Native vegetation offsets

Some say that biodiversity offsets for the removal of native vegetation are requirements designed to compensate for the unavoidable harm to biodiversity caused by development projects. Others see them as a set of protocols dreamed up by mad scientists to provide a smoke-screen allowing native vegetation to be destroyed in the name of progress.

Experience so far with regulatory regimes in Australia over habitat compensation requirements, in the USA with such things as wetland and conservation banking and in Brazil with tradeable forest conservation obligations, has suggested that biodiversity offsets may have value for businesses and governments but have little to do with beneficial biodiversity outcomes.

Biodiversity offsets can strengthen a commercial business by encouraging regulators to grant permission for new operations and by securing the support of local communities and non-government organisations. For companies, investment in biodiversity offsets usually provides a cost effective means to demonstrate that society should continue to trust them with access to the land needed for their growth.

The offsets offer governments a mechanism to encourage companies to pay cash for 'conservation', in many cases without the need for new legislation. Offsets also help to ensure the approval of development projects intended to meet growing demand for energy, minerals, metals and food. Whether they are planned in the context of sustainable development, and accompanied by counterbalancing measures to secure the conservation of ecosystems and species affected by development is a debate which is still underway.

Locally active communities can use biodiversity offsets in an attempt to ensure that local ecosystems are maintained during and after the life of a development project – but the reality is that this seldom happens.

The benefits of biodiversity offsets are potentially large, but hardly ever is there a shared vision of the meaning and standards of offsets amongst companies, governments, communities and environmental groups. There has been a clear lack of trust between all parties for the approach needed to establish the policy frameworks to underpin offsets. Companies are understandably focussed on protecting their bottom line. Governments (national and local) want the dual role of facilitating development and protecting the environment, local communities are usually unclear about what they want and environmental groups don't trust either the companies or the regulators. The prime question to be asked before any offset is approved is 'what is the benefit to ecosystems'?

The principal aim of any development which has a goal of achieving 'no net loss' or 'net gain' has to be to undertake the business activity with no lasting environmental damage. Avoiding the risk is the fundamental objective - terms such as 'alleviating harm', 'and minizing' or 'mitigating' risk just duck the question and make an observer realise that the corporation or Government spouting that nonsense is just making a noise in the hope that someone will believe them.

All too often biodiversity offsets have provided a 'green light' for the most inappropriate development. Get the right consultants together, twist the arms (or grease the palms) or the regulators involved and the permit is granted even when there is a strong view that the development should not proceed.

The principle of compensating for residual damage to natural habitat implies that biodiversity is valuable and needs to be conserved, but that proposition is not universally accepted. The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 agreed that the “achievement by 2010 of a significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity” was a prime target, however there is no evidence that we are likely to achieve even that meagre target in Australia.

Population growth and the insatiable demand for more consumer goods ensures that 'progress' and 'development' are inevitable consequences of our culture. This same inevitability can be applied to habitat loss because the effects of development on biodiversity cannot be avoided.

The offsest system, through mitigation and compensating efforts to protect, restore and enhance natural ecosystems haven't worked and won't work because Government's and companies aren't really interested in making them effective. All they need is a bit of paper which says that the risk has been 'mitigated' or 'offset'.

The principle of offsetting harm raises questions about the desired outcome of the compensatory conservation measures. Many think of biodiversity offsets as a 'no net loss' scenario – but how does that compensate for the harm caused by the development?

The God 'growth' is alive and well. It underpins the whole economic system of the western world. If growth stops we go into economic decline, recession, depression and chaos. So if we accept that in our world, development will happen, that governments regulate on behalf of society whether, when and how this should occur, questions have to be asked about how to minimise social and environmental damage and to optimise conservation outcomes. I don't think we've yet found the solution and I'm damn sure the current approach to offsets isn't it!

One simple example is the current duplication of the Bass Highway in South Gippsland. VicRoads paid over $1 million for works to 'offset' the removal of native vegetation in the road building process. Patches of trees are being planted here and there, but there is no overall plan or target to achieve a real gain for biodiversity and there is no established way to audit the results. An opportunity has been missed to use the money to purchase land which could have helped close the region's only water supply catchment. The land could have been retired from agriculture, replanted with local understory and overstorey species, resulting in a huge gain for biodiversity as well as for the regional community. The end result would have been relatively easy to monitor and audit.

The conservation of biodiversity as a specific sustainable development issue has been overlooked compared with other environmental issues such as emissions to air and water. Environmental requirements may not have been specific about the intended biodiversity results and there may have been a lack of skills in pushing the objectives – But it may simply be that companies have not placed sufficient emphasis on ensuring biodiversity outcomes and governments have not enforced legislation and environmental clauses in concession agreements. In addition, monitoring and follow-up has usually been inadequate or non-existent. Even where biodiversity conservation measures generally or speficic offsets have been required, structures have rarely been put in place to check whether such provisions were implemented.

Biodiversity offsets will only achieve results for conservation if they are adequately designed, implemented and enforced.