Compensation

Governments, companies, banks and civil society are placing more emphasis on the rigorous application of the mitigation hierarchy to avoid, minimize and compensate for projects' impacts on biodiversity. The final step in the mitigation hierarchy sequence are biodiversity offsets to achieve No Net Loss (NNL) or Net Gain (NG). Thirty-nine countries have existing laws or policies on NNL/NG, biodiversity offsets or compensation, and twenty-two countries are developing them.

This study compares compensation approaches taken with respect to impacts on biological diversity in selected countries from four different continents: Africa, Asia, North America, and South America. Background on specific legal and institutional frameworks for each country are elaborated and assumptions for further research are formulated.