The NSW Government recently commissioned an Independent Review of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 – with damning results.
The review was led by Dr Ken Henry and he concludes that the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 has failed to meet its goals. He writes: “It is clear to the Review Panel that the operative provisions of the Act are incapable of supporting its objectives. Too much rests upon the operation of other pieces of legislation that have their own, competing, objectives.”
Worse, Dr Henry says that the Act’s approaches are obsolete: “The natural environment is now so damaged that we must commit to ‘nature positive’ if we are to have any confidence that future generations will have the opportunity to be as well off as we are.”
Pretty depressing stuff.
So where to from here? In a series of recommendations, the review outlines a way forward – something that Dr Henry describes as a “major reset of public policy thinking.”
Recommendation 50 of the report says that the NSW Government should: ‘Invest in the development of a comprehensive set of natural capital accounts for NSW, suitably regionally disaggregated, that provide science-based natural capital baselines, and report changes in natural capital over time.’
IDEEA Group wholeheartedly agrees with this approach. We’re 100% committed to the concept of creating natural capital baselines for biodiversity in Australia and around the world. From our perspective, there’s no better way to measure changes in biodiversity in NSW and Australia as whole.