Environmental compensation includes a range of activities intended to counterbalance
such negative impacts of development projects that remain in the environment after
all preventive and corrective measures have been fully implemented. Sweden, being
a member state of the European Union (EU), must implement environmental compensation
under EU directives such as the Habitat Directive. However, like in other countries,
implementation is not yet widespread in Sweden, and new practices and guidelines remain
to be developed both nationally and at European level. This need is all the more urgent
considering that the European Commission estimates that, within the EU, about 100,000
hectares of land is converted from its natural state each year.
The aim of this paper is to describe current environmental-compensation practices
in Swedish road and railway projects and to discuss issues of vital importance to
the development of compensation policy, such as what to compensate for, how much,
and how.
A national inventory was performed, for the first time in Sweden, to identify compensation
measures in road and railway projects. Data were collected from a national mailing
list including 141 officials at county administrative boards (CABs), internal e-mail
correspondence within the Swedish Transport Administration and databases of court
decisions. The inventory focused on compensation measures ordered by virtue of the
Swedish Environmental Code. In addition, two case studies were carried out to investigate
the planning of compensation measures.
The results showed that CABs and courts rarely order compensation in infrastructure
projects, even though this is possible under Swedish law. Between 1999 and 2012, 37
cases (i.e. permits issued) were found for which compensation was ordered. Of these
cases, 76% concerned compensation for encroachments on minor habitats such as small
ponds and cairns. No CAB ordered compensation for non-protected areas. Compensation
ratios were never explicitly mentioned in permits, but in practice a ratio of 1:1
(often measured as area or length) was usually applied. The compensation measures
typically consisted in recreating the same kind of natural asset that was affected,
in a location close to the damaged area. In the two cases specially studied, the road
and railway planning processes were not properly adjusted to integrate compensation
issues, resulting in unnecessary bureaucracy and insufficient co-ordination between
different projects, such as between the environmental-impact assessment process and
the compensation process or between closely related sub-projects in the same region.
To meet the EU’s goal of no net loss of biodiversity, we suggest that policy requirements
should be made stricter and that incentives for voluntary compensation should be created.
In line with the goals of Swedish national transport policy and the European Landscape
Convention, account should be taken of social and cultural aspects, and there should
be a shift from a narrow focus on individual projects to a broader planning approach,
since this would allow compensation measures to be taken where they can deliver the
greatest environmental benefits.