CEEP Contributes to National Environmental Protection Reform Discussions
- Jun 2
- 2 min read
Significant changes in Australia’s national environmental laws are underway, through reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. These reforms aim to reshape how environmental impacts are assessed and managed across Australia, including changes to biodiversity offsets and restoration funding.
At the UWA Centre for Environmental Economics & Policy (CEEP), we work extensively in the area of environmental policy and natural resource management, including the design of economic and institutional frameworks that improve environmental outcomes. Given the importance of these reforms, CEEP submitted a formal response to ensure our work, and insights from environmental economics more broadly, form part of the discussion.
The submission was led by CEEP’s leadership team, authored by myself, Dr Claire Doll, and Professor David Pannell. The submission focused on environmental offsets and on ensuring that the proposed reforms strengthen biodiversity protection in Australia.
Environmental offsets are intended to compensate for ecological damage caused by development activities, but in practice they often fail to deliver equivalent environmental outcomes. We argue that offsets should only be approved where suitable ecological outcomes are realistically achievable. Too often, impacts are approved even when no viable offset exists, leading to ongoing biodiversity decline.
We also recommend establishing an “excluded matters” list for highly threatened species, habitats and ecosystems. In some cases, biodiversity losses are simply too severe or irreversible for offsetting to be ecologically defensible. For these critically threatened environmental assets, development impacts should not be able to be offset.
Another important issue is the chronic underfunding of restoration and offset schemes. Payments into environmental restoration funds are frequently insufficient to support the long-term management, monitoring and restoration actions needed to achieve genuine no-net-loss outcomes. We recommend that contribution schemes account for the full costs of restoration in perpetuity, including risks of project failure and ongoing administration requirements.
Finally, we call for transparency and accountability as essential elements of an effective environmental protection framework.
With the reforms, there should be a public register of approved offsets and annual performance outcomes to ensure independent scrutiny.
CEEP welcomes the opportunity to contribute to this important national conversation. Effective environmental policy requires robust economic thinking alongside ecological science, particularly when designing systems intended to balance development pressures with long-term environmental protection.
More information
Dr Clarie Doll: claire.doll@uwa.edu.au
A copy of the submission can be made available upon request. Please contact the author.
Consultation Process: https://consult.dcceew.gov.au/natl-environmental-standards-mnes
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