Abstract Habitat banking has gained traction in recent years as a means to compensate for the unavoidable environmental impacts of development projects through the exchange of so-called biodiversity offsets. Analyses of the ideological foundations and operational challenges of habitat banking exist, but there has been far less scholarship on the policy processes leading to the establishment of such schemes. Habitat banking is a controversial policy instrument, which has encountered opponents and proponents in most places where it has been implemented. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted from 2014 to 2018, we analyse the development of habitat banking policy in Spain. We show who was included or excluded from the policy making process, and we highlight the arguments put forward by different actors to contest or support habitat banking more generally. We show that the process was opaque and non-inclusive, driven by a small constituency of actors who sought to create investment opportunities for biodiversity conservation on private lands, and was grounded on a false social consensus which concealed alternative understandings of how environmental impacts should be addressed. We also demonstrate that the current delay in producing the guidelines can be explained by three circumstances. First, habitat banking was challenged by many civil society groups on the grounds of its market-based character. Second, necessary data was not available or accurate enough to devise effective habitat banks, with ecological metrics involved in quantifying offsets seen as too subjective. And third, key implementation actors lacked capacity and political will. The Spanish standstill highlights the struggles and difficulties that even well-resourced states can face when establishing rules for habitat banking and the trade in biodiversity offsets.

中文翻译：

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停滞不前的栖息地银行业务：西班牙的案例

摘要 近年来，栖息地银行作为一种通过交换所谓的生物多样性补偿来补偿开发项目不可避免的环境影响的手段而受到关注。存在对栖息地银行的意识形态基础和操作挑战的分析，但关于导致建立此类计划的政策过程的学术研究却少得多。人居银行是一项有争议的政策工具，在其实施的大多数地方都遇到了反对者和支持者。利用 2014 年至 2018 年进行的半结构化访谈和参与观察，我们分析了西班牙栖息地银行政策的发展。我们显示谁被包括在或被排除在政策制定过程之外，我们强调了不同行为者提出的更普遍的争论或支持栖息地银行的论点。我们表明，该过程是不透明和非包容性的，由一小部分参与者推动，他们试图为私人土地上的生物多样性保护创造投资机会，并且基于错误的社会共识，该共识掩盖了对环境影响应该如何产生的替代理解解决。我们还证明，目前制定指南的延迟可以通过三种情况来解释。首先，栖息地银行因其以市场为基础的特性而受到许多民间社会团体的挑战。其次，必要的数据不可用或不够准确，无法设计有效的栖息地库，量化补偿所涉及的生态指标被认为过于主观。第三，关键的执行行为者缺乏能力和政治意愿。西班牙的停滞凸显了即使是资源丰富的国家在制定栖息地银行和生物多样性补偿贸易规则时也可能面临的斗争和困难。