Environmental offset schemes: solution or second-place trade-off?
The recent development application submitted for our neighbour suburb, Alwyndal that entails an environmental trade off scheme introduced this concept in our community. But what is an environmental trade-off scheme and what does it entail? We aim to explain this mechanism that was born out of desperation, an attempt to resolve an environmental dead-end.
The right to a healthy environment recorded in section 24 of the Constitution already envisages conflicting interest –environmental conservation, human needs for constant development and the needs of future generations. And when we end up in a situation where we have to consider environmental trade-off schemes, we are already in a no-win position – the interests of one or even more of the above mentioned elements are bound to be sacrificed in favour of the other elements.
Environmental offset schemes aim to provide compensation in the event of significant, unavoidable environmental damages caused by a planned development project by creating a conservation gain elsewhere. And by the time we use terms like compensation, we already acknowledge that there was a loss and that some party drew a very short stick.
The primary aim is to achieve a situation of “no net loss” and a nett gain of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Key components of these schemes include:
A mitigation hierarchy: Offsetting does not constitute proactive environmental protection. It is always a last resource in the decision making process that follows the discipline of avoiding impacts, where these cannot be avoided, mitigating such unavoidable impacts and provide for rehabilitation of affected areas.
It forms part of another project scope, such as infrastructure development, mining or agricultural projects as a counterbalance for impacts on biodiversity, air and/ water quality.
It includes a component of like-for-like or better: Conservation gains from an offset project must compensate for similar ecological values to those that will be lost as a result of the proposed development. In the case that highly sensitive or irreplaceable biodiversity, off-set projects are not the appropriate solution; we move into the “no-go-scenario”.
Component of Additionality – a requirement for valid off-set projects is that it must provide a conservation benefit that would not have occurred without the proposed development. Think for example a proposal to preserve land that is already protected – this would not count as additional gain.
Legal security and permanence
Providing financial assurance for the duration of the development;
Ongoing measurement and monitoring of the project’s efficiency;
and Transparency.
Common examples of environmental off-set projects include carbon off-set programmes; biodiversity off-sets – compensating for the loss of species or habitats by restoring or protecting similar ecosystems elsewhere, water quality off-sets where the loss of wetlands is compensated by restoring protecting wetlands at a different location and air quality off-set programmes.
Off-set programmes are not without limitations or concerns, of which the most obvious is that it attempts to quantify the invaluable, in most cases it entails greenwashing (pretending to act environmentally responsible whilst the entity’s actions still amounts to destruction of the environment) and most off-sets fail or result in poor or undesirable outcomes. The lack of standardisation is another concern.
In the end environmental off-sets remain a last attempt effort to prevent or address environmental impacts and there is always a losing party in this equation. In most cases our precious biodiversity …. A case of legitimised sacrifice of one of the elements in the environmental management reality.
