Biodiversity offsets: An inclusive approach for biodiversity impact assessment.

Biodiversity offsets have emerged as a useful planning tool to manage development and to restoring biodiversity as a means to address the impacts of our expanding footprint. Biodiversity offsets are environmentally beneficial activities undertaken to counterbalance an adverse environmental impact to achieve not net environmental loss or a net environmental benefit. The inclusion of offset in the generic environmental impact assessment process represents a possible scenario for visualization of conservation actions to be explored and recommended in the mitigation measures. Biodiversity offsets address to translate biodiversity into societal value (ecological, social and economic) including conservation banking, biodiversity credits and ensure the perpetuity of healthy and productive ecosystems.