The government has great aspirations. It has committed to end extinctions and expand our protected areas to cover 30% of every Australian ecosystem by 2030. This is part of its Nature Positive Plan, aligned with the 2022 Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity pact. The goal is not just to conserve nature but to restore what is being lost.
The government has great aspirations. It has committed to end extinctions and expand our protected areas to cover 30% of every Australian ecosystem by 2030. This is part of its Nature Positive Plan, aligned with the 2022 Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity pact. The goal is not just to conserve nature but to restore what is being lost.
But how can these goals be reconciled with a budget that allocated more public money to carbon capture and storage than biodiversity?
This week’s federal budget was a new low point for investment in nature. Environmental groups roundly criticized the „bad budget for nature“, which delivered next-to-no money to protect and recover Australia’s unique and threatened biodiversity.
Research has shown Australians want at least 2% of the federal budget spent on nature. Instead, less than 0.1% of the budget spend will support biodiversity in some way. Over the past decade, biodiversity funding has gone down 25% relative to GDP.
Let’s say the government decided it was finally time to roll up the sleeves and do something. How would they go about it? What would it take to actually reverse the decline, as the government says it wants to in its Nature Positive approach?
Our threatened species populations have been declining by about 2–3% a year over the past 20 years. The first step is to stop the fall. Then the challenge is to restore dwindling species and ecosystems.
Australia now has a Threatened Species Index. Think of it like the Dow Jones for wildlife. It uses trend data from bird, mammal and plant species collected from over 10,000 sites to measure progress for nature in Australia.
Last year, Treasurer Jim Chalmers talked up the index as part of the first national „well-being budget“, which aimed to measure Australia’s progress across a range of social, health and sustainability indicators.
What does the index tell us? You can see for yourself.
