biodiversity conservation, In the News
What price preservation?
Jan
What price will we pay if the government fails to increase Australia’s national budget for threatened species and the environment?
For the first time, researchers from the University of Queensland and CSIRO have created an economic framework to determine exactly how much it would cost to undo centuries of environmental damage to restore all of Australia’s threatened species to the state they were in before European settlement – and it’s as much as 25% of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP)!
“It would cost $583 billion per year, every year, for at least 30 years to undo all the damage and restore nature to a healthy state,” James Watson, professor of conservation science at the University of Queensland, told Geraldine Mellet on ABC Radio Perth.
Currently, just 0.1% of Australia’s GDP is allocated to protecting nature, so unsurprisingly, the study’s staggering price tag has been deemed unrealistic even by the researchers themselves. Last year’s Wentworth Group Blueprint to Repair Australia’s Landscapes identified 24 actions worth
$7.3 billion per annum (in 2022$) over 30 years to repair our environment, amounting to 0.3% of GDP. Both studies highlight just how miserly the current budget allocation truly is. Clearly, much more investment is needed if the government is serious about preventing further extinctions and halting biodiversity loss.
The Scale of the Problem
While the cost of fixing Australia’s past mistakes is daunting, it shouldn’t deter us from taking meaningful action now. The recent UQ study in Nature combines ecological data with financial modelling to estimate the costs of various restoration efforts, and the models are “designed to also be used at different resolutions and scales, from small urban parks up to landscape scale and vary greatly, from very low to more than A$12,600 per hectare for areas where intensive efforts such as habitat restoration through tree planting and weed removal would benefit species,” the researchers write in an overview of their research for The Conversation.
Were Australia to implement at least some of the required measures, we would notice other benefits besides enhanced biodiversity. Restoration of habitats and species on a national scale could:
- provide jobs for up to one million people working full time for 30 years –many of these roles on Country or in rural and regional communities.
- benefit farmers and increase agricultural production by removing invasive weeds and introduced pests such as mice, rats and rabbits, which cost Australia billions per year. (Weed management was by far, the biggest expense in the study, eating up 81% of this proposed spending.
- store an estimated extra 11 million tonnes of carbon annually, contributing to Net Zero.
Give and Take
Much of the cost may also be offset by the ecosystem services these restored habitats generate. Ecosystems services are the positive contributions that species, ecosystems and landscapes make to human well-being, economies and everyday survival. Healthy ecosystems contribute to air purification, maintaining our climate through carbon sequestration, recreational and tourism opportunities, the pollination of agricultural crops, and biomedical advances, among other services.
NPAQ’s Conservation Manager, Dr Simone Maynard, says “the article shows why preventing habitat destruction is better than cure, because the cost of restoring ecosystems can be prohibitive – if they can be restored at all. Once they are lost, so are the special places, animals and plants people care about, as well as the goods and services derived from them that industry and government economies depend on. It highlights the need to carefully plan, expand and improve the management and funding for the protected area estate to support nature for people today, future generations, and for future options.”
Historically, many of Australia’s native species suffered population declines after having a price put on their heads, either for their lucrative pelts or – in the case of dingoes, quolls and thylacines – as bounty payments to landowners for ‘pest’ management.
If we are to prevent endangered species like the spotted-tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) becoming the 21st century equivalent of the now-extinct thylacine, it’s clear we must collectively spend much more to atone for earlier errors. Not increasing the national budget for habitat restoration, threatened species recovery and protected area expansion and management is akin to putting another price on the heads of our most endangered species. Biodiversity loss, and the decline in human health and wellbeing that comes with it, will be the price we’ll all pay for apathy.
