Upcoming Biodiversity Offsetting Conference to expose the scam of offsets
The controversial planning technique of biodiversity offsetting will come under the spotlight at a conference planned to take place at Narrabri’s Crossing Theatre on Saturday 22nd February 2025. This marks 10 years since coal mining companies started extracting coal from the Critically Endangered Ecological Community of Grassy White Box Woodland at the Leard State Forest east of Narrabri.
A one-day Biodiversity Offsetting Conference, movie screening and 1/2-day field trip will take a deep-dive into the Leard Forest ecological catastrophe, exploring biodiversity offsets and what they really are.
A program of events will accompany the conference, including a free public screening of the epic feature-length documentary “Black Hole” by film-maker Dujon Pereira on Friday, 21st February 2025 at 7:30pm.
Check out the event details here and register here Facebook event page here
Biodiversity offsetting is driving biodiversity loss
A biodiversity offset is a legal mechanism to avoid or minimise the impacts of development and some types of land clearing on biodiversity. Biodiversity offsetting enables the destruction of native vegetation by developers on the condition that a like-for-like place is protected elsewhere or some land of inferior biodiversity value is rehabilitated to a like standard.
The idea is that even critically endangered nature can be destroyed in one place, justified by a system where nature is purportedly being protected and apparently improved in another place.
However, the NSW Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Planning and the Environment in 2024 found that rather than protect species and endangered ecosystems, biodiversity offsetting is part of a system that is driving biodiversity loss.
The Chair of this Committee, the Honourable Sue Higginson MLC (Greens), is one of the speakers at the Conference.
New NSW Biodiversity legislation
The success of a regulated market, is based on accounting methods, rules and integrity measures. When the currency in this market consists of natural assets like forests, the outcomes of this trading also depend on the truthfulness and scientific legitimacy of ecological claims made about the biodiversity at risk, and the proposed replacements.
This is a marketplace where the value of what is being traded is only partially understood.
In launching the Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Biodiversity Offsets Scheme) Bill 2024, now law in NSW, Environment Minister Penny Sharpe MLC said:
“Biodiversity in New South Wales is in crisis. Half of the threatened species currently listed are on track to extinction within the next 100 years … Our landscapes are a shadow of their former selves” and “Half the bioregions in New South Wales have less than one-third of their original ecological capacity remaining.”
The NSW Government has also adopted the Commonwealth’s catch-phrase “Nature Positive” to describe its new policies. These include a promised commitment to “data-informed” decision-making yet at the same time signal a continued dependence on Government mapping and desk-top studies.
What you will learn at the Biodiversity Offsetting Conference
- How major projects are routinely approved to harm native habitat based on the promise of offsets being acquired at a future time
- What happens when a major project is unable to acquire the promised biodiversity offsets?
- Are the potential impacts of projects accurately assessed, and is post-approval monitoring adequate?
- Why the Leard Forest is an ideal case study of the failure of biodiversity offsetting
- How citizen science can improve and upgrade biodiversity data gathering and management
Deep dive: the Leard Forest Coal Mining Precinct
One of the planning tragedies of our time is the approval to mine the Leard Forest (including the largest single stand of critically endangered Whitebox Grassy Woodland in NSW) for coal, approved by the NSW and Commonwealth Governments over 10 years ago on the basis of false biodiversity mapping which was not required to be ground-truthed until years after the destruction commenced. Open cut mining proceeded but the conditions of consent were only ever partially satisfied throughout the progression of mining.
Now, there are proposals to dramatically expand the mines, even to encroach on those few of Whitehaven Coal’s offsets that were originally approved. You will hear from local conservationists who have been monitoring the mines since their commencement.
Who should attend?
- Environmental governance professionals
- Academics
- Ecologists
- Environmental scientists
- Conservationists
- Citizen scientists interested in mapping and biodiversity surveys
Speakers include:
- Brendan Sydes, National Biodiversity Policy Lead, Australian Conservation Foundation
- The Hon Sue Higginson MLC (Greens), NSW Legislative Council
- Kirsty Ruddock, Managing Lawyer, Safe Climate Corporate & Commercial team, Environmental Defender’s Office
- Maria Matthes, Threatened Species Conservation Ecologist, Healing History and Koala rescuer, researcher, advocate and educator
- Phil Spark, Ecologist, North West Ecological Services
- Wendy Hawes, Director and Ecologist, The Envirofactor Ecological Consultancy
- Anna Christie, Research Officer, Wando Conservation & Cultural Centre Inc, co-founder of Leard Forest Research Node
- Roselyn Druce, Maules Creek community member
- Elizabeth Laird, Maules Creek community member
- Chris Schuringa, The Sunrise Project, former Campaign Coordinator, Victorian Forest Alliance and veteran of the Goongerah Environment Centre, Victoria
- Scott Daines, South East Forest Rescue Inc
NWPA is proud to support this conference.