Capital conservation

Spending the green dollar effectively means a lot more than just good business

Making rational decisions about how to extract the biggest bang from a limited conservation buck has long vexed environmental bodies.

The Commonwealth Government has also recognised the need for better decision-making by appointing UQ Professor Hugh Possingham to head a new $6.9 million research centre based at the University.

The Research Hub for Applied Environmental Decision Analysis was announced in July and is being funded through the Australian Government’s Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities (CERF) Programme.

Professor Possingham, Director of the UQ Ecology Centre, said there was an urgent need to explore, invent, test and disseminate better methods for making decisions that would lead to more cost-effective and reliable environmental outcomes.

“The outcome of the Hub will be a set of tools, concepts, results and methodologies that will inform good policy development, planning and management in the CERF Priority Research Areas: responding to climate change, water and soil management, and sustainable use of Australia’s biodiversity,” he said.

Some of the world’s best-known environmentalists will be part of the Hub, including two UQ academics – Dr Bob Pressey, a Senior
Research Associate at the Ecology Centre, and philosopher Professor Mark Colyvan.

Professor Possingham has been part of a team which has developed a decision-support tool to determine conservation spending in the past.

Professor Possingham and colleague Dr Kerrie Wilson, along with UQ mathematics students Michael Bode and Marissa McBride, developed the tool; a mathematical model that takes into account the cost of acting in a particular area, the biodiversity value of an area and the threats to that area. It also accounts for uncertainty in data, such as rate of forest loss

“The problem was how do we spend a finite budget among all conservation activities – how do we get the biggest bang for our buck?” Professor Possingham said.

Dr Wilson said the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International, US organisations that spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year, had provided funding to develop the tool further.

“The approach will certainly change the way these organisations do business,” Dr Wilson said.

Dr Wilson said the Earth was in an “extinction crisis” which meant well-directed conservation action was essential.

“Our approach prioritises areas that have high biodiversity values, where there is greatest risk of losing those biodiversity values, where there are cost-effective solutions available, and where past spending has been limited,” Dr Wilson said.

“Only by accounting for all of those different factors can we determine where the priorities are.”

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