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Journal article
Has a dedicated biodiversity offsets policy improved the environmental and social compensation outcomes of development in Australia?
Environment, development and sustainability
2024
Abstract
Biodiversity offsets are used worldwide to provide environmental compensation for the impacts of development and to meet the goals of sustainable development. Australia has embraced the use of offsets and its offset methodologies have been used as models by other jurisdictions. However, the maturity of offset requirements in Australia is unknown. To understand this, development referrals submitted under the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Commonwealth) between October 2011 and September 2017 were reviewed to determine if offset requirements in Australia were improving in complexity, transparency and/or environmental outcomes (termed maturity) over time. Despite the implementation of dedicated policy in Australia in 2012, our analysis showed that offset requirements were not on a trajectory towards improvement (maturity) over the 6-year period examined. There was no evidence to suggest the type of offsets required and compensation for impacts to specific species and habitats increased in complexity over time. The level of detail included for offset requirements, mandatory commencement dates and requirements for ecological outcomes similarly did not increase over time. Consequently, dedicated legislation for offsets is recommended to remedy these omissions and enable effective functionality for biodiversity offsets through the protection of the environment and conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem function and ecosystem services.
Details
- Title
- Has a dedicated biodiversity offsets policy improved the environmental and social compensation outcomes of development in Australia?
- Authors/Creators
- Linda J. Abdo - The University of Notre Dame AustraliaSandy GriffinAnnabeth Kemp - The University of Notre Dame AustraliaGrey Coupland - Murdoch University, Centre for Biosecurity and One Health
- Publication Details
- Environment, development and sustainability
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- Identifiers
- 991005701567507891
- Copyright
- © 2024 Springer Nature B.V.
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Harry Butler Institute
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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Source: InCites
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InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Citation topics
- 3 Agriculture, Environment & Ecology
- 3.40 Forestry
- 3.40.195 Biodiversity Conservation
- Web Of Science research areas
- Environmental Sciences
- Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
- ESI research areas
- Environment/Ecology