L’idea di natura compensativa a Berlino. Il paradosso di equilibrare gli impatti sulla biodiversità: esperienze e progetti contemporanei
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The paper explores the ‘myth of compensatory nature’, understood as a paradox intended to off-set the impacts of urban expansion by creating substitute habitats and allowing the exchange of compensation credits, trading biodiversity loss in one location for an equivalent ecological gain else-where. Through the analysis of a series of abandoned railway and former military sites, the paper ex-amines the origins and ambivalence of the concept of ‘compensatory nature’ in Berlin, tracing the transformation of vacant lands from marginal phenomena to legally recognised, environmentally protected biotopes. However, compensation, far from being neutral, constitutes an ideological con-struct that rhetorically reconciles development and conservation, dissolving the conflict between ur-ban growth and habitat destruction. The legal logic regulating compensatory areas risks reducing biodiversity to a replaceable value. Its foundation is a reductive vision of ‘nature’, in which so-called ‘wild species’ are treated as manageable and movable elements. Recent cases of reptile and am-phibian resettlement illustrate how the pitfalls of conceiving ‘nature’ as interchangeable and repli-cable contribute to the depoliticisation of biodiversity loss.
DOI: 10.36253/rv-18041
Author: Elena Antoniolli
Institution: University of Florence
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7160609769