Events
Towards no net loss and beyond	Charles Darwin House London 22 June, 29 September and 7 December 2010

A series of inter-disciplinary workshops, organised by the Natural Capital Initiative.

The Natural Capital Initiative is organising a series of workshops to address some of the most urgent cross-cutting challenges for the potential large scale implementation of biodiversity offsetting in the UK. These include practical (governance and policy) questions, scientific and environmental information challenges, and the question of how current biodiversity offsetting ideas might ultimately be oriented around ecosystem service provision.

The first workshop was held on 22 June 2010 at Charles Darwin House, London:Towards no net loss and beyond: Addressing practical challenges for biodiversity offsetting in the UK.

Further workshops in this series
• Towards no net loss and beyond: Addressing scientific and environmental information challenges for biodiversity offsetting in the UK (29 September 2010)
• Towards no net loss and beyond: Scoping the potential for offsetting of impacts on ecosystem services (7 December 2010)

Introduction
Biodiversity is vitally important as it is linked to the delivery of ecosystem services - the benefits that the natural environment provides for human welfare. Biodiversity conservation goes far beyond the protection of individual species and habitat types. The issue of declining biodiversity is being brought into focus in 2010 by the International Year of Biodiversity. There is an increasing desire across many sectors in the UK to find new ways of ensuring no net loss of UK biodiversity, as well as realising the goal of net gain.

The recent Foresight Land Use Report shows how, over the next 50 years, the UK will see significantly increased pressures on land to deliver multiple benefits for society. As part of this, the development of land for infrastructure, housing and industry may be expected to continue. The practice of offsetting for the ecological impacts of this activity has been put forward as one way of working towards the overarching goal of no net loss of biodiversity.

Biodiversity offsetting has been defined as: Measurable conservation outcomes resulting from actions designed to compensate for significant residual adverse biodiversity impacts arising from development plans or projects after appropriate prevention and mitigation measures have been taken.

There is now substantial experience of the implementation of biodiversity offsetting worldwide. In the UK, planning law and guidance is causing planning authorities to consider options for offsetting. European law, including the Habitats Directive, includes reference to offsetting. In its
UK Approach to Biodiversity Conservation, Defra specified offsetting as an option for consideration in efforts to find new ways of addressing loss of biodiversity, especially outside non-protected areas.

The report of a Defra-sponsored scoping study for how biodiversity offsets might be designed and used in the English context, provides some clear recommendations. This includes work to establish whether clearer guidance under the existing policy framework could provide a basis for new moves to achieve no net loss of biodiversity or whether new policy is required. A recent EC-commissioned study provides a detailed assessment of habitat banking, one mechanism for delivering biodiversity offsets.

Getting involved
Limited places are available at each workshop. To register your interest, please contact Dr Bruce Howard or Ceri Margerison of the British Ecological Society,. There will be no charge for participation.