Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #bng
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Can England build all the homes the govt says we need *whilst* staying within our carbon budget & achieving national biodiversity policy goals?
The answer's 🤯
So excited to share what we’ve been working on for the last year – our new Preprint osf.io/5kxce/
Mega 🧵:
The answer's 🤯
So excited to share what we’ve been working on for the last year – our new Preprint osf.io/5kxce/
Mega 🧵:
Turns out it's too complex & interesting for any one field to answer. So worked with amazing team of housing economist @jryancollins, ecological economist @CorletWalker, biodiversity scientists @wildbusiness @mattiacmancini & industrial ecologists @MichalDrewniok & Andre Serrenho
I study ecological impacts of infrastr. For years I’ve thought, "how much infrastructure is enough"? It’s all been inspired by the figure in Haberl et al. nature.com/articles/s4189…, showing past a certain point, there’s no correlation between more infrastructure & social progress.
Although not the most important thing right now, policymaking doesn't stop for global crises: the Biodiversity Net Gain #BNG consultation is open. I urge everyone who cares about English nature to respond. My consult recommendations based on our research conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…:
Q33. Do you agree that developers which are able to exceed the biodiversity gain objective for a given development should be allowed to use or sell the excess biodiversity units as off-site gains for another development, provided there is genuine additionality?
My take. The major problem here is that it assumes that the biodiversity units promised by developers on-site will be delivered in reality. If the governance is not in place to guarantee that, it risks letting developers sell unenforceable, overambitous promises as offsets.
As new Biodiversity Net Gain #BNG consultation comes out today, here's where I stand on 5 key controversies based on our work building & analysing the Biodiversity Net Gain database looking at the effects of the policy using real data (e.g. in our paper conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…)
1) Stacking and bundling. It is in the best interest of landholders producing biodiversity units to allow stacking, as they call sell multiple credit streams from the same restoration efforts. But my take: this is actually not what's best for the policy as a whole - here's why
Landholders sometimes advocate for stacking arguing it's unprofitable to do restoration based on a single credit stream - only >1 will generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile. However, you have to weigh it up against what that money could have been spent on otherwise
Biodiversity Net Gain. Wish there was actual, empirical evidence about what it might really mean for your company/local authority/England’s nature?
Our @DICE_Kent-led new paper in @ConLetters reports the results of the 1st evaluation of #BNG conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…. Monster🧵
Our @DICE_Kent-led new paper in @ConLetters reports the results of the 1st evaluation of #BNG conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…. Monster🧵
TLDR: Under #BNG, we lose open greenspace, traded for promises to deliver smaller, higher quality habitats in future. Offset system might be tiny: 95% of units in our sample delivered within development footprints themselves. Governance & the Metric need URGENT improvement.
Environment Bill is expected to mandate that all new developments under the Town & Country Planning Act achieve a mandatory net gain in biodiversity, measured using the Biodiversity Metric (3.0 released soon). Mandatory #BNG expected to be implemented nationally from autumn 2023.
As an academic working on understanding & how to get the best possible nature outcomes for #Biodiversity #NetGain #BNG, let me share a major worry that I see barely discussed at all, & which unaddressed could decimate the biodiversity impacts: 'cost-shifting'. /1
Cost-shifting occurs when an offsetting / biodv compensation policy is introduced under the rationale that nature conservation is underfunded, so we need new private finance to make up the shortfall. So, we set up offsetting to charge developers for their biodv impacts. /2
Fundamental idea here is that offsetting provides funding that is *additional* ie would not have been provided before. So, it assumes that conservation funding post-introduction of offsetting = funding from government before + funding from private sector through offsetting. /3
As mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain inches closer, update all on what the data says the impacts of #BNG will currently be on England's nature, without further changes. 📢📢📢Updated results of our database of all development projects within councils with Net Gain policies 📢📢 /1
Database now spans ~6000 new homes & industrial, research, transport, energy, & health/social care infrastructures; ~800 individual habitat patches. It's now a pretty good picture of where #BNG is leading. Built with @wildbusiness & team of wonderful forward-thinking planners /2
Headline results: #BNG currently associated with a 36% loss of area devoted to non-urban habitats (so urban habitats cover 16% of total footprint of development boundaries under baseline, and 50% under post-dev scenario). BUT, urban is mostly replacing croplands & pasture /3 
