If the budget ditched the Stage 3 tax cuts, Australia could save every threatened species – and lots more
The Albanese government has made bold environmental promises over the last year. Given the parlous state of nature in Australia, these commitments are important. The promises include ending new extinctions, fixing national nature laws and protecting 30% of our land and waters. Achieving these goals requires a lot of money. So how does last night’s federal budget stack up? […]
ICON tells Victoria’s Parliament to ‘walk the walk’ on urban greening
The ICON Science group has submitted our response to the Parliament of Victoria’s ‘Inquiry into Environmental Infrastructure for Growing Populations’. Our city has grown rapidly – has our access to nature kept up? It’s commendable that our leaders have turned their minds to this topic, as COVID-19 has reminded us of the enormous importance of […]
What is the fate of Victoria’s flower-strewn plains?
ISCRG’s Georgia Garrard and Sarah Bekessy discuss the fate of Victoria’s native grasslands as part of The Conversation’s Ecocheck series. The native grasslands of the Victorian Volcanic Plain are one of Australia’s most endangered ecosystems. Productive and fertile, these grasslands were quickly converted to grazing pastures by early European settlers, and a notable degradation in […]
Nature comment on biodiversity offsetting
Some colleagues and I have a Comment piece that has come out today in Nature. The article outlines the risks associated with using offsets to achieve pre-existing commitments, such as those to which nations have committed under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the World Heritage Convention. We recommend that while it is often appropriate for […]
Get rid of politicians and restore democracy
Brendan Wintle and Sarah Bekessy Picture Suzette. She is economically conservative and socially progressive. Suzette believes in fiscal restraint, reducing debt, deregulation, humanitarian treatment of refugees, reducing carbon emissions and the benefits to society of tax-deductible donations to environment groups. You can see the difficult choice she faces on election day. No single political party […]
Could perverse incentives undermine biodiversity offset policies?
We’ve just had a published in Journal of Applied Ecology that examines potential perverse incentives resulting from biodiversity offsetting. We outline some of the ways in which even best-practice offsetting could end up being bad for biodiversity, and discuss how to reduce the risks of perverse outcomes. The paper is available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.12398/abstract
Biodiversity offsets could be locking in species decline
Biodiversity offset policies are an increasingly common part of biodiversity conservation strategies in Australia and around the world. But how well do they work? Ascelin Gordon and Martine Maron explain how biodiversity offsets may – perversely – provide an incentive for the continuing decline of the species they are designed to protect. Read about it […]
