National Biodiversity Offsets Conference 3.0

Can offset frameworks be used to conserve cultural heritage? 

The process of biodiversity offsetting has existed in Australia for several decades, yet it has rarely been applied to cultural heritage places. Here we consider whether and in what circumstances offsetting of cultural heritage impacts may be possible or appropriate. 

One of the concerns voiced about offsetting for cultural heritage is that no two cultural heritage places are equivalent – each is in some way unique. But similar concerns have also been voiced about whether there is a false sense of equivalency in biodiversity offsetting, acknowledging however that it is not possible to re-create cultural heritage, whereas a biome can be (slowly) reconstructed. These places can have cultural significance for indigenous and non-indigenous communities. In some instances, significance may be overlapping and even conflictual.  

Existing cultural heritage legislative frameworks are focused on protecting areas of land, and thus do not necessarily cope well when dealing with places that do not neatly fit into cadastral boundaries. But these same legislative systems explicitly allow for impacts to and destruction of cultural heritage. In these circumstances, does offsetting become a useful tool for impact mitigation?

With built heritage, the issue is a bit more straightforward and arguably the planning system already allows for offsetting to some extent. Transferrable heritage floor space schemes, for example, seek to compensate owners of heritage buildings for loss of development potential, but really only work in high density areas. Conservation areas could be used to offset, by identifying areas to be retained versus areas to be modified, thus sacrificing less intact or less significant areas for more significant areas. But if this happens, it is never explicitly described as offsetting, and the practical application of conservation areas is highly variable. 

Greater potential exists with respect to landscapes, indigenous places and archaeological sites. Agreement-making is already built into many of the indigenous cultural heritage frameworks, and the UN Charter on the Rights of Indigenous People states that “indigenous people should be the primary determiners of their heritage”. Thus, particularly with respect to indigenous heritage in Australia, scope should exist for offsetting.  

This poster outlines a starting point for developing a robust and transparent framework for cultural heritage offsetting.

Dr MacLaren North will be presenting this poster at the National Biodiversity Offsets conference this week in Canberra.

For more information please contact Dr MacLaren North.