The federal Australian government has announced an advisory group to encourage business to invest in nature repair, it announced Monday, as it looks to pass its Nature Repair Market (NRM) legislation in parliament this week.
The Nature Finance Council will be a platform for private sector collaboration and provide advice to the government to increase private investment in nature, a statement from Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said.
It will also support business to better understand and embrace nature-related financial reporting.
The Council will be chaired by former Secretary of the Department of Treasury Ken Henry, who also led the New South Wales governmental review into the state’s environmental protection law, and is on the board of Accounting for Nature.
“Our new Nature Finance Council will strengthen our efforts to protect more of what’s precious and repair more of what’s damaged,” Plibersek said.
“I’m pleased Ken Henry is bringing his considerable experience and passion to this role, to help develop new ideas and shape the future of nature repair.”
Henry told the Australian Financial Review that businesses would need to achieve “significant economic returns out of nature repair” if the economy was to transition from nature negative to nature positive.
“The global leaders understand in addition to creating the right policy frameworks and intuitions, we’re going to need to put substantial additional funds into nature repair. Those funds will have to include additional public sector funds, but also very substantial funding from the private sector,” he said.
The council will hold its first meeting Monday and will guide the government’s support for a nature-positive future over the coming three years, according to the government.
The Council’s first work plan will be available in early 2024, the government said, and The Council plans to engage with government departments and agencies across several portfolios.
Engagement between pubic and private sectors on solving nature-related issues and investment in nature would be key themes of Australia’s Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney next year, the government said.
“The work of the Council will complement our world-leading Nature Repair Market which will make it easier for business and philanthropists to invest in activities that help repair nature while avoiding greenwashing,” Plibersek said.
BILL BUSTING
It comes as the government will seek to bring a motion in parliament to expedite the release of a Senate committee report on its NRM legislation by bringing the publication deadline forward some five months.
This would then allow the government to attempt to try and pass the legislation in the Senate, however the Coalition opposition and the Greens have both said they cannot support the bill in its current form.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young told the ABC Sunday that allowing companies to use biodiversity certificates as offsets was still her party’s chief objection with the bill.
“If the offsets go, I would be happy to sit down with the government and talk about where we go from here,” she said.
Megan Evans, senior researcher at the University of NSW, wrote in a LinkedIn post that even without offsets supporting the NRM legislation in its current form would still be risky.
She said the government could still introduce offsets in its wider reforms of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, and was critical of Labor for attempting to pass the NRM bill before the EPBC work was finalised.
“Seriously, why now? There’s a significantly greater opportunity to secure improvements to the NRM and EPBC amendment bills if the bills can be scrutinised concurrently,” she wrote.
“In particular, to add ‘open standing provisions’ to the NRM bill, which would allow communities to seek judicial review of administrative decisions – crucial in enviro law (and missing in the Carbon Farming Initiative Act).”
By Mark Tilly – mark@carbon-pulse.com
** Click here to sign up to our weekly biodiversity newsletter **
