North America

Biodiversity offsets and compensation programs are well-developed in North America, particularly with the United States' wetland and species compensation programs and Canada's fish habitat compensation program. This region hosts the most mitigation banks of any region in the world. Programs are driven by national, state, and/or regional policy. Each of the three traditional compensation instruments are used in North America: compensation funds, one-off offsets, and mitigation banking. The US mitigation market (wetland, stream, and species) allows all three, although recent regulation favors credit banking. Canada prefers habitat compensation provided by the developer, perhaps because of lessons learned from the early challenges in the US system. And Mexico currently allows offsetting through compensation funds and developer responsible offsetting, but is beginning to explore mitigation banking.