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New South Wales (NSW) Government is introducing Australia’s largest Biodiversity Banking and Offsets Scheme (or ‘BioBanking’) to help address the loss of biodiversity values, including threatened species.
- Learn more about the NSW BioBanking Scheme
Scheme overview on BioBanking (486 Kb Pdf*) and the Expression of Interest form (86 Kb Pdf*).
The BioBanking Team can be contacted by phone at (02) 995 6753 or by email at biobanking@environment.nsw.gov.au to answer any inquiries.
The Native Vegetation Act 2003 regulates the clearing of native vegetation on all land in NSW (except for urban areas as well as National Parks, conservation areas, State forests and reserves. The system is based on voluntary agreements between landholders and Catchment Management Authorities called Property Vegetation Plans. An objective of the Act is to end broadscale clearing except where the clearing will improve or maintain environmental outcomes. Under the scheme farmers may be able to offset any negative impacts of clearing by improving or planting native vegetation elsewhere on their property, or even on their neighbours property, if they are agreeable.
The NSW Hunter River Salinity Trading Scheme leads the world in using economic instruments for the effective protection of waterways. It is a cap and trade scheme to manage in stream river salinity in the Hunter River. The scheme allows agriculture, mining and electricity generation to operate side by side, sharing the use of the river.
On 1 July 1996 the NSW Environment Protection Authority introduced an emissions trading scheme in the South Creek area of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River. This ‘bubble’ scheme allows the three participating sewage treatment systems to adjust their individual discharges, provided the total pollutant load limit for the scheme is not exceeded.
A pilot program implement nutrient reduction measures from diffuse sources with the credits generated to be used to comply with load-based licensing load limits (eg to assist the firms involved in the bubble licence to meet their load limits by providing offsets to reduce diffuse sources).
Provides conditions of an environmental protection licence to relate to tradeable emission schemes, green offsets and other schemes involving economic measures. Scheme’s implemented under this legislation include:
- Load-based Licensing (see Protection of the Environment Operations (Load Based Licensing) Regulation
- Hunter River Salinity Trading Scheme (see Protection of the Environment (Hunter River Salinity Trading Scheme) Regulation 2002
- Green offset Schemes or Works
- the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 is available from the Parliamentary Counsel’s Office
Load-based licensing is an application of the ‘polluter pays’ principle to the setting of environment protection licence fees. Under LBL, the annual licence fee comprises and administrative fee based on the scale of the licensee’s activity and a load fee based on the potential environmental impact.
Market-based instruments (MBIs) are being established in NSW to create a commercial value for land and water management practices that help natural resource management.
- Learn more about the NSW Environmental Services Scheme (ESS) – a pilot program with 24 landholders under agreements that rewarded environmental benefits provided by changed land use activities.
- Learn more about the Liverpool Plains Pilot Project – a trial of incentive mechanisms to encourage adoption of better land management practices
- Learn more about TARGET project in Central West of NSW – Tools to Achieve Landscape Redesign Giving Environmental/Economic Targets []
- Learn more about the Heartlands project – a collaborative project between the CSIRO, the NSW, Victorian and Australian Government, Catchment Management Authorities and local landholders in NSW and Victoria to improve land use in the Murray Darling Basin
This is a systematic colletion of environmental valuation studies presented in an on-line database.
An innovative program that is providing a new way of using water to support and improve both the environment and the socioeconomic value of rivers and wetlands. Funds from NSW RiverBank will buy water from the holders of existing water licences at market rates. This water is used to help increase environmental flows, reduce extraction to sustainable levels, and return threatened environments to an acceptable level of health over time.
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