The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is inviting people and businesses involved in the NSW biodiversity credits market to provide feedback on issues related to competition, fairness and efficiency in the market.
IPART has started its second annual review of the market, which forms part of the state’s controversial Biodiversity Offsets Scheme.
In a media release from IPART, tribunal member Jonathan Coppel describes the scheme as having been designed to offset the impact of development and some types of land clearing on biodiversity in NSW.
The scheme allows developers to ‘offset’ negative environmental impacts of their projects by investing in more positive environmental projects elsewhere, thanks to landholders being allowed to create credits through positive biodiversity measures and to sell the credits to developers via the government-created market.
The concept of offsetting negative environmental impacts is more well-known via the national carbon credits scheme and both schemes are often criticised by environmentalists as lacking in transparency and accountability.
Recommendations, reports, reviews and Labor’s ‘nature plan’
The Greens has long held a policy against offsets programs but party members on a former version of the Byron Shire Council approved offsets for construction of the Byron Bay Bypass.
The former coalition state government last year responded to recommendations from an upper house inquiry into the scheme’s integrity, noting most of them were to be addressed as part of other government statutory reviews.
It’s unclear whether a change in government since then has affected much change to biodiversity offsets regulations, with Mr Coppel saying IPART’s first review of the biodiversity credits market last year found it wasn’t performing well in several key areas.
‘We recommended the NSW Government remove price distortions and make the market more accessible for landholders and developers to trade credits,’ he says.
This year’s IPART monitoring review is to consider the performance of the market in the context of the Labor state government’s NSW Plan for Nature proposed reforms.
‘We will also be looking out for any progress made against the recommendations from our 2022-23 Annual Report,’ Mr Coppel says.
‘We’ve released a discussion paper highlighting current and emerging issues for the market and we want to hear from stakeholders on their experiences in the market and how well they consider it is functioning.
‘We are interested in hearing from Aboriginal landholders, including Local Aboriginal Land Councils to better understand their barriers to entering the credits market, including whether the way the market works aligns with Aboriginal land management and supports Aboriginal self-determination.’
Interested parties can make a submission or provide quick feedback to the Discussion Paper via IPART’s website until 8 October 2024.
Online consultation workshops are planned for the week starting 23 September.
Stakeholders can sign up to receive updates on the review, or read more information, via IPART’s website at www.ipart.nsw.gov.au
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