The contested instruments of a new governance regime: Accounting for nature and building markets for biodiversity offsets
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 18 September 2017
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the processes involved in the creation and eventual demise of a market for biodiversity offsets in the UK. The reasons for the failure of this market to take hold as a governance mechanism are considered, and its subsequent effects examined.
Design/methodology/approach
The research examines a single case study of the creation of a pilot market for biodiversity offsets in the UK. Data include policy and industry papers, complemented with interviews with biodiversity offset practitioners, regulators and non-government organisations.
Findings
The case study demonstrates that a market for biodiversity offsets was piloted with the intent to contribute to the reform of the UK planning regime. However, disagreements about this political project, uncertainties in the knowledge base, and continued entanglements with existing biodiversity meant it was impossible to stabilise the assemblages necessary to support the market, leading to its eventual demise. However, the principles and devices of offsetting have proved more resilient, and have started to combine with the existing arrangements for the governance of nature.
Practical implications
The paper presents a situation where a political project to reform governance arrangements through the creation of a market was not successful, making it of interest to researchers and policymakers alike.
Originality/value
While biodiversity offsetting has been widely discussed from scientific, legal and political perspectives, this paper addresses it as a market, explicitly designed to become a part of a governance regime. It also advances the understanding of the mechanisms by which similar processes of marketisation can fail, and suggests avenues for future research in those contexts.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the organisers and participants of the Ecological Accounts streams at the Critical management Studies 2015 conference for the feedback and discussions on an early draft of the paper. The author would also like to thank the participants in the BESRES 2015 conference who provided comments to an early version of what eventually became this paper. Finally, the author would like to thank Dr Jennifer Ferreira and Prof Stewart MacNeill for additional comments.
Citation
Ferreira, C. (2017), "The contested instruments of a new governance regime: Accounting for nature and building markets for biodiversity offsets", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 30 No. 7, pp. 1568-1590. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2015-2336
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited