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Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies
The development and private sectors are increasingly considering “biodiversity offsets” as a strategy to compensate for their negative impacts on biodiversity, including impacts on great apes and their habitats in Africa. In the absence of national offset policies in sub-Saharan Africa, offset desig...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4221092/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25372894 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111671 |
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author | Kormos, Rebecca Kormos, Cyril F. Humle, Tatyana Lanjouw, Annette Rainer, Helga Victurine, Ray Mittermeier, Russell A. Diallo, Mamadou S. Rylands, Anthony B. Williamson, Elizabeth A. |
author_facet | Kormos, Rebecca Kormos, Cyril F. Humle, Tatyana Lanjouw, Annette Rainer, Helga Victurine, Ray Mittermeier, Russell A. Diallo, Mamadou S. Rylands, Anthony B. Williamson, Elizabeth A. |
author_sort | Kormos, Rebecca |
collection | PubMed |
description | The development and private sectors are increasingly considering “biodiversity offsets” as a strategy to compensate for their negative impacts on biodiversity, including impacts on great apes and their habitats in Africa. In the absence of national offset policies in sub-Saharan Africa, offset design and implementation are guided by company internal standards, lending bank standards or international best practice principles. We examine four projects in Africa that are seeking to compensate for their negative impacts on great ape populations. Our assessment of these projects reveals that not all apply or implement best practices, and that there is little standardization in the methods used to measure losses and gains in species numbers. Even if they were to follow currently accepted best-practice principles, we find that these actions may still fail to contribute to conservation objectives over the long term. We advocate for an alternative approach in which biodiversity offset and compensation projects are designed and implemented as part of a National Offset Strategy that (1) takes into account the cumulative impacts of development in individual countries, (2) identifies priority offset sites, (3) promotes aggregated offsets, and (4) integrates biodiversity offset and compensation projects with national biodiversity conservation objectives. We also propose supplementary principles necessary for biodiversity offsets to contribute to great ape conservation in Africa. Caution should still be exercised, however, with regard to offsets until further field-based evidence of their effectiveness is available. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4221092 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42210922014-11-12 Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies Kormos, Rebecca Kormos, Cyril F. Humle, Tatyana Lanjouw, Annette Rainer, Helga Victurine, Ray Mittermeier, Russell A. Diallo, Mamadou S. Rylands, Anthony B. Williamson, Elizabeth A. PLoS One Research Article The development and private sectors are increasingly considering “biodiversity offsets” as a strategy to compensate for their negative impacts on biodiversity, including impacts on great apes and their habitats in Africa. In the absence of national offset policies in sub-Saharan Africa, offset design and implementation are guided by company internal standards, lending bank standards or international best practice principles. We examine four projects in Africa that are seeking to compensate for their negative impacts on great ape populations. Our assessment of these projects reveals that not all apply or implement best practices, and that there is little standardization in the methods used to measure losses and gains in species numbers. Even if they were to follow currently accepted best-practice principles, we find that these actions may still fail to contribute to conservation objectives over the long term. We advocate for an alternative approach in which biodiversity offset and compensation projects are designed and implemented as part of a National Offset Strategy that (1) takes into account the cumulative impacts of development in individual countries, (2) identifies priority offset sites, (3) promotes aggregated offsets, and (4) integrates biodiversity offset and compensation projects with national biodiversity conservation objectives. We also propose supplementary principles necessary for biodiversity offsets to contribute to great ape conservation in Africa. Caution should still be exercised, however, with regard to offsets until further field-based evidence of their effectiveness is available. Public Library of Science 2014-11-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4221092/ /pubmed/25372894 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111671 Text en © 2014 Kormos et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Kormos, Rebecca Kormos, Cyril F. Humle, Tatyana Lanjouw, Annette Rainer, Helga Victurine, Ray Mittermeier, Russell A. Diallo, Mamadou S. Rylands, Anthony B. Williamson, Elizabeth A. Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies |
title | Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies |
title_full | Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies |
title_fullStr | Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies |
title_full_unstemmed | Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies |
title_short | Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies |
title_sort | great apes and biodiversity offset projects in africa: the case for national offset strategies |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4221092/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25372894 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111671 |
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