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.