Event Details

A public talk by Professor John O'Neill.

In policy making, biodiversity and other environmental goods are increasingly treated as ‘natural capital’ to be given monetary values and treated as goods that can be traded through ‘offset markets’. In biodiversity offset markets a developer causing biodiversity losses pays for biodiversity gains elsewhere so there is 'no net loss' and possibly a 'net gain' in biodiversity. This paper criticises the assumptions about the value of biodiversity that underpin this approach and the forms of injustice that are consequent upon it.