In this collective report, presented at the opening of the Un Convention on Biological Diversity COP16 in Cali, Colombia, we take a closer look at biodiversity offsets and credits, which are part of the plethora of market based schemes that are being presented as antidotes to the biodiversity crisis. Biodiversity offsets are in fact policy schemes that may or may not be market based, but we consider them as part and parcel of free-market capitalist ideology. Biodiversity offsets and credits promote and normalise the idea that the loss of biodiversity and nature in one area can be compensated for elsewhere. The various articles compiled here expose the myriad of problems associated with these schemes, showing that they are yet another false ‘solution’ proposed by the beneficiaries of neoliberal economic monetisation and financialization.
An independent think tank researching the financialisation of environmental policies