Sustainability Bites

There is no such thing as a free lunch

natural capital

We’re still not measuring our reliance on nature as we rush to boost productivity

We’re still not measuring our reliance on nature as we rush to boost productivity

Sep 11, 2025 | , ,

Human economies are made possible through natural capital – stocks of land, fresh water, oceans, biodiversity and soils, among others. Farming isn’t possible without soil or water. Manufacturing isn’t possible without raw materials to convert into products. Service industries aren’t possible without reliable food. This may seem like stating the obvious. But what’s obvious isn’t always acted upon. At last week’s high-profile Economic Reform Roundtable, natural capital was conspicuously absent. At the table were bankers, unionists, housing experts and business groups – but only one environmental advocate, former treasury secretary Ken Henry. The government’s goals were to make the economy more productive and resilient and the budget more sustainable. The health of our natural capital underpins all of these.

The Blue Mountains – towards nature positive with natural capital accounting

The Blue Mountains – towards nature positive with natural capital accounting

Aug 15, 2024 | , ,

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

Nature-positive information: devilish detail and a head with two hats and no teeth

Jul 1, 2024 | , ,

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.

The BIG fix

The BIG fix

Feb 19, 2019 |

But most of the problem is us. We are consuming nature faster than it can renew itself. We are like a family with a large inheritance (ie nature) in the bank, living off the interest. Except that we don’t. We are over-spending our ‘natural income’, using up nature faster than it can renew itself and making up for it by drawing down the inheritance instead, the ‘natural capital’. If we keep doing this, there won’t be enough nature left for future generations: it’s their inheritance too.