There is no such thing as a free lunch
Will the new Environment Information Australia (EIA) be up to the job? Can it equip us, for example, with the necessary data to discern if the government’s new “nature positive” policies and nature repair markets are delivering real gains, or just biodiversity conservation doublespeak? As the saying goes, the Devil is in the detail. Or in this case, in the lack of it.
Before we commit all our ‘biodiversity eggs’ to the ‘market basket’ and leave saving Nature to the market traders, could we quickly reflect on what’s been done in the past to save biodiversity? How did we attempt to protect Nature before markets were put forward as our road to salvation? What are the lessons? Those lessons would include attention to governance, resourcing, inclusion and justice. Ignore these dimensions and there’s little prospect that a market-driven approach is going to achieve anything better.
If the environment minister is serious about the domestic delivery of the Kunming-Montreal 2030 biodiversity targets, she’ll need to burn a lot of political capital, not just with various stakeholders, but with her own Cabinet colleagues.
If your targets are consistently not being met, and collapsing ecosystems and accelerating species loss and histrionic calls to arms are not galvanising widespread action, then what do you do?
Many are throwing up their hands in despair in the face of a rapidly unfolding biodiversity catastrophe. Could environmental accounting be the missing link in our thinking?
In February, almost every nation on the planet is meeting in Kunming, China, to discuss how well they are doing at conserving biodiversity. Which is just as well as earlier this year the UN issued its latest report suggesting we are witnessing an biodiversity catastrophe with a million species threatened with extinction.
The use of Estimates by officials to promote government positions and to deploy the promotional language of ‘spin’ is an unwelcome development.
The growing body of evidence, unfortunately, is that our world is not on a trajectory of sustainability. If anything, we are accelerating away from it. However, there was a time, no so long ago, when there appeared to be a growing international consensus that sustainability was a real and achievable goal.
I’m not saying that the IPBES announcement last week was ‘wrong’, just that its framing reveals an inherent ‘disconnect’ with reality. The numbers presented are horrifying, but the call for transformation just seems naïve.