So apparently Caroline Spelman, the new UK Secretary of State for environment, food and rural affairs, will be considering “a new system of conservation credits to protect habitats,” in line with a manifesto promise.
Under the scheme proposed in the manifesto, any property development that results in biodiversity loss must compensate for that loss by an equal investment in biodiversity and habitat conservation or restoration elsewhere.
Or so says a generally favourable commentary in The Guardian by Ben Caldecott, head of UK & EU climate change and energy policy at Climate Change Capital (CCC), who actually thinks the whole thing should go global. Worth a try, why not? But will the scheme include agrobiodiversity? If the said property development, or whatever, resulted in loss of genetic diversity in crop landraces or local livestock breeds, would it likewise be brought to book? It would be nice, though perhaps naive, to think that it would.
Why just development? Why not shifts to different kinds of agriculture or cropping patterns?
You mean like this? I guess you were being sarcastic, though, right? Good point. One would have to work out whether there was an overall decrease in diversity, and whether that decrease was a global one, rather than merely local. Tough ask.