Biodiversity is being lost at an accelerated rate due to human activity. Major causes include the loss of habitat due to construction of roads, buildings and other infrastructure. To tackle this issue, University of Helsinki, Finnish Environment Institute and University of Jyväskylä joint forces for a project “Biodiversity Now”, and submitted to the Challenge competition of University of Helsinki. The project won the second price in the competition. Our team investigates features and possibilities to establish a biodiversity offset market ensuring no net loss of biodiversity in Finland. Offsets are created by investments in habitat restoration and designed to compensate for biodiversity loss from development projects. Requiring compensations establishes the polluter pays principle to internalizing the external costs of biodiversity loss from development projects. The objective of the project is to develop an offsetting scheme in Finland to counteract harmful effects of land use. A pilot will be set up for investigating habitat banking as a mechanism for offsetting, aiming to create a market for offsets. In addition to University of Helsinki, SITRA and the Ministry of the Environment support the initiative.

Researchers:

Markku Ollikainen (Professor)

Johanna Kangas (Research assistant)

Projects:

 Biodiversity Now