Biodiversity banking, also known as biodiversity trading or conservation banking, is a process by which biodiversity loss can be reduced by creating a framework which allows biodiversity to be reliably measured, and market based solutions applied to improving biodiversity. Biodiversity banking provides a means to place a monetary value on ecosystem services.
Two biodiversity banking schemes operating in Australia are the New South Wales BioBanking scheme, which commenced in 2008, and the Victorian Native Vegetation Management Framework scheme. Both schemes apply particularly to developers, where biodiversity values will be reduced through land clearing and building development. The framework requires developers to source biodiversity credits through a market mechanism to offset biodiversity loss.
The "mitigation banking" process in the United States applies to impacts on wetlands. It requires that developers firstly avoid harm to wetlands, but if harm is considered unavoidable, then similar wetlands of similar functions and values must be "protected, enhanced or restored" in compensation for those that will be damaged. The process comes under the US Clean Water Act 1972 the US Army Corps of Engineers regulations.
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“One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming administration is a change in our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)