biodiversity offsetting

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a conservation policy approach that requires developers whose projects cause measurable harm to habitats or species to compensate for that harm by creating, restoring, or enhancing equivalent ecological value elsewhere; the goal is to achieve no net loss or even a net gain in biodiversity; offsetting is controversial because critics argue that ecologically complex habitats cannot be replicated or relocated without loss of irreplaceable value and that offsetting can function as a licence to damage protected environments if equivalence calculations are imprecise