Biodiversity Offsets Threaten Both The Survival And The Meaning
Of Nature Propose a get-out clause and – however many warnings
and caveats you wrap round it – before long it will be used.
This post is about the dangerous new concept the government has
seeded in the minds of developers and planners. The idea is
called biodiversity offsetting. It involves trading places:
allowing people to destroy wildlife and habitats if, in return,
they pay someone to create new habitats elsewhere. In April the
UK government launched six pilot projects to test the idea,
which would run for two years. Four months ago, I wrote this:
“The government warns that these offsets should be used only to
compensate for ‘genuinely unavoidable damage’ and ‘must not
become a licence to destroy’; but once the principle is
established and the market is functioning, for how long do you
reckon that line will hold?” The answer, it seems, is “not very
long”. A year and a half before the pilot projects have been
completed, the new spirit of destr