No to Biodiversity Offsetting! | Corporate Europe Observatory

No to Biodiversity Offsetting! | Corporate Europe Observatory:

140 organisations from all over the world released this statement to say ‘No to biodiversity offsetting’ at the opening of the World Forum on Natural Capital in Edinburgh. The statement was launched in a counter forum on Natural Commons taking place in Edinburgh at the same time. CEO is one of the signatories.

Around the world, ecosystems and the communities that depend on them are harmed by large infrastructure projects, extractive industries and new financial markets1. To facilitate these activities, public and private entities are promoting new schemes to allow their environmental impacts to be ‘offset’. This could lead to an increase in damage, but even more concerning is that it commodifies nature. This is why the undersigned organisations are warning the world of the negative impacts of this false solution and saying “No to Biodiversity Offsetting.”

Biodiversity offsetting is the promise to replace nature destroyed and lost in one place with nature somewhere else. As with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and schemes to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), biodiversity offsetting relies on ‘experts’ to create dubious calculations that claim to make one piece of the earth equal to another. It pretends you can trade places.