IS 1% OF THE NATIONAL BUDGET TOO MUCH TO ASK TO SAVE NATURE?

By Adam Muir, Nature Positive Policy Manager, WWF-Australia 

A healthy natural environment is one of the most important things we can protect and leave behind for future generations. If you are reading this, you might feel the same.

As many of us have witnessed, Australia is in the midst of a nature and climate crisis, with ecosystems and wildlife under severe threat.

The good news is we know how to fix this, and the solutions help both nature and the climate. We need to stop burning fossil fuels, reduce landclearing (by protecting critical habitat and reforming our broken nature laws), and invest in nature repair. I want to talk about the investment needed for repairing nature and why it's so important. But first, how much do you think the federal government currently spends on nature? You’ve probably noticed when the tax office sends your annual tax receipt, there’s a breakdown of how your taxes have been allocated - a nice idea, right? And you may have wondered why nature or the environment is not even mentioned—it’s so miniscule that it isn’t even a category!

That’s because the Australian Government spends less than 0.1% of our annual budget on nature¹. This is not new; it’s been going on for decades and has mattered little which government has been in charge. In fact, if you look back over the last decade, 0.1% is at the higher end of expenditure. I find this outrageous considering how much we all need nature.

Nature is essential to our survival, well-being and prosperity. Nature gives us so much— from the air we breathe to the water we drink and the food we eat. Our forests, rivers, oceans and soils sustain life, regulate our climate and support our economy. Nature calms us and rejuvenates us. It’s home to our extraordinary plants and animals that don’t live anywhere else in the world and have a right to keep living in their natural habitats. What’s more, about half of our economy (also known as our Gross Domestic Product or GDP), worth about $900 billion, depends on nature². So, the impact of losing more of it is huge. In fact, the World Bank estimated that if nature declines at Australia’s current rate we will lose about $16.8bn a year from our economy by 2030³.

But we are losing nature at an alarming rate—the last Australian State of the Environment Report explained this in detail with a dire picture of ecosystem collapse, accelerating species extinctions and failing environmental protections. This chronic lack of investment into protecting nature is a major contributor to this ongoing decline. Every year we fail to invest in nature, it gets harder to repair and recover. Sure, Australians are still clearing land we shouldn’t be, but the more insidious issue is that the remaining areas are not managed well, pushing species closer to extinction every day. Managing the threats to the over 2,000 species officially threatened with extinction is more than just reducing landclearing—it’s controlling foxes and cats that kill our small mammals, birds and reptiles; it’s installing nest boxes for all the hollow-dependent animals who’s tree hollows have been destroyed by logging and bushfires; it’s removing weeds that are choking out native plants and making wildlife habitat uninhabitable; it’s bringing water back to wetlands and floodplains for our frogs, fish and waterbirds; it’s expanding breeding programs to support populations of particular species to re-build their numbers; and it’s restoring landscapes so there is more habitat for the animals and plants that lived there to return.

It’s the work that we need our National Parks staff, Indigenous rangers and other public land managers to be properly resourced to do, together with our farmers, who need to be supported to look after the bush. It’s also our volunteers, NGOs and scientists who play a vital role in restoring landscapes and researching and recovering key species. We know what the solutions are to these problems. In fact, the federal government and each of the state Environment Ministers have made commitments to address nature decline (outlined in Australia’s Strategy for Nature 2024-2030). The commitments align with targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework and contribute to Australia’s goal to “reverse biodiversity loss by 2030”. Despite our governments signing up for these critically important targets, there is no plan to fund them. So, back to the dollars. 0.1% of the budget is about $500 mil/year. This is about 30% of what other developed countries spend. It’s clearly not enough because nature continues to decline. So, what do we need to protect our species? We urgently need to increase our current spending of 0.1% of the annual budget to 1%. This equates to about $6-7bil per year. This amount is backed by several studies from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, the National Environmental Science Program and the Biodiversity Council, all credible scientific studies. If we invest 1% of the annual budget to protect and repair Australia’s natural environment, we can:

• Stop species extinctions by tackling invasive species and other threats (approx. $2.5bn/yr⁴);
• Protect and manage the best 30% of Australia—the best bits on public and private land, including within Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) (approx. $2bn/yr⁵)
• Restore Australia’s degraded landscapes to help nature, climate and agriculture (approx. $2bn/yr⁶).

We know that full recovery of Australia’s 2,000+ threatened species will take a lot more than this. However, 1% of the annual national budget can stop nature from going backwards and put us firmly on the pathway to recovery.

1% for nature, that’s all. Will you support this? 

WWF-Australia, alongside our supporters, and together with other NGOs and scientists are asking all political parties and independents to support this call for 1% for nature. You can join our calls for government to protect and invest in nature by adding your voice and asking our political leaders to Choose Nature.

¹ 30by30, 2024, The Price of Nature, https://30by30.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/The-Price-of-Nature.pdf

² The Nature-based Economy: How Australia’s Prosperity Depends on Nature. Australian Conservation Foundation, 2022

³ World Bank, 2021, Economic Case for Nature: : A Global Earth-Economy Model to Assess Development Policy Pathways

⁴ Wintle et al. 2019, ‘Spending to save: What will it cost to halt Australia's extinction crisis?’, Conservation Letters

⁵ Fitzsimons J, Picone A, Partridge T, Cornish M. 2023, ‘Protecting Australia’s Nature: Pathways to protecting 30 per cent of land by 2030’, The Nature Conservancy, WWF-Australia, the Australian Land Conservation Alliance and the Pew Charitable Trusts

⁶ Mappin, 2021. ‘The costs and benefits of restoring a continent's terrestrial ecosystems’, Journal of Applied Ecology