Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme

The Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme (BBOP) is a collaborationof more than 80 leading organizations and individuals including companies, financial institutions, government agencies and civil society organizations, who are members of its Advisory Group. Together, the members are testing and developing best practice on biodiversity offsets... and conservation banking worldwide. The BBOP partners wish to show, through experience in a range of industry sectors, that biodiversity offsets can help achieve significantly more, better and more cost-effective conservation outcomes than normally occurs in infrastructure development. The BBOP partners believe that demonstrating no net loss of biodiversity can help companies secure their license to operate, better manage their costs and liabilities, and improve outcomes for affected communities. We have developed a set of principles and methodologies informed by the on-the-ground experiences of our business partners to help developers demonstrate no net loss of biodiversity. In January 2012 BBOP released its Standard on Biodiversity Offsets which can be used by companies and auditors to assess risk and determine whether an offset has been designed and subsequently implemented in accordance with international best practice, as described in the BBOP Principles. BBOP's goals include: To provide a global forum for collective learning, the dissemination of biodiversity mitigation and offset concepts and the sharing of experience on implementation. To assist developers in designing and implementing mitigation measures including offsets that produce measurable and long term conservation outcomes in the widest range of countries and sectors possible. To support the development of institutional, legal and regulatory frameworks which support no net loss and preferably a net gain of biodiversity, including biodiversity offsets. To improve biodiversity offset concepts methods informed by practical experience and research and scientific practice. To promote development and ...Read More