17th December 2024
The Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales (NCC), the state's leading environmental advocacy organisation, welcomes the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal's (IPART) recommendation that the Biodiversity Conservation Fund needs to be reined in.
A key issue with the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme (BOS) is that developers can simply make a payment into the Fund in lieu of their offset obligations. Endangered species offsets are obviously difficult to source, and this means the Trust administering the Fund is often left with inadequate funds to deliver a 'like-for-like' offset.
IPART has previously recommended that the Fund be phased out entirely.
IPART has today proposed that whilst the Fund still exists, the Government must adopt a precautionary approach by ensuring that prices are high enough to provide the Trust with confidence that it can purchase sufficient offsets.
Statements attributable to Jacqui Mumford, Chief Executive Officer of Nature Conservation Council NSW:
"Allowing developers to avoid genuine offsets and simply 'pay to destroy' is driving our previous biodiversity to extinction.
"Developers are getting away with inadequate payments we know aren't enough to secure genuine like for like offsets.
"IPART and the environment movement are in clear agreement - these loopholes must be phased out.
"IPART has confirmed that recent reforms passed by Parliament are 'useful interim measures' but that more ambitious reform is needed to properly fix the scheme and protect biodiversity.
"We urge the NSW government to adopt IPART's recommendations as part of its nature reforms in 2025.
"The last Biodiversity Outlook Report found that NSW will lose half of the over 1000 threatened species in the next 100 years if we continue business as usual. NSW habitat is so degraded it can only support 29% of the plants and animals it once did.
"It is clear the system is failing nature and is in urgent need of reform."
Statement ends
