We believe that collaborative game development and gaming will help to understand how biodiversity offsetting can change nature conservation and planning and how different offsetting rules and policies change relationships of collaboration and power. Biodiversity offsetting means the planned process of creating or enhancing biodiversity to compensate local losses or degradation of biodiversity. We use gamification, game development and gaming as a new tool to collaborate and discuss the possibilities and limits of offsetting.
Goal
Nature conservation is a complex and conflict prone field where different actors, interests, practices, points of view and policies come together. Biodiversity offsetting is hoped to prevent, alleviate and resolve conservation conflicts and environmental harm, and bring flexibility to planning and development. However, it is also feared to be only greenwash and lead to even bigger loss and degradation of biodiversity. Biodiversity offsetting is a relatively new tool in nature conservation and planning. Our project focuses on Finland where no official policy or legislation on biodiversity offsetting exists and thus the practices are developing.
Funding source
Kone Foundation