Biodiversity Offsetting
Executive summary: Through the same pseudoscientific Ecosystem Approach we’ve seen of late in similar notes, all related to the Convention on Biological Diversity, biodiversity offsetting leads us to the unit of account - the BNG, ie, Biodiversity Net Gain, which was passed into British law through the Environmental Act of 2021, and will come into use in the 2024-25 timeframe, ultimately leading to higher costs for the construction industry.
The UK Houses of Parliament Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology evidently released a range of really interesting papers back in 2011, starting with the Ecohealth Approach, the Ecosystem Service Valuation, and Natural Capital Accounting, all three of which I previously reviewed -
In short, they describe an utterly lunatic ‘new economy’, centered around the concept of somehow fitting the circle into the square, and then claiming it’s a replacement of the existing economy. Only, of course, that the compensation they will require of you will no doubt be of the old type.
The Ecosystem Approach describes the ‘new economy’ as a whole, the Ecosystem Service Valuation assigns a component thereof a hypothetical value, and Natural Capital Accounting describes various gimmicks utilised, in order to maintain annual accounts for future Natural Asset Companies, given the plan here is to float them on the NYSE and LSE, and probably elsewhere.
The next document we will review relates to ‘Biodiversity Offsetting’, which - in short - describe a system, in which you have to create at least as many ‘biodiversity credits’ that you take away elsewhere, say, during construction. In other words, over the long run, restore more nature than construct, and thereby logically, long-term tear down civilisation itself.
And - of course - it’s chock full of guesswork, shortcuts, and claims of being able to predict chaos itself. If you read the previous articles, you should now be familiar with the concept.
‘Biodiversity offsetting is a market-based conservation tool that measures negative impacts on biodiversity, replacing the loss through improvements usually nearby.‘
So while you construct, you have to tear down elsewhere.
‘maintaining an equivalent amount of biodiversity elsewhere that would otherwise be lost, or by enhancing biodiversity at an alternate location‘
That’s the sound of the wheels coming undone already. Because first off, an example used later on is that of planting an equivalent amount of trees elsewhere, should you chop down some. In reality, however, you have absolutely no guarantee what that will yield, because they might actually disturb the existing biodiversity equilibrium on the new site. Or - worse - if you speak of ‘enhancing’, then you are stating that mankind is better at estimating a biodiversity equilibrium than nature itself, through pragmatic means. It’s absolutely astonishingly ignorant and arrogant at the same time.
And, sure, while you might be able to establish some sort of shallow argument relating to quantity of trees, just wait, because concessions made later on invalidate it all.
‘Offsets aim to achieve ‘no net loss’ or a ‘net gain’ of biodiversity.‘
Again, setting aside the ludicrous ‘accounting’ which never in a trillion years can account for all factors of, say, planted trees suddenly putting an existing, fragile ecosystem in danger due to unintended consequences, or through simply attracting different animals living in said, thereby impacting surroundings.
The best we can do is plant a few trees and hope for the best. And that really is such an astonishingly small part of the equation, yet, these people somehow are led to believe they can control full ecosystems. This, of course, will never happen.
As I said previously, even with a trillion IoT sensors in the air we still will not be able to predict the direction of a tornado, explicitly because the entire effect is completely chaotic. We can’t even predict the path of an ant crossing a tile in a garden, yet these people already have an entire economy planned around units of ‘biodiversity’.
Except, of course, that they’ve already front run the ‘landscape’, and that the entire thing in fact is nothing short of a scam, ultimately leading the world into feudalism. But more on that in a later article.
‘Offsetting remains largely undervalued, especially with regard to undervalued or as yet unknown biodiversity.‘
In other words, they will carry on rolling it out regardless.
With that, we’re finally out of the overview. Yes, really. Consequently, I will be somewhat more selective than in prior articles, because there is a lot of overlap.
‘Species are currently being lost up to 10,000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction‘
I’m pretty sure that’s a lie, but don’t have a source handy. Even more lies follow -
‘The major cause of this relatively recent trend is the alteration, fragmentation and destruction of habitats caused by human activities, including agriculture, forestry, transport, industry and housing.’
Oh really? Humans are the problem, in short?
’The annual economic cost of global biodiversity and ecosystem degradation is currently estimated to be £1.28-2.88 trillion, or around 7.5% of global GDP, and is likely to remain at that level through 2050 unless appropriate action is taken.‘
100% certified horse manure. It’s the same old throw in some absolutely ridiculous estimate and hope you don’t get called out. But what this does provide, is an anchor, so that down the line the crooks will go ‘see, our solution only costs $700bn per year, it’s cheap‘ - just as they did during the scamdemic… setting aside that they caused the biggest financial downturn through their enforced lockdowns.
‘Key to the success of future conservation efforts is recognition of the social and economic values of biodiversity by decision makers‘
Right, so key is for the ‘decision makers’ to recognise their quack science. And that word, ‘decision maker’, might make you think ‘politician’ or even ‘civil servant’ - but to them, it means ‘stakeholder’.
Let’s skip to Box 3 on page 2 -
‘The Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme (BBOP)… Offsets should… be implemented in a landscape context, taking into account biological, social, and cultural values involve stakeholders effectively in design and implementation; be designed and implemented in an equitable manner‘
Oh boy, the landscape context likely refers to an arbitraty spatial scale within the Ecosystem Approach, where scale is decided by - yes - the stakeholder, the values are similarly arbitraty, and also decided by you-know-who, and equitable itself is meaningless central planner jargon
Next, in the types of offsets section, we find -
‘The generalised offsetting process involves buyers, sellers, and, in the case of habitat banking, third-party intermediaries. The buyers are developers requiring land for agriculture, industry, housing or other development projects, whereas the sellers are suppliers of the land to be used as an offset for the property to be developed.’
In other words, the developer must ‘transfer’ an equivalent quantity of ‘biodiversity credits’ from site A to site B, should they fail to ‘offset’ locally (which they will).
’A range of third-party organisations, including local government, NGOs, insurers, brokers, traders and technical experts, may facilitate interactions between these two parties‘
Ah right, so another place for NGOs to sit and squeeze money out of the economy. How about ‘no’? But what is a ‘habitat bank’ anyway? Well, here are two examples.
‘Lease marginal land to create biodiverse habitats for developers. We offer the best deals for landowners on habitat banking and bespoke habitat creation schemes.‘
… yes, there’s even a brand new, parasitical industry launching in this space, and its core objective appears centered around making land unavailable.
‘... biodiversity net gain (BNG) seeks the measurable improvement in biodiversity through the development process. The delivery of BNG starts on-site ... local off-site credits that can be secured through habitat banks - its all in the name'
So the name for the central ‘biodiversity credit’ - is ‘biodiversity net gain’.
And just to get the point about making land unavailable, here’s from ‘Farmers Weekly’
As for the ‘biodiversity net gain‘, this concept already exists on the UK Government’s own site, and here it is -
‘Developers must deliver a biodiversity net gain of 10%. This means a development will result in more or better quality natural habitat than there was before development‘
It even follows with suggestions of applying similar quack science, calculating said ‘biodiversity units’, and if said developers can’t ‘offset’ enough ‘credits’, then the solution is to pay the government more taxes so they can plant some trees somewhere on the… Outer Hebrides on your behalf. Probably right next to an ever-expanding quarry.
It’s a tax, in short, which will then be added to the cost of the dwelling.
And to ram home that this really is legit - here’s the specific legislation; the Environment Act of 2021, passed by a… er, an alleged conservative government.
Latest news is that rollout has been slightly delayed, but still moving ahead -
Time to return to the HoP note. Let’s fast forward to page 3, and this bullet point -
‘Definition and valuation of biodiversity - unlike carbon credits, biodiversity measurements cannot easily be based on a single, quantifiable unit. Defining and quantifying biodiversity losses and gains always involves a subjective element, as at present, measuring every component of biodiversity is not achievable and knowledge of biodiversity is incomplete (e.g. at the microbial and genetic level).’
In other words, it’s pure guesswork. As if they will ever correctly estimate it at the microbial or genetic level. Absolutely ridiculous this is.
’Other crucial issues may also be overlooked, such as the effects of habitat fragmentation on dispersal, ecosystem function, and the loss of genetic diversity, as well as social views on the definition and value of biodiversity‘
… this is just pure lunacy. And they seek to base the entire ‘new economy’ around this?
Carrying on with more of the said lunacy -
‘Defining ‘enhancement’ - the upkeep of the offset site may include actions that could alter the landscape, compromising long-term viability of other species, so enhancement goals should take into account the health of entire ecosystems‘
In other words, unintended consequences. But to compensate, they should ‘take into account the health of the entire ecosystem’ - which they can’t even define, nor measure to any extent whatsoever apart from, it seems, counting a few trees.
See, the scale of epic fraud here is such that all of this clearly covers for an ulterior motive, because there is no way anyone is sufficiently dumb to actually believe this, once they’ve punched a hole through their opaque verbiage.
‘Though details of loss/gain calculations and potential delivery mechanisms have yet to be decided, at least one habitat banking organisation is in place and possible strategies of offset quantification have been published‘
What does this tell you? It tells me that said ‘habitat banking organisation’ is an inside job, quite frankly. The level of risk otherwise involved would likely not make it worthwhile to pursue, even for sakes of establishing an early name.
And finally -
‘Maintaining healthy, viable ecosystems over the long term contributes to human intergenerational well-being.‘
Is that linked with ‘intergenerational equity’ perchance?
‘To this end, biodiversity conservation needs to have a large-scale strategic vision, within which biodiversity markets, including carefully constructed and well-managed biodiversity offsetting schemes, may have a role to play.‘
May have a role to play.
May.