Abstract:
Increasing pressure for the conversion of tropical and sub-tropical wetlands and
forests to alternative land usage raises the possibility that biodiversity offsets will
increasingly take centre stage in biodiversity conservation planning and ecosystem
restoration discourses. This article explores the major discourses on and utility of
biodiversity offsets in the African context with a view to identifying and articulating
some of the challenges and opportunities evident in attempts to operationalise the
concept in practice. The discussion establishes that as intuitively pleasing as they
have become in recent years, with potentially large benefits expected to be derived
from offset initiatives, several significant hurdles need to be overcome for them
to become well established practice in Africa. For instance, some observers have
argued strongly that, in practice, land use and wetland mitigation in most countries
have come nowhere near achieving the goal of ‘no-net-loss’. There are also enduring questions about the credibility of the formulae used to calculate net-losses and
net-gains in biodiversity offset schemes. In the light of these and other outstanding
questions, the article concludes that biodiversity offsets may seem simple but are
much more complex to design and implement to the extent that they become really
convincing as a conservation tool for businesses in Africa.
