burke et
al. 2012)
• US National Parks Service operational budget down 13% 20092013, with deferred maintenance backlog of over $9 billion
• Biodiversity declining in over half of 60 tropical forest PAs
(Laurance et al. 2012)
Biodiversity offsets
• A ‘cap and trade’ mechanism
• Level pegging or managed drawdown on
natural capital
• Development: opportunity costs of
conservation high
• Offset: opportunity costs of conservation
low
• For Governments, a rational re-allocation to
achieve T11
• If ‘trading up’, even better…
…however, could undermine other
targets?
• Aichi Target 5: By 2020, the rate of loss of
all natural habitats, including forests, is at
least halved and where feasible brought
close to zero, and degradation and
fragmentation is significantly reduced.
• Could this still be achieved via properly
implemented PA offsets?
A ‘purist’ approach could be counterproductive
• Don’t want countries to back away from
CBD commitments
• Don’t want to penalise planning
• Don’t want to penalise PA designation
• Many PA networks still severely
underfunded
Moral hazard?
• Poor outcome if rich Governments fail to
invest, or even reduce PA investments, on
account of offset funds
• And could be perverse incentive to permit
developments and raise funds for PAs
• Yet many poor countries can’t afford to
invest in PAs
Conservation Letters 2014, 7: 423-424
•
•
•
•
•
Underfunding will persist, despite the Aichi
Target
Define and accept temporary additionality?
Offsets in protected areas additional for
lower-income countries
Familiar approach in development aid
Long-term, requires mechanism to refocus
funding as national economies improve
(practicality?)
Where to draw the line?
low income
mid income
OECD mean
Equivalence: risk of ‘trading down’?
• If focus on PAs – biodiversity may not be
comparable to impact site
• Could trade most threatened habitats for
those that are already more secure
• Equity issues for local communities or
stakeholders – ecosystem services
• Maximise benefits via large-scale planning,
aggregated offsets
South Africa: landscape planning
integrated into offset guidance
• Higher offset-area multipliers
for threatened habitats: help
meet targets, discourage
development
J. Manuel - 2013
S. Africa: priorities for offset targets
A step further for national biodiversity
offset frameworks?
• Identify conservation targets for each
ecosystem
• Prioritise aggregated offsets to support new
(or better-managed) protected areas where
they are most needed
• Consider connectivity and climate change
adaptation
• ‘Trading up’ approach – focus conservation
on the highest biodiversity priorities.
How to calculate compensation for
aggregated PA offsets?
• Scaled fee based on the project budget
•
•
Does not account for residual impact or offset costs
Does not incentivise applying the MH
•
•
•
e.g. e.g. Brazil tax for protected area conservation; Queensland (Aus),
offset payment = land value + administration costs + management
costs
Does not account for offset costs
May not adequately reflect impact
•
•
May be time-consuming and expensive
May not fully account for biodiversity values
•
Needs detailed conversion framework. Could include multipliers and
species weightings (e.g. S Africa system), rules for ‘trading up’,
predicted/actual costs for gains from PA investments
Requires sound, costed management plans for PAs
• Scaled fee based on the development footprint
• Valuation study of residual impacts
• Cost of PA offsets
•
Permanence (longevity)
• Need offset gains to last at least as long as
development impacts
• PAs: responsibilities passed to PA authority
• Need solid guarantee of appropriate longterm funding for offset implementation.
Funding for longevity
• Compensation to cover start-up costs,
ongoing management costs (from
investment), monitoring and compliance
costs
• Portion of all offset payments to improve
biodiversity information and management
in-country (e.g. through a national
biodiversity institute)
• Funds not direct to PA
authorities/Government, but managed by a
third-party, independent fund.
Conservation Trust Funds
• "Private, legally independent grant-making institutions
that provide sustainable financing for biodiversity
conservation and often finance part of the long-term
management costs of a country‘s protected area (PA)
system”
• Financing mechanisms not implementing agencies
• For aggregated PA offsets, need transparent governance
with wide stakeholder base (Government and civil
society), and clear rules and procedures, audit and
reporting
• Funds only flow if Government contributions to PAs or
maintained or increased
• With an independent fund, may still be some risks:
• Distortion of priorities
• High overheads/running costs
• Mozambique CTF
• Created in 2011 as an independent, private notfor-profit entity
• Granted public benefit status in March 2012
• Government represented on Board, but state
representation capped at 25% of Directors
• Mission: to support biodiversity conservation and
sustainable natural resource use, including
consolidation of the national system of
conservation areas
• Developing a monitoring and evaluation system
to track biodiversity outcomes
Offsets in Protected Areas are a reality
• Voluntary
offsets being
designed in
PAs
worldwide
• In many
countries,
recent or
planned
policy and
law drives
offset funds
towards
protected
areas.
Realising the promise of offsets for PAs
• No cost-shifting! – maintained/increased
Government contribution a criterion for offset
funding
• Sound science-based plans for aggregated
offsets– consolidating, extending and
connecting PAs, addressing conservation
priorities
• Well-structured framework to determine
compensation, incentivising application of the
MH
• Independent Conservation Trust Funds with
clear mandate and inclusive governance