A framework for considering coral ecosystem services for biodiversity offsets

Biodiversity offset practices often focus solely on securing ecological validity, despite biodiversity providing various human benefits such as ecosystem services (ES); the use of which is often lost by both the development project and the offset itself. In this paper, a framework is suggested to rationally examine the compensatory measures for ES use losses and tested with actual offset cases in developing countries, focusing on endangered coral ecosystems. In the framework, we first evaluate the necessity of compensatory measures for the losses of coral ES (CES) uses then suggest the restoration measures of CES uses instead of provisions for livelihood supports. The restoration measures include the provision of alternative sites and improvements to reduce the environmental load of the uses. The framework revealed that the necessity of compensation measures and the suitable restoration measure are varied depending on the original location and type of the CES uses, even within small areas. Together with optimum offset site selection, restriction of the destructive CES uses, integrating existing community-based resource management schemes, these careful considerations of CES in biodiversity offset provides hint that enable local people to achieving a balance between conservation and use. However, state of CES uses and corals should be monitored to ensure the framework effect. We further discuss the condition to apply this framework.