Biodiversity Offsetting/Ecosystems Markets Task Force

Thursday 5th September 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

The Government are today publishing a Green Paper on biodiversity offsetting and their response to the Ecosystems Markets Task Force (EMTF) report.

Published on 5 March 2013, the EMTF report made recommendations to enhance the environment and drive growth across a range of sectors, including water, energy, knowledge services, construction and manufacturing.

The taskforce’s report highlights and builds on many important areas that we are actively pursuing, such as anaerobic digestion and innovative woodland and water management. The Government’s response explains how we intend to drive these opportunities forward and maintain pace in our work to firmly establish natural capital in our decision making. The taskforce identified biodiversity offsetting as its first area for action.

Biodiversity offsets are conservation activities that are designed to give biodiversity gain to compensate for residual losses. They are different from other types of ecological compensation as they need to show measurable outcomes that are sustained overtime. Biodiversity offsetting is already used in more than 25 countries including Australia, Germany, India and the United States.

The Government are interested in how a biodiversity offsetting scheme tailored to England can help the country meet its need for both nature and development for its long-term prosperity. The planning system should help deliver both these objectives. The best planning decisions do manage to protect and enhance biodiversity; however, the system does not always work as well as it should. Some planning decisions take too long and the outcome can be too uncertain, which can hinder development. At the same time biodiversity impacts are not always adequately taken into account, or mitigated or compensated for in ways that deliver enduring environmental benefit.

Biodiversity offsetting has the potential to help the planning system deliver more for the environment and the economy. This Green Paper:

Explains what biodiversity offsetting is;

Sets out the Government’s objectives to avoid additional costs to developers and achieve better environmental outcomes and explores how offsetting could help achieve these objectives;

Sets out the options for biodiversity offsetting and the Government’s preference to give developers the choice to use offsetting and seeks comments;

Seeks evidence to improve Government’s understanding of the costs and benefits of biodiversity offsetting compared to existing approaches;

Asks questions about how detailed design of an offsetting system should be approached.

The biodiversity offsetting consultation paper and the Government’s response to the EMTF report have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses. The consultation runs until 7 November 2013. Following the consultation, the Government will develop their detailed proposals for using biodiversity offsetting and plan to set these out by the end of 2013.