The Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) is the government’s proposed mechanism for channelling funding into the landscape to help mitigate climate change. The legislation is being debated in the parliament during June 2011. The Green Institute strongly supports the need for a major increase in funding for biodiversity and agricultural land management. However we recommend that this should be achieved by setting aside a minimum of 20% of the revenue from the carbon price scheme currently under negotiation and allocating the money through a fund (or funds) with defined objectives and priorities. A Biodiversity and Climate Fund would provide funding for biodiversity and ecosystem stewardship and restoration (including in the marine environment). It could be complemented by a fund to give incentives for improving agricultural land management. The CFI should provide the framework to enable participation in voluntary markets.
Biodiversity is life and is essential to life on earth, humans included. Yet human activities are now driving the 6th mass extinction in the earth’s history to the point where we have probably already crossed the safe planetary boundary. Australia’s rich and beautiful array of plants, animals and ecosystems is in a state of crisis. Even the government acknowledges that in the last 200 years Australia has suffered the largest biodiversity decline of any continent.
Biodiversity keeps the planet habitable, circulating air, water and nutrients, moderating the weather, absorbing waste. Biodiverse natural ecosystems are a key defence against climate change by storing massive amounts of carbon safely out of the atmosphere in resilient self-regenerating landscapes.
2011 is: the International Year of Forests and the first year of the International Decade of Biodiversity (2011-2020). For the first time there is an international body similar to the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change to translate science into policy: the awfully named IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) established by the UN in December 2010.
It’s time to match the renewed international attention and get biodiversity back on the public agenda in Australia too.
The Boobook Declaration calls on the Australian government to:
1. Acknowledge the critical importance of safeguarding biodiversity as part of Australia’s climate change response, and commit to urgent action to tackle the causes of biodiversity loss. (We must protect our natural ecosystems with their vast carbon stores in order to slow global warming.)
2. Increase investment in biodiversity and habitat protection, restoration and management to at least $9 billion over the next three years.
3. Increase publicly-funded biodiversity research and monitoring.
4. Deliver education and training so that all sectors of the Australian community understand the current threats to our biodiversity and have the skills to take conservation action.
It is supported by about 90 groups Australia-wide, including the Green Institute. If you belong to a group that is working to conserve biodiversity, please add your support for the declaration.
