Biobanking
Bill hits the NSW Parliament
Brief
comment by Dr James Prest
Market
mechanisms for environmental protection are being increasingly presented
as a solution to diverse issues including climate change, water
allocation and, more recently biodiversity decline.
The approach of "offsetting" the destructive impacts of
development by requiring a developer to secure the preservation
of habitat or natural values at a different but roughly equivalent
site elsewhere has been undertaken for a number of years now on
a case by case basis in NSW and South Australia by natural resource
management agencies.
The NSW government in early June 2006 tabled a Bill to facilitate
systematic and widespread offsetting practices throughout the land
development industry in that State.
It also builds upon the Property Vegetation Plans mechanism in the
Native Vegetation Act 2003, and the biodiversity certification of
LEPs introduced by recent amendments to the Threatened Species Conservation
Act 1995.
However
the distinguishing feature of the NSW Biobanking Bill is the intention
to create a reservoir of biobank sites that can be used to create
a market in bio-offset credits to facilitate development statewide.
The
recently tabled NSW Bill has some overseas antecedents in the form
of Habitat Conservation Plans which have been accelerating in popularity
as a means of gaining approval for projects under the US Endangered
Species Act.
Link
to the Biobanking
Bill
Link
to the Second
Reading Speech
Commentary
on the Bill: (below)
...................................................................................
Biobank
sounds a lot like bunk
Sydney Morning Herald
Editorial
August 10, 2006
CONSERVATION
seems a simple enough concept. If an area of land is worth keeping,
you keep it. However, this has proved much too straightforward.
Instead, NSW thinks it would be just as good to keep another piece
of land somewhere else. That way, the original piece of land could
be developed. Such land swaps will qualify as conservation. This
masterpiece of bureaucratic thinking, "biobanking", is
the work of the Department of Environment and Conservation, which
perhaps sees itself as an adjunct to the property industry.
Under the scheme, a construction company which, for example, wants
to clear an area of bushland in the Cumberland Plain in Sydney's
west could offset that destruction with another chunk of land elsewhere
in the Cumberland Plain. In practice, biobanking will not be a straightforward
land swap. The developer would buy so-called "biodiversity
credits" from investors who own the other area of Cumberland
Plain bush. The investors would have earned biodiversity credits
by maintaining the land's "high conservation significance".
The Department of Environment and Conservation would decide how
much environmental damage the proposed development would cause,
and how many credits the developer must buy to offset it.
The in-principle flaw in biobanking is that it equates a loss of
biodiversity in one area with a commitment to retain it in another.
Yet every area is unique. In the Sydney basin, the uniqueness may
be an area's very location; a few hectares of gully somewhere in
the suburbs - and the flora and fauna its supports - may be an irreplaceable
oasis. Even a thousand similar hectares somewhere else could never
make up for its loss, no matter how many biodiversity credits the
department thinks it is worth.
There would also be many practical difficulties with biobanking.
What will be the objective basis for this proposed ledger of biodiversity
gains and losses, of credits and debits? Will the department have
to decide that the conservation of a certain area of wattle in one
location generates enough credits to offset the loss of a frog habitat
in another? Or will there be separate credits for frog habitats
and wattles and everything else, making the scheme complicated to
the point of being unworkable? And there seems to be no way of guaranteeing
that investors will continue to maintain these areas of "high
conservation significance" after they've sold the credits.
Nor do members of the public have a clear avenue of appeal if they
think the department's decisions are wrong.
At present, developers must get an expert assessment of the conservation
value of a proposed development site. Sometimes that environmental
assessment will show the development should not proceed or must
involve expensive conservation work. That direct approach, which
would continue as an alternative to biobanking, can be long and
costly. This is a problem for a State Government under pressure
to make more land available for housing, and to simplify approval
processes. It is not obvious, however, that biobanking will do either,
especially if it is to include the appropriate safeguards. Offsets
may prove even more contentious and costly than confronting environmental
problems directly. It certainly does not look like a system the
community can bank on.
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