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Achieving biodiversity net gain in a neoliberal economy: The case of England

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Abstract

The United Kingdom Government intends to require land development in England to contribute to improving biodiversity values. The basis for this, the offsetting of impacts on biodiversity, stems from and reinforces a neoliberal economic approach, fits with the privatising of conservation, and at a landscape level may improve biodiversity values. However, challenging decision-makers is the current lack of robust evidence that offsetting works, meaning allowing development despite uncertain future biodiversity benefits. Additionally, financial support for local government is declining, making it unclear whether and how effective independent auditing of biodiversity net gain will be.

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Notes

  1. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) metric is a habitat-based approach to determining a proxy biodiversity value to enable the assessment of change in that value. It is currently being updated (Crosher et al. 2019).

  2. See https://www.environmentbank.com/ retrieved 23 October, 2019.

  3. See https://www.uia-initiative.eu/en/uia-cities/greater-manchester Retrieved 23 January, 2019.

  4. See https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/conservation/landscape-scale-conservation/ retrieved 20 November, 2019.

  5. See https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/conservation/conservation-and-sustainability/farming/advice/managing-habitats/ retrieved 20 November, 2019.

  6. A multiplier or mitigation ratio increases the area of an offset by a factor required to improve the chances of no net loss (BBoP 2012a). This can compensate for delays in offset maturity, and can account for the inherent difficulty compensating for an immediate certain loss with a hypothetical and much less certain future gain (Gardner et al. 2013).

  7. Also being developed is an ‘eco-metric’, which includes wider natural capital benefits building on biodiversity gains. See https://ecosystemsknowledge.net/ecometric retrieved 22 November 2019.

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Travel and accommodation costs for this article were covered by the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland.

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  1. School of Architecture and Planning, Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland, Auckland Mail Centre, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand

    Stephen Knight-Lenihan

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Knight-Lenihan, S. Achieving biodiversity net gain in a neoliberal economy: The case of England. Ambio 49, 2052–2060 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01337-5

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