Development of a Typology of Biodiversity Offsets

Abstract

A typology of biodiversity offsets was developed using four consecutive steps: (1) The starting point was an impressionistic classification of types (“intuitive types”) that was refined in several steps throughout the research process and over time. (2) Building on the theoretical analysis of the concept of voluntariness, attributes, or criteria were extracted from the literature that provided the theoretical frame of reference to analyze the degree or intensity of voluntariness of the types presented in this work. These criteria were grouped and rearranged into different categories (with distinctive functions), notably threshold criteria, descriptive criteria, performance criteria, and quality criteria. Thus, through a process of elimination two core criteria were identified: influence and initiators, and motivation and ultimate goal. (3) These core criteria, and the respective value categories assigned to them, were used to construct the underlying attribute space, i.e., a 3 × 7 matrix. (4) Finally, the impressionistic types that have been developed over time (building on the author’s own observation and experience) and the constructed attribute space (building on criteria derived from the literature) were integrated to obtain a more refined typology of seven types.

Furthermore, a screening of biodiversity offset cases was carried out to empirically underpin these types. This generated an exploratory list of 90 biodiversity offset cases worldwide. A number of these were rejected, e.g., due to poor information quality or project failure/abandonment. The remaining 72 cases were analyzed and assigned to the seven types.