COMBO: Conservation Impact Mitigation and Biodiversity Offsets
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in partnership with Forest Trends (BBOP) and Biotope is implementing a “No Net Loss” (NNL) project funded by AFD/FFEM. The goal of the project is to contribute to the establishment and implementation of effective mechanisms to avoid, reduce, restore and offset impacts of biodiversity and ecosystems in order to achieve “No Net loss” or a “Net Gain” of biodiversity as well as generate additional funds from biodiversity offsets to fund conservation activities in Africa.
The COMBO Project Uganda component aims to addressing effects of planned/ongoing investments, in the longer term, through the mitigation hierarchy and implementing enduring and resilient offsets. The Project supports policy and institutional level interventions to institutionalize the Mitigation Hierarchy as an additional biodiversity conservation tool. The COMBO project works with government ministries (Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE), Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities (MTWA) and government agencies (National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) , National Forestry Authority (NFA), Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) and departments (Wetlands management Department (WMD), Department of Environment Support Services (DESS) etc.), private sector (in Oil and Gas Sector, Infrastructure Development, hydropower generation and transmission), and development partners to develop and apply mitigation hierarchy which will involve a sequence of four key actions – ‘avoid’, ‘minimize’, ‘restore’ and ‘offset’
Conservation Challenges
Major developments being carried out include transport infrastructure that is being upgraded in many areas, Agricultural infrastructure, oil and gas exploration and production, Hydropower development and tourism infrastructure. Some of these are being implemented inside or at the fringes of protected areas and have potential to cause negative environmental impacts.
Conservation Approach
Supporting the uptake of best practice in the application of the mitigation hierarchy will require different approaches, an integrated approach to planning within the landscape will be important to ensure ‘No Net loss’. There is need to increase efficiency in data collection, share monitoring protocols and stakeholders should share a common planning framework within the project landscape.
Goals
Reconciling economic development and biodiversity conservation by supporting government policies which improve mitigation of industry impacts
Strategy: supporting the uptake of best practice in the application of the mitigation hierarchy (i.e. Avoidance, Minimisation, Restoration and Offsets) for development project that impact biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Activities
COMPONENT 1: Improving policy to reduce development project impacts on biodiversity the policy experience gap analysis has been conducted.
COMPONENT 2: Developing tools to measure potential impacts on biodiversity, identifying measures to reduce impacts and developing baseline and monitoring methodology
COMPONENT 3: Developing institutional, legal and financial mechanisms for offset implementation, particularly those linked with conservation trust funds to secure the permanence of conservation outcomes
COMPONENT 4: Supporting the uptake of best practice in the public and private sectors, monitoring these initiatives and developing lessons learnt.
COMPONENT 5: Building national and regional capacity by sharing lessons learnt.
Threats
Uganda is undergoing rapid development across all sectors. The National Development Plan II (NDPII) proposes that by 2020, Uganda will be a middle income country and the development interventions envisaged by the Vision 2040 would invariably result in residual unavoidable impact on biodiversity resources. This implies that government will have to implement a number of reforms and undertake a number of deliberate policy changes which will have to be made in order to achieve this ambitious goal. Uganda being one of the most bio-diverse countries in Africa, containing more than half of Africa’s bird species and a wide range of vegetation types including semi-arid woodlands, montane forest and lowland forest measures have to be put in place to mitigate development impacts.
Accomplishments
The Uganda COMBO team completed all the assessments on policy, legal and experience gap analysis. The COMBO team contributed to the phrases on the mitigation hierarchy and biodiversity offsets in the National Environment Act 2019.
COMBO Uganda worked with the Ministry of Water and Environment to develop the National Biodiversity and Social Offset Strategy. The purpose of the NBSOS is to ‘ensure achievement of NNL/NG of biodiversity and associated social outcomes from development projects, thereby securing future economic growth, reconciling competing demands for land use, and enhancing the environment and its benefits for people for the long term’.
COMBO’s second objective was to prepare the implementation of the No Net Loss (NNL) or Net Gain (NG) principles by identifying and supporting national spatial planning processes, collection and analysis of data, design of metrics and exchanges rules adapted to specific contexts. Within this, our goal for demonstration landscapes is to show how appropriate policy and best practice relating to the mitigation hierarchy and NNL/NG) can be operationalized at the landscape level. Sound biodiversity data and knowledge management systems underpin robust mitigation planning and decision-making.
COMBO has further given support to UWA in developing sector biodiversity offset guidelines to guide development protected areas.
On best practices in the mitigating industrial impacts, COMBO has been instrumental in reviews ESIA reports to offer technical guidance in designing and implementing offsets.
Building National Capacity and regional capacity by sharing lessons learnt, a number of technical staff from government institutions, private sector and ESIA consultants have been offered skills in the Mitigation hierarchy. The goal of this training is to strengthen the capacity of institutions to design and implement the mitigation hierarchy, including offsets, as a planning and management tool for biodiversity conservation