TY - JOUR
T1 - Neoliberal policy refugia: The death and life of biodiversity offsetting in the European Union and its member states.
AU - Corbera, Esteve
AU - Lave, Rebecca
AU - Robertson, Morgan
AU - Maestre Andres, Sara
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2021 The Authors. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers).
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - The past decade has been a dynamic one for biodiversity offsetting policy. Efforts to incorporate offsetting into the Convention on Biological Diversity as a compliance mechanism did not succeed. The expansion of offsetting outside of the Natura 2000 network in the European Union (EU), which looked all but inevitable in the early 2010s, was withdrawn in the face of unexpectedly strong opposition from environmental groups and the business sector. Highly publicised offsetting programmes in some EU countries have had mixed outcomes, and many observers describe offsetting as a failed policy. And yet four years of interviews and policy analysis in Brussels, Spain, and England suggest that reports of offsetting's death may be exaggerated. While the possibility of an overarching EU Directive aimed at harmonising offsetting policy and practice across the region's countries seems unlikely, in Spain, offsetting has returned to the national policy arena via adoption as an implementation tool within the national Green Infrastructure Strategy. Offsetting in England persists in a handful of counties as a locally situated development strategy, and seems to have returned at the national level despite its spectacular flame-out in 2014. This is not, after all, a high-profile failure of neoliberal environmental policy. Rather, we see offsetting's persistence as a result of policy refugia: the retreat to small but amenable jurisdictions where offsetting policies can wait out inclement policy conditions and then emerge to recolonise the policy landscape when conditions improve.
AB - The past decade has been a dynamic one for biodiversity offsetting policy. Efforts to incorporate offsetting into the Convention on Biological Diversity as a compliance mechanism did not succeed. The expansion of offsetting outside of the Natura 2000 network in the European Union (EU), which looked all but inevitable in the early 2010s, was withdrawn in the face of unexpectedly strong opposition from environmental groups and the business sector. Highly publicised offsetting programmes in some EU countries have had mixed outcomes, and many observers describe offsetting as a failed policy. And yet four years of interviews and policy analysis in Brussels, Spain, and England suggest that reports of offsetting's death may be exaggerated. While the possibility of an overarching EU Directive aimed at harmonising offsetting policy and practice across the region's countries seems unlikely, in Spain, offsetting has returned to the national policy arena via adoption as an implementation tool within the national Green Infrastructure Strategy. Offsetting in England persists in a handful of counties as a locally situated development strategy, and seems to have returned at the national level despite its spectacular flame-out in 2014. This is not, after all, a high-profile failure of neoliberal environmental policy. Rather, we see offsetting's persistence as a result of policy refugia: the retreat to small but amenable jurisdictions where offsetting policies can wait out inclement policy conditions and then emerge to recolonise the policy landscape when conditions improve.
KW - England
KW - European Union
KW - Spain
KW - interviews
KW - neoliberal conservation
KW - offsetting
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85102446845&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/tran.12434
DO - 10.1111/tran.12434
M3 - Article
SN - 0020-2754
VL - 46
SP - 255
EP - 269
JO - Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
JF - Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
IS - 2
ER -