Opinion: Climate action needs rethink on funding

Substantial private investment is necessary to enable large scale landholders to seriously tackle climate change and protect natural resources, say the farmer and environmental groups who support a collaborative research project recently published by Land & Water Australia.

The study, study Concepts for Private Sector funded Conservation using Tax-effective Instruments, proposes a radical new approach developed by a multi-stakeholder team led by Professor Paul Martin from the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law at the University of New England and Macquarie University’s Centre for Environmental Law..

"Government and private interests are seeking ways of attracting, organising and investing enough money to address challenges to Australia’s environment," Professor Martin said.

"With the Garnaut Report highlighting the rapid advance of climate change and its consequences, the need for action is clearly urgent. To be effective there has to be substantial investment, including private investment, to find solutions and conserve ecosystems on both public and private land.

"Australia must harness emerging markets for carbon, climate, biodiversity, salt and water in a far more effective way than we have to date. We have to make it attractive to invest money and effort without using the existing business model, which relies on limited taxpayer funds and fragmented philanthropic efforts."

Professor Martin said that the goal of the project is to find ways of securing far larger sustained investments in conservation than are currently possible by making private investment attractive.

This new business model combines payments to landowners for providing a range of ecosystem benefits-such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, water saving and salinity control-with private philanthropy and investment in research. The key to its operation is the focus on an efficient transacting system, a true competitive market, and improved tax treatment of private conservation investment.

The approach has been evaluated against the conservation programs of two conservation bodies, the Rice Environmental Champions program and the Liverpool Plains Land Management Committee. In both cases the business model would deliver significant increases in landowner conservation efforts using relatively small amounts of government funding.

"Local farmers here can see how collaboration among themselves and with outside investors can make lasting positive changes to their land management and their local environment," says David Walker of the Liverpool Plains Land Management Committee, which acted as a case study for the research.

Many landowners feel that without sufficient investment from other sources, they will not be able to do what is needed. This "private lands, private money, commercially managed" approach may be the seed of a solution to the problem.

Denis Saunders, Chair of WFF-Australia, said "Protection of Australia’s unique wildlife requires large-scale, co-ordinated investment across large areas of private and public land. WWF believes that this report proposes a way to do this on private land that is both effective and fair."

"This exciting new research is an important innovation - a powerful collaboration of people and ideas to the get right muscles and knowledge working together to achieve sustainable good outcomes in natural resources", said Dr Stuart Pearson, from Land & Water Australia. "This work shows the power of a great idea and strong collaboration"

The research was funded by Land & Water Australia’s Innovation Call and has involved experts from the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law, Macquarie University Centre for Environmental Law, working with collaborators including WWF Australia, Kreston Dormers Accountants and AgriDNA.

The following organisations have endorsed the need for a new business model for conservation over privately owned lands, along the lines outlined in this study.

• WWF Australia
• Australian Conservation Foundation
• Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology
• Greening Australia
• Rice Environmental Champions
• Liverpool Plains Land Management Committee
• Financial and Energy Exchange Limited

Professor Paul Martin’s study will be launched at 11am on the morning of the 3rd of April at The American Club, Level 15, 131 Macquarie Street, Sydney. Online registration  is required.