Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697636833746.pdf (Australia)
Submission to Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 [Provisions] 1 June 2023 Australian Parents for Climate Action c/o Environmental Leadership Australia Level 2, 69 Reservoir Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 Email: info@ap4ca.org Australian Parents for Climate Action represents over 17,000 parents, grandparents and carers from across Australia.
We are Australia’s leading organisation for parents advocating for a safe climate.

Our supporters are from across the political spectrum, across all Australian electorates, and from varied socio-economic positions.

We seek non-partisan responses to climate change and its impacts.

We advocate for Australian governments and businesses to take urgent action to cut Australia’s carbon emissions to net zero as quickly as possible.
We encourage Australia to take a leadership role on the world stage, leading by example and calling for other nations to take the necessary action to protect our children’s futures.

For more information, visit www.ap4ca.org This submission was prepared by volunteer Siobhain O’Leary, with input from Milos Karapandzic and David McEwen and has been approved by Nic Seton, Chief Executive Officer of Australian Parents for Climate Action.
AP4CA - Nature Repair Market Submission - 1 June 2023 Page 1 Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 [Provisions]Submission 48 Submission “The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological - social - psychological - economic system.

We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite.
Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch” Dana Meadows The world cannot address climate change risks and prepare for adaptation without also addressing biodiversity destruction.

Climate change is a key driver of biodiversity destruction, and the integrity of biodiversity is an essential ally and collaborator in emissions mitigation efforts.

All financial activity, as well as social, political, and cultural activity, is dependent on nature: we are nature.
Our economic systems cannot be to the detriment of our life support systems, it is not only morally wrong but incongruent with our own survival.

Australian Parents for Climate Action… ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Welcomes a shift in policy toward increased protection of biodiversity.

Calls for an emergency level and large-scale response to halt the rate of biodiversity destruction.
We specifically reference ‘destruction’ as the terminology ‘biodiversity loss’ is inadequately passive in describing the process by which biodiversity is being actively diminished.

Contends that a market-based solution is not an adequate response to the crisis.

Calls for the immediate removal of all government subsidies and concessions for fossil fuels, a key driver in biodiversity destruction.

All government funding and decision making should reflect the priority of safeguarding biodiversity.
Proposes that decision-making processes sit within a more holistic nature-values framework, better incorporating diverse values perspectives, especially those of First Nations people.

A monetized system is incapable of adequately accounting for the diverse and complex value of nature.

Calls for a precautionary approach to biodiversity destruction as a priority, given that it is easier to protect what is there than try and recover it once it is gone.
This includes planning processes, policies and regulations that prioritise our life support systems, biodiversity over profit.

Strongly contends that biodiversity credits as offsets are explicitly excluded from the bill.

Proposes that a poorly designed market has significant potential to do more harm than good.

Any market design that enables offsetting is a poorly designed market.

Offsetting does not equal repair.


Calls for sufficient funding for ongoing and comprehensive monitoring of ecosystems and funding for a skilled and independent workforce who oversees any biodiversity program.
AP4CA - Nature Repair Market Submission - 1 June 2023 Page 2 Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 [Provisions]Submission 48 AP4CA does not support the prioritisation of a market-based solution to solving the biodiversity and extinction crisis We are not in favour of a market solution and believe the repair and protection of biodiversity should be managed through strong and enforced regulation and legislation, including stronger penalties for individuals and corporations whose operations destroy biodiversity.
It is clear from the State of The Environment Report that, to date, there have been multiple failures of regulation and inadequate protections in place within planning processes and across jurisdictions.

There is also insufficient monitoring and data to help truly understand the scale of destruction.

It calls for a more strategic and an emergency level, large-scale response than a market motivated by profit will deliver.
Government tightening of regulations, legislative reform and direct funding will have a far greater outcome for halting biodiversity decline than the market will ever be able to deliver.

The market cannot be relied on to deliver specific outcomes within specific timeframes.
The department states that it is “premature to commit to biodiversity-related targets or key milestones given the complexity, and uncertainty around participation, and project success (failure) rates” nor are targets yet set within specific timeframes because it “is not realistic to suggest a timeframe for delivering (sic) outcomes” “given the various uncertainties involved”.

And yet the halting of biodiversity destruction is urgent.
A market solution will not deliver positive outcomes for broad and diverse areas.

Left to the whim of business the department recognises that it is entirely possible that “some regions are favoured more than others” and the “distribution will largely reflect decisions made by the market itself based on perceived need or opportunity”.

This is not a scientific or needs based approach which the complexity and widespread destruction of biodiversity demands.
AP4CA calls on the government to fund biodiversity repair directly Sufficient government funding for Nature Repair should be made available outside of a market mechanism.

We do not accept the government’s claim that “the government cannot afford to arrest the biodiversity crisis” or that “the scale of the task is beyond government” and instead suggest that it is a matter of prioritisation.

The Nature Repair Market cannot substitute for government funding.
In budget estimates recently the department was unable to point to specific and targeted threatened species funding from the government, this should be reviewed as a matter of urgency.

There must also be substantial commitment to properly empowering and resourcing agencies to monitor and protect what we have and investment in upskilling where needed to protect and enforce penalties for breaching environmental protection laws.
The estimated $2 billion per year to arrest the extinction crisis is an extremely small amount in budgetary terms, especially in relation to safeguarding our life support systems.
By comparison the stage three tax cuts, which are largely going to wealthier individuals contributing to biodiversity destruction through highly consumptive lifestyles, will cost $243 billion and the planned nuclear submarines under the AUKUS deal will cost US$245 billion AP4CA - Nature Repair Market Submission - 1 June 2023 Page 3 Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 [Provisions]Submission 48 over 30 years.
Both budgetary priorities were funded without the need to establish a complex market solution without specific targets or timeframes.
We note that in earlier consultation rounds related to the Nature Repair Market, submissions from business groups including the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute, Carbon Market Institute, Business Council for Sustainable Development, EY and others expressed skepticism that there would be voluntary business demand for biodiversity market investments, with many indicating that the government would need to invest to “create market certainty.” 1 If the government is determined to pursue the market as a major solution, and given stated limitations in government funding, it would be prudent for the government to immediately end all subsidies, and compliance exemptions, for industries known to have the most significant impact on biodiversity destruction such as native forest logging, high intensity agriculture and fossil fuel extraction, to instead redeploy these funds to the aims of biodiversity protection.
Similarly, a moratorium should be placed on the approval of any new or expanded fossil fuel projects in line with International Energy Agency recommendations to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

Not to do so would be to create a situation where the government was seeking to leverage private investment toward biodiversity protection, while simultaneously actively funding and advancing biodiversity destruction.
Funds and policies should instead be turned toward endeavours that achieve the stated aims of positive outcomes for nature.

There is significant potential for state-sanctioned greenwashing in the execution of the market Capitalism instrumentalises everything it comes into contact with.

For the Nature Repair Market the product is not nature but marketing.
There is little to no evidence that companies will engage in voluntary ‘nature repair’ but for the reputational boost and marketing opportunity it will provide them.

The market will provide an avenue for companies wanting to claim they are doing their bit for nature, however there is no requirement for them to advertise the ways in which they are causing harm.
While the bill seeks to address the issue of greenwashing via ‘guidance on the claims that would be able to be made in relation to biodiversity certificates’, without the two-sided ‘balance sheet’ of declaration of harm, as well as repair, the market will still have significant potential to operate as state-sanctioned greenwashing.
Integrity and transparency are already lacking The Department of Environment confirmed in Budget Estimates recently that the Nature Repair Market is based on an unsolicited report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) titled 1 Source: analysis of previous Nature Repair Market submissions by Dr Yung En Chee, Senior Research Fellow (Quantitative Ecologist) at the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, University of Melbourne, via Twitter.
AP4CA - Nature Repair Market Submission - 1 June 2023 Page 4 Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 [Provisions]Submission 48 "A nature-positive Australia".

The department confirmed it has not done its own modelling to determine the market's potential, instead relying on PwC estimates.
Given the cloud of integrity surrounding PwC, and their actions to leverage government connections for profit, their modelling should be considered with scepticism and viewed through the lens of extreme bias and vested interest, especially in the absence of the government's own modelling.
In a move that perfectly illustrates why this should be treated with caution PwC announced in April 2023 it has created a " Centre for Nature Positive Business " with the intention to expand its market and leverage opportunities in the business of nature to “assist its clients”.
There appears to be little to no evidence of a positive outcome for the repair of nature via a market, outside a report from a company seeking to profit from its establishment who appears to have proposed the idea in the first instance.

Offsets should never be an objective of the Nature Repair Market Under no circumstances should the Nature Repair Market be able to operate as an offsetting mechanism.

We are in direct opposition to the market ever being used for the purpose of offsetting.
Offsetting does not equal repair in precisely the same way that carbon offsetting does not equal emissions reductions.

The widespread use of offsetting by companies in their ambitions to achieve ‘net zero by 2050’ has not held up to scrutiny.

The quality of offsets being used is in extreme doubt with investigations revealing around 80 to 90 % of offsetting programs are junk.
This is especially true of avoidance offsetting and projects that are vulnerable in the long-term such as reforestation projects which are coming under pressure from drought and fire.

Offsetting means emissions are not meaningfully being reduced and it is an exercise in ‘reductions on paper’ only.

For biodiversity repair any offsetting relationship is even less quantifiable and would be harder still to hold up to scrutiny due to the complex and interdependent relationships within and between ecosystems.
The destruction of biodiversity is driven primarily by profit seeking.

Clearing of native forests is done to make way for new housing developments, new mines or new agricultural land.

The overfishing of seas is done to satisfy customer demand.
If we allow the destruction to continue unabated in one place, but make it possible to offset this by stopping destruction in another, the very best outcome will be the status quo; which, according to the State of the Environment Report and the Minister, is ongoing destruction.
Independence and the right people While we are encouraged by the requirement that the advisory committee include a member with expertise in biological or ecological science and a committee member with expertise in indigenous knowledge, we also seek the specific exclusion of persons associated with industries or companies operating in a financial way in ‘nature positive’ markets.
It is only through ensuring very strong adherence to removing actual and perceived conflict of interests that the advisory commute will be truly independent.
AP4CA - Nature Repair Market Submission - 1 June 2023 Page 5 Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 [Provisions]Submission 48 Please refer to AP4CA prior submissions in relation to the Nature Repair Market proposal In relation to AP4CA prior submissions our position has only strengthened in opposition to a market-based mechanism as an appropriate or adequate response to the crisis.
We remain steadfast that the market should never be used for the purposes of offsetting.

A National Biodiversity Market consultation - 16 September 2022 Nature Repair Market Exposure Draft of Legislation - 23 February 2023 AP4CA - Nature Repair Market Submission - 1 June 2023 Page 6 Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 and Nature Repair Market (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 [Provisions]Submission 48