Communicating Biodiversity Offsetting in Sweden

At a time when biodiversity is declining, there needs to be a shift in how development projects take responsibility for lost natural values. Such a change is provided by biodiversity offsetting which give project owners an opportunity to compensate for declines in natural quality. However, offsetting for biodiversity costs money and therefore a clear business case is needed. Like all types of Corporate Sustainable Responsibility (CSR) work the expected competitive advantages are dependent on the stakeholders’ knowledge of the CSR measures. The aim of this study was therefore to explain how ecological compensation is communicated to stakeholders and why communication is carried out from the perspective of the project owner in a Swedish context. Through interviews and building on theories of CSR, stakeholders, and communication, the results from the five cases herein shows that communication is regarded as very important to most biodiversity offsetting projects. How, when and to whom the communication was directed seemed to depend on the goal which was most important to the project owner. Four goals highlighted in the results were: To gain a social licence to operate; gain new knowledge and to further the indirect increase in natural values inherent in all biodiversity offsetting projects. Also, claiming legal permits for development was a goal for most of the responding organizations. The goals influenced which stakeholders became the most important to communicate with, and different communication strategies were used for the different stakeholders. Some stakeholders could clearly be grouped into general categories, e.g. legal authorities and non-governmental organizations, but this study concluded that the heterogenous character of many of the stakeholders mentioned by the participating organizations made it difficult to categorize these into specific groups