The Greens have criticised the Albanese government for failing to offer any new money for conservation measures at a global conference aiming to secure a new agreement for nature for the next decade.
Countries have been meeting at the Cop15 summit in Montreal to negotiate targets for the protection and restoration of nature, including a target of $US200bn a year to fund conservation work.
There have also been calls for developed nations to establish and pay into a fund to support conservation measures in poorer countries.
While countries including Germany and France have made additional funding pledges, Australia has been criticised for failing to offer more than its existing budget commitments despite the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, using the summit to push for tougher targets on halting extinctions and protecting land and sea areas.
The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, who has been attending the summit, said she was disappointed “no money from Australia was put on the table to help those negotiations come along”.
“We saw a lot of money pledged by countries like Germany. France made another contribution this morning. So other countries are putting money on the table,” Hanson-Young told the ABC’s Radio National.
“It’s been disappointing to see Australia hasn’t contributed yet. In these final hours of the negotiations, I urge the Australian government to help keep ambition high by putting some more money on the table to help.”
Kelly O-Shanassy, the chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, is also in Montreal, where there are concerns the final text of the agreement will fail to include targets to halt extinctions immediately or by 2030.
Australia has been an advocate for such a target in the agreement, having already set a zero extinctions target domestically.
O’Shanassy said “money is essential to ending extinction, so it’s disappointing that there were no new funding commitments from Australia at Cop15”.
“Australia has a lot at stake – our species are unique and found nowhere else on this planet – we have a lot to lose. There’s simply not enough cash on the table – both globally and at home in Australia – to end extinction,” she said.
“Both France and Germany have made new funding commitments and there’s still time for Australia to step up and do the same.”
The Albanese government is under increasing pressure to back its conservation targets with more funding.
Scientists have estimated $2bn is needed a year in the federal budget to recover Australia’s full list of almost 2,000 threatened plants, animals and ecological communities.
When it announced its zero extinctions target and a revamped threatened species strategy in October, scientists and environment groups warned the government would need to drastically increase funding to support domestic conservation measures.
Plibersek’s announcement this month of the government’s response to the 2020 review of national environmental laws was also met with calls from the Greens and the independent senator David Pocock for more public spending on the environment.
Much of the government’s discussion of conservation funding has been focused on boosting private investment, including through a proposed nature restoration market.
Plibersek told the ABC’s AM program on Monday that the government increased funding for the environment in the October budget and “we are determined not only to increase government funding but to make it easier for others to invest in repairing nature as well”.
She said work to restore and protect nature was becoming as “important for businesses as reducing their carbon pollution”, and pointed to a recent report by the consulting firm PwC, which estimated a nature market could be worth $137bn by 2050.
“Australia plans to increase its international public finance for nature through to 2030 to support developing countries implement an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework,” she said in a further statement to Guardian Australia.
“This builds on our commitment to double development assistance funding to $2bn over 2020-2025 for climate, including environment and biodiversity projects.”
Plibersek said Australia had played a positive role in Montreal towards a final agreement and had gone from “environmental laggard to leader on the world stage”.
She said one example was a statement developed by Australia and Norway and signed by 37 other countries pushing for higher ambition for protection of oceans.
