Redistribution of fishery benefits among commercial and recreational fishers caused by offsetting

Biodiversity offsetting is widely used to offset negative impacts of development on biodiversity. However, offsets can affect the distribution of benefits among beneficiaries, due to the redistribution of ecosystem services caused by impacts and offsets. Here, we compared the distribution of fishery economic benefits and losses to commercial and recreational fishers under two different offset policy rules: offset locations in close proximity to impact sites, and spatially unrestricted offsetting. With a focus on mangrove and seagrass ecosystems in Queensland, Australia, we measured how the distribution of net outcomes would change using the Gini coefficient. Different offset policy rules had similar effects on the redistribution of fishery benefits among commercial and recreational fishers. However, both offset policy rules failed to fully compensate for losses of fishery benefits for most affected beneficiaries. Locating offsets in close proximity to impact sites achieved slightly more evenly-distributed benefits among recreational fishers and among most types of commercial fishers. The findings suggest that in this system, even though the distribution of net outcomes of impact-offset projects for fishers are somewhat evenly distributed, they tend to be uniformly negative for both recreational and commercial fishers.