What, If Anything, Is Wrong with Offsetting Nature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20143680 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Karin Edvardsson Björnberg (0000-0003-4063-3219, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Sweden, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 749-768 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.12287 |
| OpenAlex | W3096890914 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 26 |
Biodiversity offsetting is an increasingly popular policy instrument used to compensate for losses in biodiversity and ecosystem services caused by development projects. Although evidence suggests that offsetting can yield significant environmental benefits, application of the policy instrument is surrounded by controversy. Among other things, critics argue that offsetting builds on normatively contentious assumptions regarding the value of nature and the fungibility of biodiversity components, such as species, habitats, ecosystems, and landscapes. A large portion of the criticism targets the allegedly illegitimate commodification of nature that the policy instrument entails. Exploring the significantly more developed normative discussion on carbon offsetting, this article identifies four arguments that plausibly could be made to support the claim that it is wrong to commodify nature in the way biodiversity offsetting schemes do: the common ownership argument, the price argument, the non‐substitutability argument, and the “crowding out” argument. Although none of the arguments definitively invalidate the use of biodiversity offsets, they provide good reasons to proceed with caution when designing and implementing them
Argument (complex analysis) · Biodiversity · Biology · Commodification · Criticism · Economics · Economy · Ecosystem · Ecosystem services · Fungibility · Law and economics · Natural resource economics · Normative · Political science · Positive economics · Public economics · Value (mathematics) · Ecology · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Environmental Conservation and Management · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Law
The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics
The Varieties of Intrinsic Value
Motivation Crowding Theory
Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment
The Gift Relationship
Animal RightsCurrent Debates and New Directions
Motivation crowding by economic incentives in conservation policy
The Last Man Argument Revisited
The ethics of emissions trading
Markets, Morality and Climate Change
The Ethics of Emissions Trading
The Goodness of Means
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |