Can a ‘nature-repair’ market finance conservation on First Nations lands?

Since September 2022 the Albanese government has looked to expand the previous government's Agriculture Biodiversity Stewardship Market Bill 2022 into a more sophisticated and spatially far-reaching framework to financially underwrite biodiversity conservation and monitor its expected improvement.

This is a part of the new government's response to the 2020 Samuel Review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, found to be deficient, and the 2021 State of the Environment Report documenting ongoing biodiversity loss. In December 2022 a lengthy exposure draft of the Nature Repair Market Bill was released for comment.

In this seminar, based in part on his submission on the exposure draft, Jon explores how workable the proposed regulatory framework to 'repair nature' might be on First Nations titled lands that are fast expanding as the main portion of the Australia's National Reserve System.

The proposal is modelled on the perceived success of the commodification of carbon (emissions) although carbon as property is clearly very different from biodiversity as property. The proposal to commodify nature is a radical policy departure with an eye no doubt on possible global 'nature-related' financial disclosures requirements currently being considered by an international Taskforce.

But if passed, will Nature Repair Market law be effective in financing biodiversity conservation and what might be its shortcomings from the perspective of First Nations landholders?

About the speaker

Jon Altman is an anthropologist, economist and policy analyst who has had a decades-long interest in development alternatives on First Nations lands that will help protect and enhance their exceptional cultural and environmental values while delivering livelihoods. He currently a non-executive director of a number of Indigenous led not-for-profit organisations including the Karrdakd Kanjdji Trust and Original Power and is an adviser to the First Nations Clean Energy Network.

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This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

Image credit: Image of beautiful billabong with buff and pig damage in Kakadu supplied by the speaker.