Offsetting environmental impacts beyond climate change: the Circular Ecosystem Compensation approach

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science and Management
• Ecological Economics
• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Background:

• Existing climate neutrality and offsetting schemes face limitations in theoretical impact scenarios and scope.
• The Paris Agreement emphasizes the need for robust environmental compensation strategies.
• There is a growing demand for comprehensive environmental impact offsetting beyond carbon emissions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and detail the Circular Ecosystem Compensation (CEC) approach for environmental offsetting.
• To address limitations of current schemes by incorporating a broader range of environmental impacts.
• To explore CEC as a potential pathway towards 'environmental neutrality'.

Main Methods:

• The CEC approach involves six steps: LCA, impact reduction, cost monetization, value derivation, ecosystem restoration, and monitoring.
• It integrates Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results with Ecosystem Valuation, using monetization of environmental costs and restoration benefits.
• A case study demonstrates the practical implementation of the CEC approach.

Main Results:

• CEC enables offsetting of diverse environmental impacts (acidification, eutrophication, land/water use) through real ecosystem restoration.
• Environmental burdens and benefits are balanced monetarily, linking product/organizational impacts to ecosystem regeneration.
• The case study illustrates the feasibility of implementing CEC in practice.

Conclusions:

• CEC provides a comprehensive framework for environmental offsetting, moving beyond climate neutrality towards environmental neutrality.
• Challenges include integrating impact categories, monetization data, temporal lags, and proving cost-efficiency.
• Further testing and development of CEC are recommended to enhance robustness in offsetting environmental impacts.