The Biodiversity Offsets Scheme (BOS) is an important part of the NSW Government’s approach to balancing the need for development in NSW while also protecting the environment. The scheme builds on 15 years of experience in using market-based approaches to biodiversity conservation.
Reporting on the performance of the BOS is fundamental to delivering on the Biodiversity and Conservation Act 2016 and making continual improvements to the program.
There are two main components when considering the performance of the BOS:
- Biodiversity performance – outcomes related to biodiversity including species and ecosystems
- Market performance – the number of trades that take place, the market price of the credits, differences between supply and demand for the credits
IDEEA Group aligned the concepts and definitions in the UN SEEA with the BOS to report on BOS market performance. The work included three key areas:
- developing the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) conceptual framework that applies to the BOS and understand and examine if the SEEA framework can be tailored and implemented to address the BOS related key issues: biodiversity credits pricing and market dynamics.
- designing the structure of the market report, based on information available and aligned to the SEEA framework
- developing a plan to elaborate all three editions of the BOS State of the Market Report, based on the agreed approach and conceptual framework aligned to SEEA.