Biodiversity offsets are conservation activities intended to compensate for the residual, unavoidable harm to biodiversity caused by development projects. Recent experience with regulatory regimes, such as wetland and conservation banking in the USA, tradable forest conservation obligations in Brazil and habitat compensation requirements in Australia, Canada and the EU, has been supplemented by growing interest in the potential of voluntary biodiversity offsets. This experience suggests that biodiversity offsets may be of value to business, government, local communities and conservation groups alike. While the benefits of biodiversity offsets are potentially large, several significant hurdles need to be overcome to realize them. This report discusses the limitations of biodiversity offsets and the steps needed to develop the approach further.
