| dc.description.abstract | Loss of biodiversity is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Efforts to mitigate this challenge involve the implementation of biodiversity offsetting measures, that aim at fully compensating for biodiversity lost in one place by enhancing biodiversity gain in another. Although biodiversity offsetting is widely adopted, the efficacy of the measure is still questioned. This calls for more empirical assessments to ascertain the potential of the measure and the conditions influencing its outcomes. Among the forms of biodiversity offsetting is enhancing biodiversity in protected areas by financing activities that improve and/or strengthen their management. Focusing on this form of biodiversity offsetting, the candidate uses a mixed methods approach to ascertain the efficacy of the measure by; analysing the understanding, implementation, and the social and ecological impacts of biodiversity offsetting, using the Gangu Central Forest Reserve in Uganda as a case.
The thesis is composed of three interrelated articles and a Kappa which reveal that biodiversity offset measures are perceived as unable to fully compensate for lost biodiversity with equivalent biodiversity gains. In return the measures are implemented as ordinary compensation measures with no efforts to attain the no net loss goals required of the measure. This can lead to net biodiversity loss. The implementation and ecological outcomes of biodiversity offsets are dependent on existing local nature-society relations and dynamics in resource access and use. Biodiversity offset activities also trigger changes in the access to, use and control of resources, which significantly affect social livelihoods and potentially exacerbate social inequalities. The thesis argues for the incorporation of social benefits and values in biodiversity offset matrices. The thesis shows that biodiversity offset measures can improve the ecological status of the protected areas in which they are implemented. Restoration of the degraded Gangu Central Forest Reserve led to increases in forest cover, species composition, evenness and diversity. However, displacement of previous resource uses contributed to the conversion of large parts of the reserve outside the offset site and to continued illegal extraction of forest resources within the biodiversity offset site, threatening the permanence of the biodiversity offset benefits. | en_US |
