The Designer Carrots program arose out of the National Market Based Instruments (MBIs) Pilot Program Round Two selection process. During the selection process, the selection advisory panel identified the need for a National MBI Capacity Building Program as they felt additional capacity building was essential to increase the potential for widespread success of well-designed MBIs for natural resource management (NRM).

The $1.2 million national MBI Capacity Building Program, which runs under the banner of Designer Carrots,  is developing a number of products to help regional NRM groups and government policy makers build their capacity to better understand and use MBIs as an incentive to encourage land managers to implement best practice NRM.

The Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water is coordinating the program.

Designer Carrots will build on the work already delivered by researchers, practitioners, regional NRM groups and government agencies. 

Tools delivered by the Designer Carrots program include the following.

MBI website

This website has been developed as a portal for MBI information. It has fact sheets and general information on MBIs, and has useful support mechanisms such as a MBI document library (including fact sheets, case studies and guidelines) members forums, the Little Orange Book (a ‘yellow pages’ of MBI experts), an MBI decision support tool, training modules and an events calendar containing the dates for training workshops and other MBI events.

Practitioners' network

The members area of this website has been developed a community of MBI practitioners providing virtual networking, and the ability to utilise the resources of this website, such as web forums, the ability to set up individual profiles, email services and survey process. The members area supersedes the previously established e-lists to facilitate interaction. The network also had the opportunity to meet face-to-face through the regional MBI workshops and national conference. 

Designer Carrots seed money

The Designer Carrots seed money project was developed for regional NRM groups as a service designed to provide resources to broker knowledge and build the capacity to implement and design MBIs. The project was announced on 31 October 2007 and was timed to build capacity at the start of the program so key learnings can be communicated at the regional workshops and through this website. To see a list of the successful applicants click here.

Case studies and fact sheets

There are a number of case studies and fact sheets which have been developed by the Australian, state and territory governments and are available on this website's document library.  Additionally, a series of Designer Carrots fact sheets, case studies and guidelines have been developed to fill in gaps in current information and to provide some national consistent for MBIs. Additional, case studies will be added by members of this website so this knowledge base will continue to grow.

Training packages and regional workshops

Eighteen regional workshops were held nationwide, including workshops for regional NRM groups and government agencies. A national conference also was conducted to help show case MBI work which is currently underway or has been completed in the field of NRM. The training provided practical information on the development, administration, communication, monitoring and evaluation of major MBI approaches.

Decision support tool and metrics framework

The Decision Support Tool and Metrics Framework help create a knowledge platform for the consistent national application of MBIs. The decision support tool guides determination of the feasibility of applying different MBIs. The metric tool assists in the development of an MBI project. Both of these products will be available on this website.