The Federal Government is calling for feedback on a potential new scheme to allow farmers to cash in on environment improvements they make to their land - with big businesses eyed as the ones likely to bankroll it.

Although it is farmers who could be set for a big windfall, some local farmers remain sceptical that the idea will work.

Draft legislation has just been released for public feedback on a proposed scheme which rewards landholders who restore or manage local habitat by granting them biodiversity certificates which can then be sold to other parties.

Under the Biodiversity Certificates Scheme, any landowner could sell environment improvements to businesses who had a potentially negative impact on biodiversity. 

A newly released Price Waterhouse Coopers report said the Australian biodiversity market could unlock AU$137 billion in financial flows to advance Australian biodiversity outcomes by 2050.

“Real estate, agriculture, tourism and hospitality, and mining sectors are well positioned to unlock nature positive opportunities from a biodiversity market,” the report said. 

The National Farmers Federation believes agricultural land will be the main land type used to create biodiversity certificates and The Australia Institute says it thinks “miners and property developers” will be the main buyers of credit.

However, the very idea of a biodiversity market and the particular model being proposed by the Government has its fair share of critics.

Part of that criticism came almost from the first day the repair scheme was announced.

“Australia’s environment is poor and deteriorating and government cannot foot the bill alone,” the Government's release statement said – flagging that the rationale was partly a desire to shift public costs onto the private sector.

Diana Fear CEO of Central West Farming Systems said she was worried that like much of the new federal environmental laws farmers perspectives and needs are not being fully considered in this bill.

“There’s not enough detail yet about how the Government’s scheme would work and people have not been thinking about this from a farmer’s point of view” she told the Western Plains App.

“I guess that will come out in the detail. I think there is a problem with people not realising just how farmers do look after their land because we have to just keep it fertile. So for instance how we already reduce carbon with our soil practices. I am not really sure how this idea does anything to enhance a farmer’s agricultural interests.”

Diana Fear. Image: Central West Farming.

An Australian Institute submission to a Government review into the proposed laws says a biodiversity market scheme like this only serves to create an opportunity for land developers and miners to destroy wilderness.  

They said they failed to see how this would lead to net gain for the environment when 'some land is only being protected because other land is being developed.'

It said 'It's not that the Government cannot fund this program, it simply doesn't want to.'

The Western Plains App understands that a potential buyer of a certificate would be generated through the environmental planning approval process. would come through requirements made to an applicant for development through the environmental planning approval process.

Once a certificate is generated and approved by the Clean Energy Regular it can they be sold on the market.

Ms Fear told the Western Plains App the less straight forward question about how it would operate is how biodiversity would be priced on the market.

A spokesperson from The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water told us "Certificates will provide standardised information to enable the market to decide how much a certificate is worth. All landholders, including First Nations peoples, conservation groups and farmers can participate in the market".

The National Farmers Federation has told the Government it should not follow the carbon pricing model. 

However, the NFF has also told them they are “supportive of the proposed national biodiversity certificate and the opportunities it will provide to farmers and landholders to progress towards participation in an ecosystem service or broader marketplace”.

In explaining its own problem and corruption plagued nature offsets markets scheme, the NSW Government 'Biodiversity Outlook Report 2022 estimates that, without effective management, only 50% of species and 59% of ecological communities that are listed as threatened in New South Wales will still exist in 100 years.'

Public feedback on the market repair scheme is open until Friday 24 February 2023.