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Biodiversity Offsetting in England: Deepening the Neoliberal Production of Socionatures

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Nature Swapped and Nature Lost

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Abstract

Let’s now move to the exploration of the emergence and evolution of biodiversity offsetting in a specific country, the UK and explore two major aspects of offsetting that are deeply intertwined: how its emergence relates to the deepening of neoliberal conservation (this chapter) and to governmental attempts to facilitate economic development, often in the form of urban development (next chapter). This chapter, as well as Chapters 6, 7, and 8, largely draws on empirical data obtained through ethnographic research across England from the summer of 2014 until the autumn of 2019. During these five years I conducted more than 80 interviews with governmental officials, environmental administrations and public bodies, including Natural England and Defra, members of several environmental NGOs, conservation brokers (including the Environment Bank), representatives of industries, as well as various economists, regulators, conservation scientists and environmentalists. Interviewees came from very different backgrounds, but they were all involved in the designation and implementation of offsetting in the UK.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the evaluation of these pilots see: http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/4915928315985920?category=10006.

  2. 2.

    See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140305215952/http://www.defra.gov.uk/ecosystem-markets/about/membership/.

  3. 3.

    See https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/natural-capital-committee.

  4. 4.

    See https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517123/ncc-terms-of-reference.pdf.

  5. 5.

    See https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517123/ncc-terms-of-reference.pdf.

  6. 6.

    See http://www.foresightgroup.eu/news/foresight-group-assets-under-management-exceed-1-billion/.

  7. 7.

    See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-improvement-areas-improved-ecological-networks/nature-improvement-areas-about-the-programme.

  8. 8.

    For the official evaluation report of the offsetting pilots see here: http://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=18229.

  9. 9.

    The Big Society was a political ideology developed in the early twenty-first century. It proposed “integrating the free market with a theory of social solidarity based on hierarchy and voluntarism” and conceptually it was drawing on “a mix of conservative communitarianism and libertarian paternalism.” The roots of the Big Society ideology “can be traced back to the 1990s, and to early attempts to develop a non-Thatcherite, or post-Thatcherite, brand of UK conservatism, such as David Willetts' Civic Conservatism and the revival of Red Toryism. Some commentators have seen the Big Society as invoking Edmund Burke's idea of civil society, putting it into the sphere of one-nation conservatism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Society).

  10. 10.

    “Cameron and Clegg set out ‘big society’ policy ideas”. BBC News, 18 May 2010. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8688860.stm.

  11. 11.

    See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/20/the-big-society-civil-exchange-audit-shows-coalition-contempt-and-hypocrisy; http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/caroline-slocock/big-society_b_6505902.html.

  12. 12.

    See http://www.environmentbank.com/team-biographies.php.

  13. 13.

    See http://ec.europa.eu/environment/biodiversity/business/assets/pdf/workstream2/ebl_en.pdf.

  14. 14.

    See http://www.environmentbank.com/about.php.

  15. 15.

    Under the Natural Environment Research Council-NERC, UK’s leading public funder of independent research, training and innovation in environmental science.

  16. 16.

    In 2016, Defra published an official evaluation of the offset pilots that is available here: http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&ProjectID=18229&FromSearch=Y&Publisher=1&SearchText=WC1051&SortString=ProjectCode&SortOrder=Asc&Paging=10#Description.

  17. 17.

    See http://www.environmentbank.com/documents/EnvironmentBankNewsletterSpring2012_000.pdf.

  18. 18.

    See http://www.shellfoundation.org/Our-Focus/Partner-Profiles/Environment-Bank/Summary.

  19. 19.

    See https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/192580/local-nature-partnerships-overview120402.pdf.

  20. 20.

    See http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/biodiversityoffsetting. I have to point out here that this web link has stopped working in July 2018, so it seems that it is not available online anymore.

  21. 21.

    See https://www.cieem.net/data/files/Resource_Library/News/Planning_Naturally.pdf.

  22. 22.

    See http://bbop.forest-trends.org/events/no-net-loss/.

  23. 23.

    See http://www.environmentbank.com.

  24. 24.

    See also in Chapter 3 the reference to Jasanoff’s work.

  25. 25.

    See https://www.nytimes.com/1910/01/30/archives/what-the-baby-is-worth-as-a-national-asset-last-years-crop-reached.html.

  26. 26.

    See http://www.oecd.org/environment/tools-evaluation/36190261.pdf.

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  1. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Elia Apostolopoulou

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Apostolopoulou, E. (2020). Biodiversity Offsetting in England: Deepening the Neoliberal Production of Socionatures. In: Nature Swapped and Nature Lost. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46788-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46788-3_5

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