The government has launched a consultation on introducing a ‘biodiversity offsetting’ scheme in England, to ensure that when a development causes ‘unavoidable’ damage to nature, new nature sites will be created.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) consultation – ‘Biodiversity offsetting in England: Green Paper‘ – has multiple objectives: to introduce options for biodiversity offsetting in England; to seek public views on how to best deliver them to ensure ‘real’ benefits for the environment and the economy; and to ‘gather the evidence to come to an informed position’.

Open to everyone, but particularly relevant to ‘developers, environmental organisations, ecological consultants, landowners and potential offset providers’, the consultation provides an overview of biodiversity offsetting, explores how it might operate, and introduces key issues that would need to be addressed.

Biodiversity offsetting was one of the recommendations of the business-led Ecosystem Markets Task Force, to which the government’s response was published on 5 September 2013.

England faces ‘twin challenges’

In the foreword to the consultation document, Owen Paterson MP, Secretary of State for Environment, said that ‘England faces the twin challenges of growing its economy and improving its natural environment… we must be open to new thinking about how our planning system deals with biodiversity if we are going to achieve these goals’.

He continued: ‘Our economy cannot afford planning processes that deal with biodiversity expensively and inefficiently or block the housing and infrastructure our economy needs to grow. Our environment cannot afford the wrong type of development, which eats away at nature… we should look at new ideas that could help it maintain and improve our ecosystems, air, water and soils as they underpin sustainable economic growth in the long-term’.

According to Defra, biodiversity offsetting is a ‘measurable’ way to counteract the residual damage to nature caused by development, which cannot be avoided or mitigated; this guarantees there is no net loss to biodiversity from development and can ‘often’ lead to net gain for nature.

Countries such as Australia, Germany, India and the United States, and over 20 others, are already using offsetting.

‘License to trash nature’

However, environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth (FoE) view the offsetting scheme as a ‘license to trash nature’.

FoE has identified ‘many’ risks from biodiversity offsetting, including that:

• communities could lose ‘cherished’ local nature sites with no opportunity to object and no say in where new habitats go;
• developers could use offsetting as a way of increasing the amount of ‘inappropriate’ development and pay to protect and enhance habitats in other locations where land is cheaper; and
• the true value of natural spaces will be ‘undervalued’ as offsetting won't account for nature's contribution to flood mitigation, human health, or pollination services provided by bees and other insects.

Sandra Bell, Friends of the Earth Nature Campaigner, said: "Nature is unique and complex - not something that can be bulldozed in one place and recreated in another at the whim of a developer. Instead of putting nature up for sale the Government should strengthen its protection through the planning system and set out bold plans to safeguard and restore wildlife across the UK."

The consultation will run until 7 November 2013, and a summary of responses will be published soon afterwards.

Read more about the biodiversity offsetting consultation.