The practice of biodiversity offsetting by mining companies is not a long-term sustainable solution to compensating for environmental impacts, academics have said.
Mining companies must develop better practices to ensure net zero loss for biodiversity due to an “unsustainable” offsetting model that can inflict social damage, Canadian academics said in a paper published in The Extractive Industries and Society.
Creating a conservation site near a mine has been promoted as “best practice” in biodiversity, with mines in Madagascar held up as the “showcase” for how the sector can operate responsibly, said report authors Lynda Hubert Ta and Bonnie Campbell of the University of Ottawa and the University of Quebec respectively.
However, mining firms’ biodiversity offsetting methods have “important shortcomings and cannot be considered as providing longer-term, environmentally sustainable solutions”, the authors said.
For example, the Ambatovy mine in eastern Madagascar has degraded approximately 2,065 hectares of forests home to threatened fauna and flora, the authors said. To offset the impact, the company has created protected areas totalling 28,740 hectares, they said.
Despite the larger size of the conservation areas, and potential environmental benefits, the company cannot necessarily compensate for impacts due to a lack of clearly established indicators to measure its biodiversity loss or gain, the authors said.
“It is difficult to estimate future environmental gains precisely or know whether the benefits of one zone of conservation will eventually equal a mining site’s losses in biodiversity,” the academics said.
“These zones’ real contribution to protecting biodiversity is therefore uncertain.”
Some of the problems with the biodiversity offsetting initiatives in Madagascar, according to the report, include:
- Some parts of one conservation area were already protected
- One offset project was selected due to being “threatened with extinction” despite already being “relatively well preserved” and isolated
- One area of lowland tropical forests was intended to offset an area of rare coastal forests
- One offset programme was planned to last as long as the life of the mine, but ecosystems can take much longer to fully recover
Biodiversity offsets can present a range of problems for communities, the paper said. For example, restricting activities such as gathering, clearing, and hunting can remove a source of income for locals.
“Restricting subsistence activities also affects wellbeing and reinforces or exacerbates inequalities and social tensions,” the authors said.
Managers of Ambatovy’s offsetting initiatives could imprison or fine locals who broke their rules by using resources from the area, they said. The offset projects also widen the influence of the mining company to affect communities beyond the boundaries of the mine operations.
“Though they are only indirectly affected by the mining projects themselves, recognising the rights of the communities affected by biodiversity offsets deserves further investigation. In short, biodiversity offsetting can lead to inequalities and environmental injustice.”
Offsetting projects must account for communities’ human rights to reduce their social risk while aiming to protect the environment, they said.
Madagascar has an enormous range of biodiversity that the country’s population depends upon for its survival, the authors said.
Some 43 countries require mining developments to offset some of their biodiversity impacts, while 63 enable voluntary offsetting, according to an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) paper published last year.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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