Posted 13/6/08  Updated 24/6/08

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To go the to Pale Green Paper, click

http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrence.nsf/LinkView/523B19576C368289CA2572C0007B3BEA554FC9C681B6CAB6CA2572C600036DB1

NEW  (13/6/08)  

Land & Biodiversity In A Time Of Climate Change:  Do you think the Green Paper is a pale shade of green?  Tell us if you agree with the State government's take on its role in addressing this issue. 

Below is an extract from section 4.1 of the Pale Green Paper.  This, along with the next section, 4.2 Changing Paradigms,  is how the Victorian government sees its role in addressing Land and Biodiversity in a time of Climate Change.  Tell us if you agree with government - mrra.sec999@gmail.com

Land & Biodiversity in a time of Climate Change :

The "Pale" Green Paper

4.1  The role of Government

Government’s main objective for land and biodiversity management is to maximise the value of the services the land produces to ensure its long-term health. One of Government’s roles is to identify appropriate mechanisms to deal with areas of market failure and to facilitate their successful implementation. Depending on the situation, the appropriate mechanisms can include education programs, regulation, incentives and public investment.

In some cases the design, implementation and ongoing support of markets for environmental goods and services offers a cost effective way for Government to achieve the community’s environmental objectives. Markets involve incentive based tools and rely on supporting regulation and education tools. Markets can be designed to accommodate government investment in biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as private investment. As markets for biodiversity and ecosystem services emerge, the goods and services they produce will become assets, rather than liabilities.

 
The role of Government differs between private and public land.  Wherever possible, it should aim to maximise the potential for win-win outcomes. At times, Government is required to make decisions about trade-offs between values.

Public land

One third of Victoria is currently under public ownership. This includes national parks, State forest, conservation reserves and other publicly-owned land and water assets. The Victorian Government is directly responsible for managing public land and the benefits it provides Victorians. A range of statutory agencies and authorities such as Parks Victoria, CMAs and Coastal Boards also have responsibilities in managing much of this public land.

The role of the Victorian Government and its partner agencies in public land management includes:

• Maintaining the ecological integrity of land so it continues providing public good services – ongoing public land management includes reducing threats (through activities such as weed and pest removal, erosion control and ecologically appropriate fire management), rehabilitating degraded land and ensuring land is used appropriately so it continues providing ecosystem services.

• Providing equitable opportunities for appropriate use of public land – public land is classified in a range of ways that reflect different uses and values. National parks contain high biodiversity values and only low intensity use is allowed, while State forests are utilised more broadly. It is the government’s responsibility to provide safe and equitable access to these lands within the constraints of approved uses.

• Preventing negative offsite impacts – the boundary between public and private land is often a place of conflict. Just as private landholders are required under the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994 to avoid off-site impacts of their land management actions, the government has a responsibility to limit the spread of weeds, pests and fire from public to private land.

• Safeguarding assets of significance – public land hosts a range of natural assets (such as biodiversity assets and heritage rivers), cultural assets (such as Indigenous cultural sites and recreation sites) and built assets (including venues for community sports and heritage buildings). As managers of public land, it is the government’s responsibility to ensure assets on public land are protected.
   

Private land
 

Two thirds of Victoria is owned and managed by private individuals and companies. Their actions make significant contributions to land and biodiversity management. The community can (and does) work together to manage and improve land and biodiversity on private land, through Landcare, Conservation Management Networks and other groups. The Government, on behalf of the community, can
seek to influence management of this land when individual actions affect others.

Responsibilities of Government on private land can include:

• Creating incentives to produce public goods – a variety of non-priced goods and services are desired by the community. It is a role of government to establish institutional arrangements which help integrate non-priced goods and services into the economy. For example, government may need to design and implement institutional arrangements that create a broader market for biodiversity than the BushTender program has already achieved. The creation or codification of property rights and the enabling of trades based on individual assessment of their value is well established for land holdings, developing for water and emerging for carbon and biodiversity markets.

• Safe minimum standards – government has a role in setting safe minimum standards to ensure basic health and safety threats are managed.

• Negative externalities – when decision makers fail to take into account the external effects of their behaviour, government can respond by trying to influence the behaviour. This can be done through a range of mechanisms such as regulatory settings, tradeable permits or taxes or markets.

• Information – government can help ensure information is provided to the market place or to communities and individuals to help with decision-making. This can include land management information to clearly show, where known, the impacts or benefits of various land management practices.

• Public investment – targeted investment in facilitating change through voluntary action, providing infrastructure (including enabling technology) to enable private investment and providing incentives to change is sometimes warranted. 

Different levels of government use different tools and have different capabilities. For example, taxation incentives are largely (but not solely) the province of the Australian Government, but there are opportunities for the Victorian Government to identify and remove disincentives to good management. The Australian and state and territory governments have greater financial capability (in total) than individual local governments, but the important role of local governments should not be underestimated. In many cases, they are best placed to lead or deliver specific local initiatives.

Tools that involve less red tape and foster individual innovation should generally be preferred over more interventionist approaches. Options for correcting market failures by reassigning property rights and improving pricing should be considered first. Where this is not possible, or will adversely affect markets, regulation should be considered.

Governments have a particular responsibility to intervene when actions may negatively affect future generations.  Decision making processes must effectively integrate long and short-term economic, environmental, social and equity considerations. They must also take account of enhanced information as it becomes available and be flexible enough to adjust policy settings and program strategies to achieve desired outcomes. Relevant benchmarks against which outcomes can be monitored are needed to assess the performance of these policies and strategies.

4.2  Changing paradigms

The current approach to land and biodiversity management reflects a mixture of traditional and new ideas and institutions.  These are responding to growing community expectations for biodiversity protection and better environmental management. Best practice regulation, creating and defining property rights and responsibilities, and industry-led environmental management systems are examples of emerging new paradigms. Governments are developing market-based instruments to better allocate and manage finite resources.

The water market, allocation of marine aquaculture leases in offshore fisheries reserves and the BushTender programs are examples of this in Victoria.

 
It is now well accepted that government alone is not responsible for protecting the environment. The community and business are responding and sharing responsibility for environmental outcomes. New market mechanisms encourage and support business to seek creative solutions to sustainability issues and new business models can build them into everyday practices. Government can play a role in ensuring markets effectively include all production costs, particularly currently discounted environmental costs.
 

As we increase our knowledge of how to use market forces and encourage innovation to achieve environmental outcomes, more ideas and solutions are likely to emerge. While market-based instruments have been successfully used for the delivery of government incentive payments, there are further opportunities to look at supporting cooperation between investors, or between landholders providing related environmental outcomes.

The design of government programs is changing to respond to this new thinking. Better problem definition, new ways of engaging with stakeholders and better collaboration across program areas and government departments has started. New ways of thinking and conceptualising programs are essential.

The White Paper process will help progress this. While some problems and inefficiencies exist, it is generally recognised that Victoria has a strong integrated catchment management system. Other Australian states have adopted the model established under the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994. Opportunities to learn from the experiences of other states as well as Victorian CMAs obviously exist. The clear link
between catchment and water management suggests further work is possible in this area.

Government agencies in Victoria have a long history of working with voluntary community groups such as Coast Action/Coastcare and Friends groups, farmers, schools, local councils, industry and interested individuals to improve land health and biodiversity. As voluntary groups like Landcare join larger networks, an increasing focus on delivering whole-of-landscape outcomes is emerging. Committees of Management help manage public land assets on behalf of DSE and the community. There have been significant improvements in partnerships with the CFA, SES and other land, fire and emergency management organisations.

Changes in the nature of volunteering and a stronger environmental ethic in the community mean we need to better incorporate partnerships with diverse user groups and increase the emphasis on education and training.

In the past, programs were developed around single issues with little interconnection or collaboration. This partly reflected government processes including the short-term nature of the budget cycle. Political drivers and the demands of community lobby groups have influenced resource allocation or led to narrowly focused programs. The skills of people involved in these programs may have been limited to one area, restricting opportunities for a more holistic approach.

The traditional approach to pest and weed management has been to respond to species once they are already widespread and the problem is evident. A stronger focus on prevention and early intervention is needed and has been  developing in recent years.

Although tree planting has helped combat salinity, opportunities to achieve other environmental outcomes such as biodiversity improvements weren’t always pursued at the same time.

Today, efforts are made to facilitate integration and collaboration but there is room for further improvement.

Soil management

The impact on productivity from soil erosion and soil health decline is generally a management issue for individual farmers. However, government is interested in this work due to off-site impacts such as river sedimentation. The sustainable use of soils can create other benefits such as improving carbon storage. Government and industry are considering actions that achieve positive environmental outcomes while allowing flexibility to adapt to various drivers of change.
 

Threatened species management

Victoria’s approach to threatened species protection is scientifically rigorous but with current investment the listing process and the development of management plans and on-ground action isn’t keeping pace with the number of species or decline rates. Fundamental decisions need to be made about the level of resources that can be invested in this area and whether we want to continue to aim to protect all species.
 

Fire management

Prior to European settlement the Australian landscape adapted to Indigenous peoples’ fire use and the natural occurrence of fire. Today’s fire patterns are different, with the key focus being to protect life and property and contain fire. This containment may in fact increase the long-term threat of severe fire, as evidenced by massive fires in 2003 and 2006/07. Increased scientific knowledge of fire requirements of the Australian bush is helping inform a new framework that acknowledges the importance of ecological burning while reducing threats to life and property.
 

Public land management

The role of public land and the values for which it is managed is evolving. Public land management has traditionally reflected a tension between resource use and conservation values.  Public land is important for water catchments, recreation, tourism and a range of other ecosystem services. The need to manage for multiple uses and to plan for the impacts of climate change requires a review of the current approach.
 

Information management

Data collection is currently project-based rather than long-term and systematic. Maps are constructed using an amalgam of data from different temporal and spatial scales. In Victoria, we are unable to present a clear picture of what is happening to many important assets. Scales, time-lags and the extent of degradation make it difficult to recognise insidious change or to demonstrate short-term progress. Environmental benefits are usually seen in the long term only, resulting from cumulative actions.
 

Condition measurement is important and needs improvement. We need a framework that supports decision-making and adaptive management to help inform investment in high value assets, efficient environmental outcomes and effective learning.
 

The increasing scale and urgency of the problem, and significant complexity and scientific uncertainty surrounding change, means that broad-based action is required to build the resilience of our ecological and social systems. An approach that builds adaptive capacity, continual innovation and flexibility is required.

New paradigms are needed that guide programs to respond to well defined problems and direct interventions towards multiple outcomes rather than single issues or problems. A focus on agreed medium-term and long-term outcomes should lead to longer term programs. Decisions must be based on good information (scientific and local) and decision-making processes must be transparent.
 

Advances in scientific capability, technology and economic theory have dramatically improved our ability to achieve environmental outcomes and to evaluate the merits of different policy approaches.
 

Scientific advances allow us to measure and compare the land health and biodiversity outcomes of different policies. Improved modelling and simulation capabilities help overcome missing information problems. This allows us to estimate the outcomes that result from different actions and design policy accordingly, even when there are complex relationships.