Win-win? Balancing people's uses of nature with biodiversity No Net Loss
Keywords: Biodiversity No Net Loss
Social impacts of economic development
Values attributed to nature
Hydropower
Biodiversity offsets
Uganda
Social impacts of biodiversity offsetting

Governments, businesses and lenders worldwide are increasingly adopting a ‘No Net Loss’ (NNL) objective for biodiversity, often partly achieved through biodiversity offsetting as the last step in a hierarchy of mitigation measures (avoidance, minimisation, remediation and offsetting). Offsets aim to balance residual losses of biodiversity caused by development in one location with commensurate gains at another. For offsets to be effective, they need to be designed and implemented to satisfy ecological, economic and social needs. Incorporating the values that people place on nature, including biodiversity, into offset designs can help to make them more sustainable and equitable.
While ecological challenges to achieve NNL are debated, the associated gains and losses for local people have received less attention. International best practice suggests that offsets should make local people ‘no worse off’, but there is a lack of clarity concerning how to achieve this with regard to people’s use and non-use values for nature, especially given the inevitable trade-offs when compensating biodiversity losses with gains elsewhere. This is particularly a challenge for countries such as Uganda, where poor people depend on natural resources; badly planned offsets can exacerbate poverty, and development and offset impacts can vary spatially, temporally, and by location, gender and livelihood.
I conceptualise the ‘no worse off’ principle, and propose a definition for determining whether people are ‘no worse off, or preferably better off’ in the context of biodiversity NNL: project-affected people (appropriately aggregated) should perceive the component of their wellbeing associated with biodiversity losses and gains to be at least as good as a result of the development project and associated biodiversity offset, throughout the project lifecycle, than if the development had not been implemented.
I then explore how this ‘no worse off’ principle and definition can be operationalised, using the Bujagali and Isimba Hydropower Projects and the associated Kalagala Offset in south-eastern Uganda as a case study. I use a human wellbeing framework to evaluate local people’s perceived social impacts (both positive and negative) of the two hydropower projects on their perceived wellbeing. I explore how these perceived impacts vary geographically and between socio-demographic groups, thereby providing insight into what appropriate aggregation unit (individual, household, interest group, village or region) could potentially be used when measuring impacts on people’s wellbeing. Once the perceived social impacts have been identified, I use a mixed-methods approach to understand the cultural dynamics of the study area and, in particular, the perceived impacts of the development projects and offset on local people’s nature-based cultural values. This aims to address the lack of empirical research on incorporating people’s non-use cultural values associated with nature into a biodiversity NNL strategy for individual developments, including biodiversity offsetting. Lastly, I use a stated preference choice experiment to solicit local people’s preferences for different proposed compensatory activities as part of a biodiversity offset, with the aim of improving the benefits that offsets generate for people. This provides an empirical example of how choice experiments can be used to inform socially acceptable biodiversity offset designs.
The research findings highlight the importance of designing project-level NNL strategies that account for the use and non-use values that local people attribute to nature. This will help improve the social acceptability of a combined development and biodiversity offset, and provide insight into how governments, financial institutions and developers can design, implement and maintain equitable and sustainable project-level NNL strategies that protect nature but also leave local people ‘no worse off, or preferably better off’.