Did you know that there are approximately nine million types of plant, animal, fungi, and micro-organisms on Earth?

Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, research has established that we need them all. Biodiversity makes Earth habitable by providing balanced natural solutions that filter water and regenerate the soil. Biodiversity also helps fight disease and helps sustain businesses and tourism.

We’re all aware of the need to act to reduce climate change. Of equal urgency is the need to halt the loss of biodiversity because human activity is dismantling ecosystems and eradicating genes, species, and biological traits at a disastrous rate. So far, we’ve caused the loss of 83% of all wild animals and half of all plants. In response, governments, businesses, the public, and organizations of all types are now acting to protect biodiversity and reverse its loss.

In response, we’ve now published the world’s first national standard on biodiversity net gain.

The Biodiversity Net Gain Standard

In the UK, the first set of good practice principles on biodiversity net gain (BNG) was published in 2016. BNG is an approach to development and land management that leaves biodiversity in a measurably better state than before, after first avoiding and then minimizing harm. Done well, BNG has an important role to play in protecting, restoring, and recovering nature and supporting thriving ecosystems.

The 2016 principles provided a framework for developments to generate meaningful and long-lasting benefits for the natural environment. These principles were then supplemented by practical guidance and revised in 2020.

In 2021, we published a standard that builds on and adds to this foundational work.

BS 8683:2021 A process for designing and implementing Biodiversity net gain translates the principles – and actions to implement them – into a specification. It provides a consistent and structured process for designing and implementing BNG. It doesn’t cover the actual delivery of BNG, but rather provides a framework to demonstrate that a project has followed a process to design and implement BNG, based on UK-wide good practice.

To learn about biodiversity in planning and development, click here.

Who Does BS 8683 Benefit?

This biodiversity standard applies to all sizes of development, from very large nationally significant infrastructure projects to small housing developments. Users will probably come from a wide range of sectors from construction and infrastructure through to land-owning organizations (who are both developers themselves and who are providing biodiversity offsets sites) and brokers.

This biodiversity standard promotes biodiversity best practices to help consolidate the use of BNG and provides design and pre-construction professionals with a standard to specify to sub-contractors and clients as well as for local authority planners looking to incorporate biodiversity net gain in master planning and into local plans and strategies.

BS 8683 will also promote good practice in the delivery and subsequent monitoring of biodiversity net gain and is also likely to be applicable to ongoing estates/grounds maintenance activities undertaken by existing projects, as well as the delivery of net gain from capital projects.

This standard will also help provide confidence to the market in providing biodiversity offset sites by establishing a set of benchmarks relating to the monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity offsets. All told it is a flexible document with a range of important uses.

BS 868 will be used by businesses to:

• Demonstrate delivery of biodiversity best practices

• Give clients, commissioning agencies, and other stakeholders confidence that processes are in place that will help secure voluntary or relevant local planning or contractual requirements relating to biodiversity net gain outcomes

• Ensure that internal processes and procedures are in place to help deliver BNG as stipulated by commissioning agencies, clients, and consenting bodies

• Help evidence the satisfactory discharge of planning conditions or the meeting of appropriate regulatory requirements relating to biodiversity net gain outcomes

• Help differentiate and avoid accusations of ‘greenwash’ that could compromise biodiversity net gain approaches

• Help enhance consistency across projects for organizations running multiple projects, minimizing the risk of error and driving consistency of approach

• Enable planning authorities and clients to specify the consistent delivery of biodiversity net gain processes among developers or contractors operating within their territory or on their behalf

• Add to brand value by demonstrating that the organization delivering to the standard is following an evidenced and credible approach and has robust processes in place

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