Biodiversity losses are occurring at an unprecedented rate, with ongoing environmental degradation at the expense of expanding economic activities. A transformative change is needed away from business-as-usual development and towards prioritizing the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. For the effective governance of biodiversity, a well-designed mix of policy instruments are needed that are suited to the local context. This PhD project examines the social-ecological implications of policy instruments for biodiversity governance, with an emphasis on biodiversity offsets. Offsets are a policy instrument where actions are taken to compensate for negative impacts to biodiversity caused by developments. I discuss how such policy instruments must be carefully designed and implemented to ensure positive outcomes for people and biodiversity.

In Paper I, I examined how biodiversity offset policies, which have been commonly misunderstood as a market-based mechanism, can be designed with various levels of involvement from market and state. I presented an ideal-typical typology based on the institutions from which biodiversity offsets are organised: Public Agency, Mandatory Market and Voluntary Offset. I identified the institutional arrangements of six offset policies using cross-case comparison and stakeholder mapping to analyse how the biodiversity losses and conservation measures are decided. Based on these results, I determined how the six policies relate to the ideal types. The results found that the government plays a key role not just in enforcing mandatory policies but also in controlling the supply and demand of biodiversity units, supervising the matching of biodiversity values or granting legitimacy to the offset. The paper concluded that commensurability of natural capital is restricted in offsets (biodiversity is always exchanged with biodiversity), while different degrees of commodification are possible depending on the policy design and role of price signals when trading credits.

In Paper II, I examined the implementation gap of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) objectives and global biodiversity targets at a (sub)national level. I identified obstacles to achieving the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and challenges faced in interpreting the CBD guidelines through a content analysis of biodiversity policy documents, participant observation as well as semi-structured interviews with experts at the 14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD. As compliance was found as a key challenge in the CBD, I presented insights for fostering the implementation and enforcement of biodiversity policies by drawing from concepts in international human rights law. In particular, I examined review mechanisms of human rights law and biodiversity agreements to determine the strategies used for compliance. The paper concluded that recognising the synergies between human rights and biodiversity can help strengthen review mechanisms for implementing the objectives of the CBD.The findings from Paper I provided a foundation for understanding the institutional design of national and local offset policies. In Paper II, I then broadened out to discuss the challenges faced in interpreting and implementing global biodiversity targets into national regulatory frameworks. Together, both papers analysed the institutional design and implementation of policy instruments, and examined their contributions to a transformation for the sustainable use of biodiversity.