This presentation will explore the pre-conditions for catalysing a marine biodiversity market in Australia, and the critical enablers to deliver long-term outcomes underpinned by robust science and strong safeguards.
With reef restoration science and technologies now scalable beyond localised impacts, we are at a critical point in the development of mechanisms that drive the delivery of these on-ground outcomes. In the context of the Global Biodiversity Framework, we are seeing the international emergence of corporate impact disclosure frameworks, and concurrently the gradual development of biodiversity accounting standards and crediting schemes supporting the quantification of positive restoration outcomes. This presents a unique opportunity to establish high-integrity marine nature markets in Australia, centred around science-based biodiversity accounting that facilitates financing pathways for restoration at-scale. To take advantage of this opportunity, not only do we need to translate science into appropriate accredited/legislated methodologies that align with global standards, but conducive policy frameworks are equally important. With many schemes terrestrially focused, we will briefly outline recent work on marine methods and the challenges in aligning those scientific approaches with global standards, before highlighting the gaps and critical path towards implementation from a regulatory/policymaker perspective in Australia, both alongside and independent of carbon markets.