The ISR in conjunction with the Burnett Mary Regional Group (Natural Resource Management Inc) are examining the concept of an environmental trading tool and its applicability to the Queensland environment.
Environmental banking is a natural resource management concept that provides advanced compensation for unavoidable environmental losses due to developmental activities.
Environmental banking can be achieved through the restoration, creation and enhancement (and in some cases preservation) of an environmental equivalent generally within a designated service or catchment area.
The objective in environmental banking is to replace the physical and biological functions and human-use values of the environment which are unavoidably lost due to development. The area used to offset, compensate or mitigate adverse and unavoidable environmental impacts from development is called an environmental bank. The specific natural resource characteristics or values of the Environmental Bank are called credits. The credits produced in a bank can be traded or sold on the open market.
As some property developers are unlikely to be specialists in environmental restoration/mitigation resulting, their costs to offset impacts are likely to be significantly higher than those of specialists. An Environmental bank allows these property developers to purchase credits to fulfil their offsetting needs, making them a bank customer. A bank developer is anyone who establishes an environmental bank.
The United States compensatory wetland mitigation banking is also the most advanced form of environmental banking and has been used as the basis for Queensland model.
Publication of proceedings of fourth edition of Sundown Seminar Series 2006
Lavery, Hugh and Gane, Michelle A. (2006) Update on Environmental Banking. Publication of proceedings of fourth edition of Sundown Seminar Series 2006. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00004517/ [External html]
