Australia can heal its sick environment for far less cash than the federal government gives fossil fuel companies every year, scientists say.

Some of the nation’s most distinguished environmental scholars have released a landmark blueprint to restore ailing land and sea scapes and rescue thousands of species from death row over the next 30 years.

And while the annual price tag of $7.3 billion might seem eye watering, they say it’s cheap at less than two thirds of what the government reportedly gives fossil fuel producers in subsidies each year.

The independent Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists says its plan will cost just 0.3 per cent of Australia’s GDP – an excellent spend, they say, given half of the national economy is nature dependent.

And it’s a fraction of the $30 billion Australians spend on their pets annually, group member Martine Maron told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

“Just half of the GST from that spending could recover all of Australia’s threatened species,” said the professor of environmental management at the University of Queensland.

“Frequent announcements of a million dollars here and there for worthy environmental projects can make it feel like the money is flowing, but at the moment we are throwing tiny cups of water at a burning building.”

Fellow member and ANU geography professor Jamie Pittock said politicians should welcome the blueprint because it shows voters don’t have to choose between a healthy environment and a productive economy.

He says global studies estimate doing nothing about environmental degradation equates to a loss of nearly half a trillion US dollars, or $A479 billion, per year.

“If we don’t take serious action now then we will have neither a productive economy nor a healthy environment.”

The blueprint outlines 24 repair tasks that will lead to outcomes including fixing over-used and fragmented river systems, restore coastal biodiversity, avoid most extinctions and save those that are currently threatened.

Prof Pittock says much of what’s in the blueprint is not radical and builds on existing efforts and ideas.

He says implementing it will help Australia meet its international commitments on climate change and biodiversity loss.

But it’s clear more long-term public funding will be needed alongside mechanisms to scale up private investment including in the government’s nature repair market.

One of the blueprints key recommendation, and one of its most costly, is to offer landholders incentives to retire strips of farmland and restore the banks along waterways.

The long list of benefits includes revegetation, carbon sequestration, habitat renewal, reduced erosion that will in turn help freshwater and coastal fish stocks.

Then there are the jobs that will come from relocating cattle watering stations, fencing off streams and river banks and replanting denuded land.

“The sequestration benefits of implementing the actions in our native vegetation chapter alone, would help Australia meet 18 per cent of our net emission reduction obligations,” Prof Pittock said.

“It would provide landholders up $34 billion to repair and conserve landscapes. This would reduce the total funding needed for repair to just 0.26 per cent of GDP.”

The group hopes the blueprint will form the basis of a long-term bipartisan strategy to restore Australia’s ecosystems, with oversight by a national council or similar body.

“We need to stop taking nature for granted. It needs us, and we need it,” Prof Maron said.

Tracey Ferrier
(Australian Associated Press)