We need more information for better decision-making, but what will the new Environmental Information Australia give us? Hugh Possingham and co. provide a nice commentary in The Conversation Australia + NZ. about the law introduced to the Australian parliament yesterday to establish Environmental Information Australia. It's great to see natural capital accounts in the mix, but the specifics are left to the agency's Head. This is not necessarily bad. But the head has two masters, reporting to the parliament in a Statutory role and up the agency line as an officer in the public service. And who will say what is nature-positive? To account for it, we need to know where we are starting, and what, if anything, can be exchanged. Will one glossy black cockatoo equal five grey-headed flying foxes? https://lnkd.in/g5Xa_B82
Hugh Possingham
7mo
Most evenings I have five flying foxes (little black I think) in my back garden. I would love a glossy black-cockatoo instead. Can you bring one over and do the swap? Can I offer twenty flying fox for a breeding pair of glossies? I am going to plant a casuarina or 200 asap.
Formerly Wildlife Zoologist/Director at BIOSTAT. Retired from consulting disgusted with government and industry undermining science and evidence based decision making while engaging in misinformation and greenwashing.
7moIt's a very good point. Certainly data sources such as ALA can provide some information. There is a huge body of relatively good quality "grey data" in the corporate world that is routinely hidden from view. This is especially relevant to the early years of EIA where the only guidance came from the best available science at the time. Since then regulations and guidances have been whittled down to provide only superficial assessment incapable of determining impact assessment. However, it is data nonetheless and can add to the quality of a comprehensive environmental knowledge-base. In my career I've come across peer reviewed research efforts in areas such as rehabilitation and conservation management that have were already studied, researched, and implemented (or at least recommended) many years to decades earlier. The difference being the stupidity of commercial in confidence concept which in many cases stopped much of this information being made available publicly or published in peer-reviewed journals. Legislation needs to be forced on all projects to release the data publicly. Corporates can cry over their "commercial in confidence" BS over their long-lunches.