A method for calculating minimum biodiversity offset multipliers accounting for time discounting, additionality and permanence.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity offsetting, which means compensation for ecological and environmental damage caused by development activity, has recently been gaining strong political support around the world. One common criticism levelled at offsets is that they exchange certain and almost immediate losses for uncertain future gains. In the case of restoration offsets, gains may be realized after a time delay of decades, and with considerable uncertainty. Here we focus on offset multipliers, which are ratios between damaged and compensated amounts (areas) of biodiversity. Multipliers have the attraction of being an easily understandable way of deciding the amount of offsetting needed. On the other hand, exact values of multipliers are very difficult to compute in practice if at all possible. We introduce a

SUBMITTER: Laitila J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4374704 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature