As a fundamental component of risk management, leading companies now go beyond regulatory requirements to mitigate a broad range of environmental and social impacts. This helps maintain their social license to operate. However, corporate responsibility is poorly developed in the area of biodiversity, especially in developing countries where biodiversity is greatest [1]. This lack of action contrasts strongly with the plight of the world's biodiversity, which most recognize as highly threatened [2].
According to the voluntary guidelines of the Convention on Biodiversity, companies should first avoid, reduce, and then mitigate their impacts on biodiversity. One tool being developed to deal with the residual impacts is the biodiversity offset, wherein a company finances conservation project(s) that compensate for the unavoidable impacts of its operations, so there is no overall negative effect on biodiversity [3,4]. In some countries, offsets have become standard practice. For example, in Western Australia, government approval for new projects requires "net conservation benefits" that go beyond typical project-level mitigation [3-5]. These biodiversity offsets are similar to carbon offsets, wherein a company sequesters an equivalent amount of carbon to that it emits, thus ensuring that the company is 'carbon neutral' [6]. Compared to greenhouse gases however, biodiversity offsets have even greater complications that concern measurement, stakeholder preferences, and equivalence [3,4]; Table 1 summarizes the basic steps in an offset process. This paper examines if existing schemes that assess conservation priorities can be used to determine whether the habitat or species protected by an offset is at least equivalent in status to that affected by a company's operations, i.e., equivalence.
In the context of biodiversity, schemes that assess conservation priorities serve two major purposes in determining 'status'. In addition to determining equivalence, the schemes should help identify no-go areas, i.e., areas deemed too important, or where habitat loss is already too great, to allow any further impacts. Such a safeguard is necessary to avoid the further loss of rare and irreplaceable habitats and species. For example, companies in the International Council on Mining and Metals have committed themselves to avoid mining or exploration in World Heritage Sites [7]. A failure to manage biodiversity impacts has led to successful market campaigns against prominent companies [8].
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