Early outcomes of England's new biodiversity offset market

Abstract

Abstract Nature markets are being operationalized as a tool to address the biodiversity finance gap and achieve global biodiversity targets. However, there is limited understanding of how the outcomes of these markets align with biodiversity targets. One example is the off‐site market supporting construction projects that are required to achieve biodiversity net gain (BNG) in England. To quantify the preliminary market outcomes after 16 months of operation, we collected data from England's offset register and planning portals. We evaluated these data to understand the habitat diversity being delivered through the market offsets and offset alignment with environmental targets such as 30×30 under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. We found that current habitat delivery is skewed toward a few habitat types, with other neutral grassland constituting 44% of planned habitat. There is very limited delivery of new wetland and woodland habitats, with most committed offsets being dedicated to improving the condition of existing habitats. More importantly, only approximately 2% of the registered offset area has been sold. Our results demonstrated how the habitat scoring system within the statutory biodiversity metric used to measure BNG is shaping the market through the creation of incentives to deliver particular habitat types. The potential demand constraints identified also highlight the role of government regulation in scaling the market. These lessons from the off‐site BNG market extend to other biodiversity offsetting systems and markets globally, particularly those that are using derivatives of England's biodiversity metric.