Conservative Bank Research Articles

Habitat offsets for insect species conservation: practicality or placebo?

Some formal call for mitigation of the perceived damage incurred to sites is an increasingly frequent demand on developers of sites of conservation significance. The broad theme of ‘bio-offsets’ is receiving increasing attention in many parts of the world. Wide discussion of the values of ‘Environmental Offsets’ under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC) in Australia encompasses measures considered to counterbalance the impacts to biodiversity that result from development. They range from rather nebulous ‘carbon offsets’ to counter industrial emissions to more limited measures of considerable interest in conservation and management of habitats for threatened insect species. These predominantly involve consequences of clearing native vegetation, long acknowledged as a paramount threat to Australia’s terrestrial biota. These measures may be purely voluntary, but are more commonly conditions of project approval, negotiated on a case-by-case basis, or more tangentially can be managed by some form of ‘credit’ purchased by developers in the form of a ‘conservation bank’. Essentially, they fall into the category of direct offsets, to compensate for losses by providing a replacement habitat, or for enhancement of the remaining areas to increase carrying capacity—basically to at least result in ‘no net loss’ and no increased vulnerability to key species. However, there may be formal demand for a ‘net gain’, so that conservation benefits exceed the losses incurred from the development, or to ‘maintain or improve’ allowing flexibility for either standard to be met. At one level, the principle resembles a ‘salvage operation’, in which a duty of care (moral or legal) may (1) incur capture of individuals likely to otherwise be sacrificed, either for direct translocation or to some ex situ situation for later release; or (2) provide opportunity for natural dispersal to the offset habitat. The Australian government’s definition of ‘environmental offsets’ is ‘actions taken outside a development site that compensate for the impacts of that development— including direct, indirect or consequential impacts’ (Australian Government 2007). The policy background is discussed by Gibbons and Lindenmayer (2007), who emphasized that offsets should not be used to justify land clearing, and that offsets might be feasible (1) only for relatively simple vegetation types that can indeed be restored; (2) where the offset must be in place before loss of the original site occurs; (3) where management of the offset site is adaptive; and (4) that the offset sites must be secured for the future. Compliance issues may be difficult to ensure. The first condition is important: Morris et al. (2006) pointed out that many habitats may take decades or even a century or more to develop the full compensatory values of lost vegetation systems. However, even defining or categorizing those values may be difficult. In practice, habitat-based offsetting for individual insect species or populations tends to be viewed as a short-term operation, and so poses both ethical and practical problems, the balance of these varying between individual cases, and reflecting the ease of defining and providing sites and/or resources, the need for long-term commitment (countering the expectations of some developers viewing it as a ‘quick fix’ to expedite their development plans), and lack of knowledge of the species involved, particularly their ecology, population structure and landscape geometry needs. Attractions to developers can include (1) a costeffective means to comply with environmental and planning laws; (2) faster processing times for approval; (3) T. R. New (&) Department of Zoology, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia e-mail: T.New@latrobe.edu.au

Publicly traded versus privately held: implications for conditional conservatism in bank accounting

Compared with privately held banks, publicly traded banks face greater agency costs because of greater separation of ownership and control but enjoy greater benefits from access to the equity capital market. Differences in control and capital market access influence public versus private banks’ accounting. We predict and find that public banks exhibit greater degrees of conditional conservatism (asymmetric timeliness of the recognition of losses versus gains in accounting income) than private banks. We predict and find that public banks recognize more timely earnings declines, less timely earnings increases, and larger and more timely loan losses. Although public ownership gives managers greater ability and incentive to exercise income-increasing accounting, our findings show that the demand for conservatism dominates within public banks and that the demand for conservatism is greater among public banks than private banks. Our results provide insights for accounting and finance academics, bank managers, auditors, and regulators concerning the effects of ownership structure on conditional conservatism in banks’ financial reporting.

Conservation and biodiversity banking: a guide to setting up and running biodiversity credit trading systems

Forewords by Tom Albanese and Stephanie Meeks * Part I: Overview * Introduction * History and Theory: The Origin and Evolution of Conservation Banking * The Advantages and Opportunities * The Pitfalls and Challenges * Part II: Establishing A Conservation Bank * Ecological Considerations * Legal Considerations * Regulatory Considerations * Business Considerations * Financial Considerations * Part III: State of the Art * Fish Banking * Getting Two for One: Opportunities and Challenges in Credit Stacking * The Marine Leap: Conservation Banking and the Brave New World * Part IV: Going Global * Biodiversity Offsets * Australia s Biodiversity Credits * Part V: Conclusion * The Future of Biodiversity Offset Banking * Index

Environmental Principles and Policies: An Interdisciplinary Approach

In recent years, debate over the most efficient means of dealing with environment problems has heightened. This is particularly true for issues such as habitat loss and climate change, whose environmental ramifications are of global significance. In the past two decades much of this debate has centered on so called ?economic instruments? for environmental protection, such as tradable permits, quota systems, environmental taxes and conservation banks. The recent emphasis on instruments signifies a departure from traditional environmental policy, which focused almost exclusively on legal regulation (i.e., so called ?command and control? regulations). Ostensibly, the purpose of economic instruments is to protect the environment in the most economically efficient manner, by turning a ?zero sum game? into a situation where environmental and social costs are integrated into market process to find ?optimal? levels of environmental degradation. It is within this intellectual mine-field that Sharon Beder launches her recent publication, Environmental Principles and Policies: An Interdisciplinary Approach.

Financial Options from Regulating Real Estate for Habitat Conservation

This article offers an analysis of financial incentives for landowners, conservation bank managers, and land developers under habitat regulations for land use. A financial option theory approach is used with call and put options as contracts for habitat conservation and exchange. The market for habitat is modeled as a stochastic game to derive the option price on habitat that allows for arbitrage between land with and without permission to develop. This analysis applies to a variety of policies including transferable development rights, conservation, and mitigation banking to protect wetland and upland habitat and wildlife.

European economic institutions: Stability- or growth-oriented?

This paper deals with various aspects of the performance expected from some of the most relevant European institutions (monetary and tax authorities, unions) vis-a-vis alternative ones, from a macroeconomic point of view. The role of the rules (e.g. the Stability and Growth Pact) as a coordination device to deal with externalities arising from national fiscal policies is first considered and compared to explicit coordination. The priority given to price stability is then discussed together with the questions of reputation, credibility and the relationship with fiscal policy and labour markets. A conservative central bank eliminates the temptation to inflate, but is only a second-best solution for internalising the externalities arising from uncoordinated-wage bargaining. The paper finally discusses the consequences on growth of the stability pursued by actual European institutions. Some reflections on the ‘model’ adopted for shaping European institutions conclude the paper.

Monetary and Fiscal Policy Interactions: Optimal Delegation and the Value of Leadership

We consider monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a New-Keynesian model of a closed economy with a government solvency constraint. We study the problem of optimal delegation in the discretionary game with two optimising policymakers and provide a welfare ranking of different leadership regimes. We find that (1) if one policymaker chooses an aggressive (smooth) policy then the other policymaker must also choose an aggressive (smooth) policy, regardless of the leadership regime; (2) an institutional design that causes any policymaker to adopt an aggressive policy generally leads to welfare losses; (3) an institutional design that causes any policymaker to adopt a history-dependent policy is welfare increasing. Specific results obtained include showing that discretionary stabilisation policy by a conservative central bank reduces welfare, and that a 'speed limit' on fiscal policy improves social welfare as the central bank chooses to smooth the interest rate in equilibrium.

Extirpating the Agriculture versus Conservation Dichotomy

Private ranch and farm lands are disappearing at an alarming rate (Heimlich & Anderson 2001) in developed countries. In the United States, more than 12 million ha were converted to exurban developments in the 1990s (Theobald 2001). Private lands cover 72% of the U.S. land surface, contain biodiversity at levels often comparable to or above protected areas (Maestas et al. 2003), contain 60% of threatened and endangered species exclusively, and possess habitat for nearly 95% of all threatened and endangered species (Wilcove et al. 1996). With only 6% of the contiguous United States held in nature reserves (Scott et al. 2001), what ecosystem services and biodiversity will remain, given the sprawling and consumptive nature of humans? This crisis exemplifies the dire need to reroute our direction and perspective toward conservation. Privatelands conservation has been recognized as one of the most important challenges for conservation (Knight 1999; Freyfogle 2003). Despite innovative progress toward holistic integration of agriculture and conservation (Banks 2004), scientists and practitioners have largely failed to embrace the future of partnership-based and private lands conservation. Four main factors may affect partnership-based conservation: public opposition and fear, negative prior experiences, lack of support from agency/institution superiors, and government policies (Yaffee 1998). One major problem driving the first three factors is the social dichotomy between agriculture and conservation. Both groups generally are assumed to hold opposing viewpoints involving land uses and biodiversity conservation, despite a common ecological heritage, polarizing agriculturalists and conservationists (Banks 2004). Our current conservation era is transitioning from limiting losses due to agricultural practices toward limiting losses due to urban sprawl. This transition is the new fron-

A set of simple decision matrices for prioritizing collection of rare plant species for ex situ conservation

Because it is virtually impossible to collect seed or tissue for ex situ conservation banks from every known population of rare plant species, it is important to rank populations systematically in terms of their priority for collection. The New England Wild Flower Society, which maintains a regional seed bank, developed a set of three complementary decision matrices in spreadsheet form by which to prioritize all occurrences of all state-listed rare plant species in New England in terms of their urgency and feasibility for collection. Data on 4333 occurrences, spanning 456 taxa, were collated from six state Natural Heritage Programs. The first decision matrix ranked taxa in terms of their amenability to storage or propagation at ex situ institutions, and determined whether any known New England occurrences were reproductive. The second matrix further ranked taxa in terms of their global and regional rarity and the viability and genetic and geographic representation of collections already present in the bank. The third matrix scored individual occurrences within each taxon in terms of the presence of imminent threat, reproductive status, vigor, protection status, potential genetic distance from other occurrences, availability of landowner permission, and their current status in the bank. Occurrences were then sorted in ascending order by total matrix score; those with low scores were at the top of the list for collection priority. 3743 occurrences were deemed eligible for collection. Scores ranged from 14.5 to 182, and were influenced most strongly by the number of occurrences per taxon. Clear breakpoints were apparent in the distribution of scores, with clusters of uncommon taxa at the low end of the scale and a long tail created by taxa with more numerous occurrences in New England. These breakpoints could potentially be used to prioritize groups of occurrences that should receive the first attention for collection, while postponing collection of higher-scoring groups. Fewer than 1% of occurrences were misclassified, according to post hoc inspection. This simple set of decision matrices can be adapted by a wide range of institutions involved in ex situ conservation.

Landscape Equivalency Analysis: Methodology for Estimating Spatially Explicit Biodiversity Credits

We propose a biodiversity credit system for trading endangered species habitat designed to minimize and reverse the negative effects of habitat loss and fragmentation, the leading cause of species endangerment in the United States. Given the increasing demand for land, approaches that explicitly balance economic goals against conservation goals are required. The Endangered Species Act balances these conflicts based on the cost to replace habitat. Conservation banking is a means to manage this balance, and we argue for its use to mitigate the effects of habitat fragmentation. Mitigating the effects of land development on biodiversity requires decisions that recognize regional ecological effects resulting from local economic decisions. We propose Landscape Equivalency Analysis (LEA), a landscape-scale approach similar to HEA, as an accounting system to calculate conservation banking credits so that habitat trades do not exacerbate regional ecological effects of local decisions. Credits purchased by public agencies or NGOs for purposes other than mitigating a take create a net investment in natural capital leading to habitat defragmentation. Credits calculated by LEA use metapopulation genetic theory to estimate sustainability criteria against which all trades are judged. The approach is rooted in well-accepted ecological, evolutionary, and economic theory, which helps compensate for the degree of uncertainty regarding the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on endangered species. LEA requires application of greater scientific rigor than typically applied to endangered species management on private lands but provides an objective, conceptually sound basis for achieving the often conflicting goals of economic efficiency and long-term ecological sustainability.

Status of Species Conservation Banking in the United States

Conservation BiologyVolume 19, Issue 4 p. 996-1007 Review Status of Species Conservation Banking in the United States JESSICA FOX, Corresponding Author JESSICA FOX EPRIsolutions Environment Division, 3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304, U.S.A. Current address: 6161 Pomegranate Avenue, Newark, CA 94560-4329, U.S.A., email jessfox@stanfordalumni.org jessfox@stanfordalumni.org Current address: 2128 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, U.S.A., email anm@stanfordalumni.org anm@stanfordalumni.orgSearch for more papers by this authorANAMARIA NINO-MURCIA, Corresponding Author ANAMARIA NINO-MURCIA Earth Systems Program, School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, U.S.A Current address: 6161 Pomegranate Avenue, Newark, CA 94560-4329, U.S.A., email jessfox@stanfordalumni.org jessfox@stanfordalumni.org Current address: 2128 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, U.S.A., email anm@stanfordalumni.org anm@stanfordalumni.orgSearch for more papers by this author JESSICA FOX, Corresponding Author JESSICA FOX EPRIsolutions Environment Division, 3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304, U.S.A. Current address: 6161 Pomegranate Avenue, Newark, CA 94560-4329, U.S.A., email jessfox@stanfordalumni.org jessfox@stanfordalumni.org Current address: 2128 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, U.S.A., email anm@stanfordalumni.org anm@stanfordalumni.orgSearch for more papers by this authorANAMARIA NINO-MURCIA, Corresponding Author ANAMARIA NINO-MURCIA Earth Systems Program, School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, U.S.A Current address: 6161 Pomegranate Avenue, Newark, CA 94560-4329, U.S.A., email jessfox@stanfordalumni.org jessfox@stanfordalumni.org Current address: 2128 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, U.S.A., email anm@stanfordalumni.org anm@stanfordalumni.orgSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 July 2005 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00231.xCitations: 97AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume19, Issue4August 2005Pages 996-1007 RelatedInformation

Rules versus discretion - A disinflation case

This paper compares a strict inflation target regime to a conservative central bank regime to determine the monetary regime appropriate for a disinflation process. The analysis shows that in a two-period model, in which policymakers face given first-period inflationary expectations, a strict inflation target could be preferred to the appointment of a conservative central banker who has discretion. The result differs from that of Rogoff (1985), who assumed rational expectations and concluded that a conservative central banker is always preferable. The disadvantage of the conservative central banker derives from his tendency to accelerate disinflation relative to rate that maximizes social welfare.

Eighth National Mitigation and Conservation Banking Conference: Environmental Banking and Beyond

Eighth National Mitigation and Conservation Banking Conference: Environmental Banking and Beyond

8th National Mitigation & Conservation Banking Conference

8th National Mitigation & Conservation Banking Conference

Using Economic and Regulatory Incentives to Restore Endangered Species: Lessons Learned from Three New Programs

Abstract: We studied three new incentive‐based programs for restoring endangered species on private lands in the United States: safe harbor, Environmental Defense's Landowner Conservation Assistance Program, and conservation banking. For each program, we gathered data on the number of participating landowners, the number of species targeted for assistance, and the cumulative acreage of enrolled land. Measured in this way, both safe harbor and the Landowner Conservation Assistance Program have been remarkably successful. Landowners are drawn to three aspects of these programs: (1) the removal of regulatory burdens associated with attracting endangered species to their property; (2) technical guidance on how to restore habitats for endangered species; and (3) cost‐share assistance for habitat restoration. Technical guidance appears to be more important than either regulatory relief or financial assistance in securing the cooperation of some landowners. Assessing the success or failure of conservation banking proved more difficult, given the relatively small number of banks created to date and the lack of any centralized database on them. However, nearly half of the 47 endangered‐species conservation banks we surveyed have sold credits, indicating some success in either acquiring or restoring essential habitats.

A CENTRAL BANK FOR ALL SEASONS? THE LOWER INFLATION AT NO COST PROPOSITION UNDER CONDITIONS OF POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY

Recent literature on independent and conservative Central Banks has highlighted the possibility of achieving lower inflation for no increase in the volatility of output—especially when political influences are taken into account. We extend this idea to allow for political uncertainty, where political parties get elected with a probability that may vary over time. We find that it is no longer possible to guarantee lower inflation at no cost at all times. But it is possible to guarantee one or other property if the bank is very conservative or if the governments are always liberal. That implies a conventional inflation–output stability trade-off. However, it is also possible to have conditions in which neither property applies.

Publishing Central Bank Forecasts

In this paper, a simple model of information asymmetry is used to study central bank forecast publication. Central banks are assumed to choose between not publishing a forecast, publishing a forecast that conditions on current policy, publishing an unconditional forecast, or publishing both. There is no incentive for the central bank to publish forecasts unless it faces conflicting output and inflation objectives, and also possesses an information advantage over agents. A conservative central bank that does not have a large information advantage over agents may prefer not to publish forecasts at all, while a central bank that enjoys a large information advantage will prefer to publish unconditional forecasts.

Habitat Approach to Streamlining Section 7: Colorado Department of Transportation’s Shortgrass Prairie Initiative

Starting in January 2000, FHWA, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and partners at public and private resource organizations came together to design an impact assessment and advance a mitigation and conservation banking process to aid in the recovery of declining species on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. The Shortgrass Prairie Initiative provides programmatic clearance for CDOT activities on the existing road network in the eastern third of Colorado for the next 20 years—through 2022; addresses 3 listed and more than 20 declining species with the greatest likelihood of being listed as threatened or endangered; and covers 90,000 acres of right-of-way in four of CDOT’s six regions. The agencies involved sought to invest resources, which would otherwise be spent on a project-by-project clearance process, in more comprehensive and proactive species conservation that would help alleviate the need for further listings and improve predictability in the project development process. Methodologically, the project focused on impacts to habitats rather than species individuals and estimated potential impacts using best available data, supplemented by expert opinion. The resulting project offers programmatic clearance with 1:1 (that is, 1 acre of impact to 1 acre of conservation/mitigation) habitat conservation, regulatory streamlining, cost savings in several categories, and more effective habitat and species preservation. The uniqueness of this project stems from its primary focus on species currently unlisted as federally threatened or endangered, coverage of major as well as minor projects, and the scale at which conservation is being pursued, including planned preservation of approximately 15,000 to 20,000 acres from 2002 onward.

Macroeconomic Performance and Wage Bargaining in a Monetary Union

Building on a micro-founded model of a two-region monetary union, this paperanalyses the macroeconomic impact of institutional reforms in labour marketsand central banking that may occur as a result of monetary unification. Thepaper shows that monopoly distortions in the labour market are a key factorin evaluating the effects of central bank's conservativeness and wagecentralisation on inflation and unemployment. Wage restraint is favoured ina highly decentralised wage bargaining setup as well as under a liberalcentral bank, provided competition is high in the labour market.

Implementing the strategic formulation framework for the banking industry of Hong Kong

Applies a new strategy formulation instrument (named as the strategy formulation (SF) framework), which is geared for an Asian (Chinese) culture within the banking industry of Hong Kong. In particular, the focus will be on a case study of the ABC Bank. The ABC Bank remains one of the more conservative banks in Hong Kong. Its major advantages are that it only deals with inter‐banking, and corporate banking. It has no bad debts and is extremely cash rich. However, because of its conservativeness, it remains a very low profile bank within the Hong Kong market. The main objective of this paper is to develop a set of strategies for the organization based on the SF framework. The SF framework is a combination of the SWOT analysis, the balanced scorecard (BSC), and Sun Tzu’s Art of Business Management in Strategic Planning, via the quality function deployment methodology. This new strategic management instrumentation was developed by Lee and Ko. The SF framework is unique because it integrates strategy formulation tools from both the Eastern and Western cultures, and its flexibility allows intercultural adaptations for most organizations.