Biodiversity banking

Biodiversity banking, also known as biodiversity trading or conservation banking, biodiversity mitigation banks, compensatory habitat, set-asides, biodiversity offsets, are conservation activities that compensate for the loss of biodiversity with the goal of biodiversity maintenance through a framework which allows biodiversity to be reliably measured, and market based solutions applied to improving biodiversity. Biodiversity banking provides a means to place a monetary value on ecosystem services. Typically this involves land protection, restoration, an/or enhancement. Biodiversity banking is often applied so that there is no "net loss of a particular biodiversity feature." According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, by 2004, interest in voluntary biodiversity offsets was growing in the United States, Brazil, Australia, Canada and the EU. Experience suggested that industry, governments, local communities and conservation groups all benefit from biodiversity offsets or biodiversity banking.

According to the IUCN, "[b]iodiversity offsets are designed to compensate for residual environmental damage caused by development after avoidance, minimization, and mitigation of environmental impacts have been considered and implemented. The goal of offsets is to compensate for the loss of biodiversity at one location with conservation gains elsewhere."

In practice, biodiversity banks rely on existing governmental laws, which forbid companies or individuals of buying up land in an area that houses, say a critically endangered species. An exception is also in place in this governmental law which allows companies to buy up the land nonetheless, if they also buy a certain amount of compensation credits with a certified biodiversity bank. These credits, which represent a significant extra cost to the company, are then used to provide revenue for the biodiversity bank, but the revenue derived thereof is also used by the bank to buy up conservation area elsewhere for the endangered species.

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