No net loss accounting: aligning biodiversity offsets with ecosystem accounts.
Abstract
Biodiversity offsetting and ecosystem accounting are two rapidly developing fields that share a common goal: quantifying changes in ecosystems. Nevertheless, the intersection of these fields is often overlooked, despite the significant synergies they offer. This perspective paper explores this intersection from both sides, highlighting the benefits of ecosystem accounting for offsetting practice and the steps needed to make ecosystem accounts offsetting-ready. The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting-Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) is the most widespread and sophisticated framework for ecosystem accounting. This framework was designed to consistently quantify biodiversity changes at several spatial scales, including fine scales typically relevant for biodiversity offsetting. Furthermore, the components of this ecosystem accounting framework are also tightly related to the key concepts of biodiversity offsetting. To illustrate this, we provide a dictionary cross-linking the terminologies of the two fields. Despite the fundamental similarities, most ecosystem accounts developed today are not (directly) suitable for fine-scale use. We discuss the reasons for this, and the practical challenges of improving the suitability of ecosystem accounts for offsetting use. Solution: Aligning ecosystem accounts and biodiversity offsetting offers a huge opportunity for both fields, enhancing the standardisation of offsetting practices, and making them extensible to high level no net loss biodiversity targets. This can be achieved by using offsetting-relevant scalable biodiversity metrics as condition variables, and by implementing condition indices that yield meaningful offsetting currencies. We argue that future ecosystem accounting case studies should recognise offsetting and the quantification of net loss/gain as relevant use cases. And we also call for dedicated offsetting pilots that apply ecosystem accounts in concrete no net loss contexts, highlighting the transformative potential of harnessing these synergies for biodiversity policy.