Research Planning, Inc. (RPI)
conducted two week-long workshops on use of the Habitat Equivalency
Analysis (HEA) model for natural resource injury assessment and
restoration in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. The workshops were sponsored
by Petrobras and attended by representatives from industry, government,
and academia. HEA is an approach to determine compensation for habitat
injuries, such as from oil spills, groundings, and coastal development.
The workshops were held in October 2006 and June 2008.
The principal concept is that the public can be compensated
for losses of habitat resources through habitat replacement projects
providing additional resources of the same type. This approach avoids
the complexities of how much a mangrove forest or sand beach is
worth. Instead, it values the ecological services and functions
that were lost using agreed-upon metrics, then scales restoration
projects to restore the losses using the same metrics.
The goal of the first workshop was to demonstrate
how HEA could be used to quantify injuries from an oil spill - and
select and scale appropriate restoration projects. A day was spent
visiting mangrove habitats to see how field data are used to establish
ecological services and functions. These are complex concepts but,
by the end of the workshop, the group was convinced of the value
of HEA, and they were completing inputs for the injury and restoration
curves on their own.
At the second workshop in June 2008, the results of
the monitoring program on Environmental Assessment and Monitoring
of Mangroves following the Oil Spill in Guanabara Bay were used
to develop preliminary HEA analyses using available data on the
oil spill.
A final report was submitted on 1 October 2008 and
included recommendations on the use of HEA for mangrove injury and
restoration scaling; summary of data interpretation for natural
resource damage assessment analysis of other natural resources;
and recommendations for long-term studies to support Natural Resource
Damage Assessments and other environmental assessments in Brazil.
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