Clear definitions around baselines in biodiversity standards are essential to be able to successfully measure outcomes and avoid nature decline, especially regarding offsets, an expert told a conference in Canberra Wednesday.

The statement comes as the Australian government seeks to define its national offset standards as part of its broader national reforms to the Environmental Protection, Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

When finalised, the rules will determine how biodiversity offset requirements will be imposed on project developments being assessed at the federal level, though it is unclear how they will relate to the planned nature repair market, if that scheme ends up with an offsetting component.

University of New South Wales Senior Lecturer Megan Evans told the Australian Land Conservation Alliance conference that conservation work could still result in an overall decline in biodiversity, depending on how baselines were defined.

Source: UNSW

She used the example of a “no-net loss” scenario if it is set against a business-as-usual scenario that was based on biodiversity decline, as is the case in Australia, meaning it would still result in an overall decline in nature.

“We know that we’re losing biodiversity. If we want to achieve no net loss against a BAU scenario, the outcome of that is that we’re maintaining that trend, we’re getting a neutral outcome against that declining baseline,” she said.

“So, if we succeed, we maintain background trends of biodiversity decline. That’s not often what we think about when we hear no net-loss, but that is existing policy.”

Evans noted the Albanese government’s Nature Positive Plan aims to achieve zero net loss of nature from 2020, and to be “nature positive” by 2030, which would require a total shift in efforts.

“That means doing the mitigation hierarchy perfectly, plus a whole lot more. It is a fundamental shift, and the more we play around with offsets the more we stay in the red, we need to do far more,” she said.

Evans’ presentation highlighted that the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework defined nature positive as an absolute gain against a fixed baseline, meaning nature positive would need to be defined as more nature in 2030 and 2050 than currently exists today.

Speaking to Carbon Pulse on the side-lines of the conference, Evans said that at this stage it was still unclear what the government’s thinking was on where they plan to set baselines, but said it could be inferred.

“By allowing avoided loss offsets, you’re still assuming a declining baseline, but they need to be explicit,” she said.

“Are they talking about a fixed-2020 baseline, or are we talking about allowing avoided loss offsets?  [Because] that’s assuming biodiversity loss is going to keep going. In their draft standard … they didn’t actually define that baseline at all. They need to be in there, otherwise things like no net-loss, nature positive, they mean nothing.”

Avoided or averted offsets refer to protecting one patch of existing habitat in exchange for the clearing or loss of another.

NET GAIN

James Tregurtha, with the Nature Positive Taskforce at the Department of Climate Change. Energy, Environment, and Water (DCCEEW), told the conference what the government’s “current thinking” was on its national environment reforms.

He said that the Nature Positive Plan had committed to a “net gain” as part of its development process on baselines, and the government was currently exploring how that could be demonstrated more clearly.

“That will definitely be part of the offset standard when it is finalised,” he said.

“But I don’t think you can necessarily have a blanket rule because when you’re talking about biodiversity, threatened species, ecological communities, it is such a diverse landscape.”

Tregurtha acknowledged that the way biodiversity offsets had worked in the past “had not been perfect”,  adding that the government was looking to move part of the offset and conservation payment from being policy and guidance into law.

“National environment standards will be a really important part of how we will be able to codify elements of offsetting and conservation payments through that document as a legislative instrument to give it the force of law, which it hasn’t had in the past,” he said.

A legislative instrument would give the government the capacity to lock in offsetting attributes that it wanted to pursue, Tregurtha said.

He said the Nature Positive Plan made clear that averted loss offsets would not be accepted unless it can be demonstrated that the habitat is under clear and imminent threat.

“It is our intention that the investment into offsetting is made far more into the regenerative, the management, the restorative space, which is where we want offsetting to occur, where it’s necessary, so that’s important,” he said.

JUST SAY NO

Asked what good offset policy would look like, UNSW’s Evans said this would involve rejecting developments on the basis that the impacted area could not be offset.

“We actually need to starting saying no to impacts, and we’re only offsetting stuff that we can ecologically feasibly restore, and we’re not just relying on protecting existing stuff as offsets because that assumes a declining baseline, therefore it’s not nature positive to protect existing stuff in exchange for losses,” she said.

“The mitigation hierarchy and offsets need to be in the regulations, it needs to be in the legislative decisions.”

Referring to her research conducted earlier this year, Evans pointed to quotes from government assessment officers who said that under the current EPBC Act it’s “very hard to refuse a project on the basis that you can’t find an offset”.

“There’s more negotiation involved and we have to consider sustainable development from a social and economic point of view as well as the environmental aspects, so we try to come up with something that’s acceptable more from an economic, political perspective at the same time as getting some environmental outcomes,” the DCCEEW official said.

Crucially, Evans said the EPBC reforms and Nature Positive plan currently do not address the administrative practice of “backloading” – deferring detailed assessment of impacts and offset requirements – until after approval of impacts.

“Conditions of approval these days are ‘develop an offset management plan’, then everything is dealt with later,” she said.

By Mark Tilly – mark@carbon-pulse.com

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