As a part of our continued advocacy in areas of sustainability, we have responded to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s consultation on the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023.

The Bill proposes the development of a nature repair market (underpinned by legislation) to encourage investment in biodiversity to drive environmental improvement across Australia. This will enable landholders who protect, manage or restore local habitat and to receive biodiversity certificates which can then be sold to other parties. It will ensure the integrity of biodiversity certificates so the market can invest with confidence. The market will operate in parallel with the existing carbon market. This will encourage projects with carbon sequestration and biodiversity outcomes.

Our submission outlines:

• the importance for alignment with concurrent work on climate related financial disclosures, to determine if there are any synergies that can be utilized when building the nature repair market framework. 
• It is critical that information reporting to the market is transparent, subject to appropriate assurance and meets stakeholder needs. 
• The significant role that the accounting profession has to play in preparing, measuring and providing rigor and transparency to nature-related and sustainability disclosures and markets, in a similar way to the financial market.