Offsetting Nature? Habitat Banking and Biodiversity Offsets in the English Land Use Planning System

Land use planning is a key arena for the spectacles of localism and marketisation being staged by our self-proclaimed greenest government ever. A new “presumption in favour of sustainable development” aims to encourage housebuilding and other development by simplifying and decentralising the planning system, while protecting the natural environment. This protection is in part to be achieved through a new market in off-site mitigation, supplementing existing policies which (can) require onsite mitigation of habitat degradation. The proposed system allows developers to offset deleterious impacts on biodiversity in one place by paying for improvements somewhere else, at a market rate. The message is that this “habitat banking” system will not only aggregate small habitats into ecologically significant reserves, while facilitating the ‘development’ we allegedly need to escape financial crisis, but also open up new income streams for landowners and reserve managers to spend on habitat conservation. By moving mitigation somewhere else, however, it will also reinforce the message that humans and other species live in separate places, that the non-human is not present in everyday life, but inhabits a separate world, which is fragile and in need of protection. This paper argues that displacing and marketising the mitigation of habitat degradation may serve to entrench this separation, thus retarding rather than facilitating the emergence of ecologically sustainable human settlements. It examines the use of habitat banking and biodiversity offsetting in the English planning system, and situates this in an international context, before offering some brief reflections on its likely effects and broader implications

Mega-sporting Events as Experience Goods

This paper tests the hypothesis that a nation’s hosting of a mega-sporting event is an experience good for its residents. Applying data from an ex-ante and ex-post query based on contingent valuation methods, we use the Soccer World Cup 2006 as a natural experiment. The significant ex-post increase in valuation is shown to be due to adventitious citizens requiring an involving experience, rather than to an updating of a-prior assessment.Experience goods, contingent valuation method, World Cup

Green Infrastructure’s contribution to economic growth: a review

The purpose of this report is to assess whether investment in Green Infrastructure increases economic growth, based on the available evidence. We take Green Infrastructure (GI) to mean a planned approach to the delivery of nature in the city in order to provide benefits to residents1. This includes features such as street trees, gardens, green roofs, community forests, parks, rivers, canals and wetlands. Economic growth is defined as an increase in economic activity as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Specifically we are interested in whether investment in GI increases GDP compared to what would have happened without the investment. We approached the question in two ways, firstly considering the weight of evidence supporting relevant logic chains and secondly reviewing case studies

The Potential Tourism Impact of Creating the World's Largest Marine Reserve in the Pitcairn Islands

The Pitcairn Islands, by virtue of their small size and isolation, do not have many obvious economic options, but tourism based on their environment and history is an opportunity that could provide employment, income, and increased connection to the outside world. The creation of the world's largest marine reserve in the Pitcairn Islands would greatly enhance the territory's image and provide an opportunity for increased awareness of the islands and their unique tourism offerings. The proposed marine reserve represents a realistic opportunity for building a sustainable economic future for Pitcairn's resident population. Environmentally responsible marine tourism has enormous potential for generating reliable revenues for the Pitcairn islanders and overcoming chronic problems of economic marginalisation caused by the islands' extreme geographic isolation

Induced Civic Pride and Integration

This paper investigates whether a nation’s contingent value of hosting a mega-event depends on past experience with implied public goods benefits for its residents. Applying data from an ex-ante and ex-post query based on contingent valuation methods, we use the FIFA World Cup 2006 as a natural experiment. The significant ex-post increase in valuation is shown to be due to adventitious citizens requiring an involving experience, rather than to an updating of a prior assessment. The World Cup finals were the first mega-event hosted by reunified Germany. We use this landmark event in German contemporary history to investigate how the integration of the two parts of Germany progressed after 18 years of reunification. We still find a profound difference in clear-sighted civic awareness of East and West German individuals. However, civic pride induced by collective experience can considerably accelerate the convergence of East Germans’ preferences towards those of West Germans, which Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln (2007) recently calculated to take 20 to 40 years or one and a half generation.experience goods, contingent valuation, civic awareness, German reunification

Mapping and valuation of ecosystems and economic activities along the coast of Cameroon: implications of future sea level rise.

The vulnerability of the coastal zone of Cameroon to flooding from sea level rise (SLR) was quantified using Geographic Information System (GIS) flooding analysis. The main economic activities and ecosystems along this area were iden tified using secondary data. Valuations of non- market values of ecosystems were based on the ecosystem service product method. The low-lying coastal areas were found to be physically and socio-economically susceptible to impacts of SLR due to their high ecological and economic value. A digitised land use/land cover (LULC) classification was produced from low resolution topographic maps and Google Earth images of the area. The digital elevation model (DEM) used was acquired by the shuttle radar topography mission. Evaluation of potential land loss due to inundation was based on empirical approaches using minimum and maximum scenarios of 2 and 10 m flooding. These were estimated considering the best available SLR data for the area, mean high water levels and wave heights during storms. The estimated SLR range from 2.3 m to 9.2 m for the low and high scenarios, respectively, by 2050 and from 2.6 m to 9.7 m for the low and high scenarios, respectively, by the year 2100. Results indicate that 112 km 2 (1.2 %) and 1,216 km 2 (12.6 %) of the coastal area will be lost from a 2 m (equivalent to a low scenario by 2050) and 10 m (equivalent to a high scenario by 2100) flooding, respectively. 0.3 % to 6.3 % of ecosystems worth US$ 12.13 billion/yr could be at risk of flooding by the years 2050 and 2100. The areas under a serious threat cont ain mangroves, sea and airport, residential and industrial areas of Douala. Main plantation crops of banana and palms will be slightly affected. The identification of the soci o-economic impacts of projected SLR on vulnerable coastlines and populations is important for timely actions to be taken in mitigating the effects of natural disasters in the coastal zone

Valuing the Cultural Monuments of Armenia: Bayesian Updating of Prior Beliefs in Contingent Valuation

We use contingent valuation to place a value on the conservation of built cultural heritage sites in Armenia. When we present the hypothetical scenario in the questionnaire we spell out what would happen to the monuments in the absence of the government conservation program. We posit that respondents combine such information with their own prior beliefs, which the questionnaire also elicits, and that the WTP for the good or program is likely to be affected by these updated beliefs. We propose a Bayesian updating model of prior beliefs, and empirically implement it using the data from our survey. We find that uncertainty about what would happen to the monument in the absence of the program results in lower WTP amounts.Valuation of Cultural Heritage Sites, Non-Market Valuation, Contingent Valuation, Bayesian Updating, Prior Beliefs