The Business and Biodiversity Offsets Program (BBOP), one of the flagship programs of the US-based Forest Trends NGO, of which Eiffage has been a member since 2012, has developed an international standard on ecological compensation. This demanding standard has been widely adopted in the regulations of many countries including France (through the Biodiversity law of 2016 in particular) and was used to assess the strategy and application of Avoidance-Minimization and Compensation (mitigation hierarchy) of the BPL HSL conducted y Eiffage between 2011 and 2017.

In this study, the ins and outs of the strategy, from the initial impact study to complementary environmental studies to the final calculation of the compensatory debt, were analyzed and synthesized, and show how much the application of the mitigation hierarchy on a large project like BPL is complex. In fact, nearly 1,000 ha on 240 sites were needed to offset the environmental impacts of this 214 km long line.

This international case study was a first time in the field of linear infrastructure compensation. It demonstrates the Group's expertise in avoidance-minimization-compensation of the impact of major development projects on biodiversity.
 
Available here

BBOP’s website
 
 
Contacts: Clément Bourge et Marion Aubrat