Peter Burnett looks at the politics of a possible Senate deal on changes to the government’s draft Nature Positive reforms. Achieving good environmental policy outcomes is becoming increasingly difficult in this political maze.
Environment Information Australia
The Blue Mountains – towards nature positive with natural capital accounting
The Blue Mountains rise to the west of Sydney, NSW. In the year 2000 it was included on UNESCO’s World Heritage register for its representation of the evolutionary adaptation and diversification of eucalypts in post-Gondwanan Australia. Those eucalypts are rich in oil, filling the air with a distinctive blue haze that gives the region its name. Earlier this month, the many environmental organisations and community groups with connections to the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area came together for the Inaugural Blue Mountains World Heritage Conference. The meeting aimed to chart a way forward to ensure the protection and environmental stewardship of the globally significant landscape of the Blue Mountains. Michael Vardon was invited to speak at the conference on environmental accounting. Here he shares his personal perspectives on how the goodwill and enthusiasm generated at this meeting might translate into enduring environmental outcomes. Our governments chant a mantra of ‘nature positive’ but without a framework like natural capital accounting, it’s little more than empty rhetoric.
Nature-positive information: devilish detail and a head with two hats and no teeth
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.
Much activity but difficult to tell if it will make a difference: Senate Budget Estimates 2023
The Senate has just wrapped up its Budget Estimates hearings. The good news is that most of the ‘substance’ relates to increased activity. The recent years of inactivity on the environment are clearly over. The bad news is that it will take a long time to generate fresh momentum.