Creating biodiverse urban developments? Multi-stakeholder perspectives on biodiversity offsetting

Surma, Martyna; Lamond, Jessica; Sinnett, Danielle

Abstract

The United Kingdom is one of the countries with the lowest biodiversity value globally. Efforts to address biodiversity loss and create more biodiverse urban environments include recent legislative changes in England implementing the mandatory requirement of biodiversity net gain (February 2024) for new developments. In our study, we seek to understand better what economic and financial factors impact the types and locations of delivery of biodiversity in urban environments, and how the perception of these factors affects decision-making. This paper presents findings from in-depth interviews with key stakeholders from both public and private sectors who are actively engaged in the process of delivering biodiversity in new urban development. We identified participants through association with case study developments and via a snowballing approach and conducted forty 45-minute semi-structured interviews online via Microsoft Teams. Next, we applied a deductive approach to our reflexive thematic analysis in NVivo. Our results show that from the perspective of key actors in the sector, pre-development stages are essential for delivering cost-effective urban biodiversity, and multi-stakeholder engagement plays a role. In our study, we discovered that the perceived cost of delivering biodiversity in new developments will influence the overall decision-making process in both private and public sectors. Additionally, we found that biodiversity offsetting may negatively impact urban biodiversity in new developments. These findings suggest that the impact of biodiversity net gain in urban areas may be limited unless these challenges are addressed, or care is taken to better incentivise delivery in urban areas.

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: EURA 2025: Creating healthy and sustainable cities
• Start Date: Jun 10, 2025
• Deposit Date: Jun 16, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/14564581