Bezombes Lucie, Gaucherand Stéphanie, Kerbiriou Christian, Reinert Marie-Eve, Spiegelberger Thomas
Université Grenoble Alpes, Irstea, UR EMGR, 2 rue de la Papeterie-BP 76, F-38402, St-Martin-d'Hères, France.
EDF R&D, Laboratoire National d'Hydraulique et Environnement, 6 Quai Watier, F-78400, Chatou, France.
Environ Manage. 2017 Aug;60(2):216-230. doi: 10.1007/s00267-017-0877-5. Epub 2017 May 10.
In many countries, biodiversity compensation is required to counterbalance negative impacts of development projects on biodiversity by carrying out ecological measures, called offset when the goal is to reach "no net loss" of biodiversity. One main issue is to ensure that offset gains are equivalent to impact-related losses. Ecological equivalence is assessed with ecological equivalence assessment methods taking into account a range of key considerations that we summarized as ecological, spatial, temporal, and uncertainty. When equivalence assessment methods take into account all considerations, we call them "comprehensive". Equivalence assessment methods should also aim to be science-based and operational, which is challenging. Many equivalence assessment methods have been developed worldwide but none is fully satisfying. In the present study, we examine 13 equivalence assessment methods in order to identify (i) their general structure and (ii) the synergies and trade-offs between equivalence assessment methods characteristics related to operationality, scientific-basis and comprehensiveness (called "challenges" in his paper). We evaluate each equivalence assessment methods on the basis of 12 criteria describing the level of achievement of each challenge. We observe that all equivalence assessment methods share a general structure, with possible improvements in the choice of target biodiversity, the indicators used, the integration of landscape context and the multipliers reflecting time lags and uncertainties. We show that no equivalence assessment methods combines all challenges perfectly. There are trade-offs between and within the challenges: operationality tends to be favored while scientific basis are integrated heterogeneously in equivalence assessment methods development. One way of improving the challenges combination would be the use of offset dedicated data-bases providing scientific feedbacks on previous offset measures.
在许多国家，需要进行生物多样性补偿，以通过实施生态措施来抵消发展项目对生物多样性的负面影响。当目标是实现生物多样性“零净损失”时，这些生态措施被称为补偿。一个主要问题是确保补偿收益等同于与影响相关的损失。生态等效性通过生态等效性评估方法进行评估，该方法考虑了一系列关键因素，我们将其总结为生态、空间、时间和不确定性因素。当等效性评估方法考虑到所有因素时，我们称它们为“综合的”。等效性评估方法还应旨在以科学为基础且具有可操作性，这具有挑战性。全球已开发出许多等效性评估方法，但没有一种能完全令人满意。在本研究中，我们考察了13种等效性评估方法，以确定（i）它们的一般结构，以及（ii）与可操作性、科学基础和综合性相关的等效性评估方法特征之间的协同作用和权衡（在本文中称为“挑战”）。我们根据描述每个挑战实现水平的12条标准对每种等效性评估方法进行评估。我们观察到，所有等效性评估方法都有一个共同的结构，在目标生物多样性的选择、所使用的指标、景观背景的整合以及反映时间滞后和不确定性的乘数方面可能存在改进之处。我们表明，没有一种等效性评估方法能完美地结合所有挑战。在这些挑战之间以及挑战内部存在权衡：在等效性评估方法的开发中，可操作性往往受到青睐，而科学基础的整合则参差不齐。改进挑战组合的一种方法是使用专门的补偿数据库，这些数据库能提供有关先前补偿措施的科学反馈。
