Although offsetting schemes may avoid biodiversity loss, the implementation of these schemes can be challenging, given the difficulty of balancing biodiversity benefits with the resulting increase in compensation costs. Here we have developed a novel offsetting methodological approach to balance environmental gains and land availability to support the decision-making process and negotiations among stakeholders. We applied this approach for the compensation of Legal Reserves, a percentage of native vegetation area that landowners have to set apart in their rural properties in Brazil to maintain native vegetation. If landowners do not reach the Legal Reserves requirements on their land according to the law, they may compensate it in other equivalent properties. To balance environmental gains and land availability, we have developed a dynamic tool that allows users to objectively analyze results from multiple offsetting scenarios. These scenarios can combine different levels of abiotic and biotic equivalence requirements, along with the possibility of trading up, i.e. compensating in priority natural vegetation areas and/or priority areas for restoration, even without high equivalence, with the resulting balance on land availability. The proposed approach seeks to find acceptable solutions, balancing stakeholder requirements for ecological equivalence, land availability, and possibilities of trading up. This procedure can enhance the local trade of Legal Reserves compensation, minimizing biodiversity losses, and also reducing costs. Our case study shows that it is possible to apply ecological equivalence in a balanced manner for Legal Reserve compensation. Owing to its flexibility, the proposed approach and tool can be easily adopted by other compensation schemes worldwide, supporting the negotiation and decision-making processes, to reduce biodiversity loss.

尽管补偿计划可以避免生物多样性的丧失，但这些计划的实施可能具有挑战性，因为很难平衡生物多样性的好处和补偿成本的增加。在这里，我们开发了一种新颖的抵消方法论方法来平衡环境收益和土地可用性，以支持利益相关者之间的决策过程和谈判。我们将这种方法应用于法定保护区的补偿，这是土地所有者必须在巴西农村财产中划出的原生植被面积的百分比，以保持原生植被。土地所有者依法对其土地未达到法定储备要求的，可以用其他同等财产予以补偿。为了平衡环境收益和土地可用性，我们开发了一个动态工具，允许用户客观地分析多个抵消方案的结果。这些场景可以结合不同级别的非生物和生物等效性要求，以及交易的可能性，即. 对优先自然植被区和/或优先恢复区进行补偿，即使没有高等效性，也能平衡土地可用性。提议的方法寻求找到可接受的解决方案，平衡利益相关者对生态等效性、土地可用性和交易可能性的要求。该程序可以增强当地的法定保护区补偿交易，最大限度地减少生物多样性损失，并降低成本。我们的案例研究表明，可以以平衡的方式将生态等效应用于法定保护区补偿。由于其灵活性，提议的方法和工具可以很容易地被世界各地的其他补偿计划采用，支持谈判和决策过程，以减少生物多样性的损失。