Description
The Cross-Sector Biodiversity Initiative (CSBI) guide provides practical guidance, innovative approaches and examples to support operationalizing the mitigation hierarchy effectively. It clearly defines the four steps of the mitigation hierarchy—avoid, minimize, restore and offset—and their application with regard to managing biodiversity throughout the life cycle of an extractive project; provides clear, systematic guidance for determining and demonstrating biodiversity loss or gain as a result of mitigation efforts, highlighting links to ecosystem services where available and appropriate; offers practical measures for predicting and verifying biodiversity conservation outcomes over time; and offers insight into documenting and comparing costs and savings resulting from mitigation action or inaction.It is aimed at environmental professionals working in, or with, extractive industries and financial institutions who are responsible for overseeing the application of the mitigation hierarchy to biodiversity conservation, while balancing conservation needs with development priorities.