Government Guidelines and Legislation
Enactment of Biodiversity Banking
Source: http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/
The long talked about biobanking concept has been enacted by the NSW Parliament. The Threatened Species Conservation Act has been amended to establish a biodiversity banking and offsets scheme. The Act is called the Threatened Species Conservation Amendment(Biodiversity Banking) Act 2006.
Essentially, the biobanking scheme allows landowners establish biodiversity credits on their land which can then be traded.
From the Act, the biobanking scheme has the following key elements:
- the establishment of biobank sites on land by means of biobanking agreements entered into between the Minister and the owners of the lands concerned,
- the creation of biodiversity credits in respect of management actions carried out or proposed to be carried out on or in respect of biobank sites that improve biodiversity values,
- a system that enables those biodiversity credits, once created and registered, to be traded (including by being purchased by developers) and used as an offset against the impact of proposed development on biodiversity values,
- the establishment of a biobanking assessment methodology, by order of the Minister published in the Gazette, for the purpose of determining both the number of biodiversity credits that may be created in respect of anagement actions or proposed management actions and the number of biodiversity credits that must be retired in connection with a development in order to ensure that it improves or maintains biodiversity values.
Despite the Biobanking scheme being established under law, the biobanking scheme is not to be implemented until: A joint committee of the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council has been appointed, the committee has prepared guidelines for the operation of the scheme during a trial period and examined options for applying the scheme to the clearing of native vegetation (within the meaning of the Native Vegetation Act 2003), and tabled the subsequent report to both Houses of Parliament.
The biobanking scheme may be implemented without the above process being completed, six months after the commencement of this Part the amended Act.
Further Information:
To read the full text of the amendment, see the NSW Government Legislation website: http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/scanact/sessional/NONE/0
