Submission – National Environmental Standard for Environmental Offsets

Australia's new environmental laws should be clear about environmental offsets being the last resort in the mitigation hierarchy (avoid, mitigate, repair and offset). 

Australia’s environmental law reform will fail to halt biodiversity decline unless environmental offsets are made measurable, enforceable, and outcome focused. 

The current Standard risks enabling offsets that meet process requirements but fail to deliver real ecological outcomes.

In order to achieve this, the Academy recommends:

• enforcing the Standard through outcome-based requirements, focused on measurable environmental protection and recovery outcomes, rather than process-based language alone. Enforce outcomes rather than principles
• amending the Standard to ensure offsets account for temporal lag and deliver equivalent biodiversity outcomes within ecologically relevant timeframes
• requiring rigorous, enforceable, transparent monitoring to ensure each direct environmental offset is demonstrably linked to relevant measurable ecological outcomes, and to prevent an offset from being treated as successful despite being ecologically ineffective
• clear definition of the terms ‘net gain’ and ‘compensate’, including a test of outcomes
• compulsory public reporting and enforceable obligations to ensure offsets achieve intended outcomes, including for projects of national interest.