There is no such thing as a free lunch
People have been calling for the creation of a ‘climate trigger’ for years, but to little avail. Why? Because things are complicated, and a climate trigger is not the only game in town. It’s no silver bullet, but a quick check on where Australia’s emissions are coming from suggests a climate trigger may have a role to play.
Next year, the Australian Parliament will consider one of the most significant environmental reforms in our history with the Government promising legislation to implement its Nature Positive Plan, replacing the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. The path to this point has been long and winding. First the National Party backflipped on its support for the bill, then the Greens did a backflip on their opposition to it, all in pursuit of politics over policy. Then we come to other cross-bench Senators, whose position is variable at best and unpredictable at worst. We need this to work.
Price Waterhouse Coopers has produced a report, A Nature-Positive Australia, which says that there could be $78 billion of private investments in Nature repair in Australia by 2050. Seriously? There are multiple reasons why this seems highly unlikely.
Can markets put a value on improvements in biodiversity, enabling landholders to be paid for their services to nature and allowing businesses, among others, to invest in the biodiversity credits that landholders would produce. The new Nature Repair Market bill certainly aligns with this framing, but investors are unlikely to sign up, at least not without inducements.