Offsets for the Western Sydney Strategic Assessment
The situation
In 2017 the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) commissioned Open Lines to lead a team of consultants and ecologists to do a strategic assessment of four new major urban areas and a series of transport corridors in Western Sydney.
These areas are within the Cumberland Plain, an ecologically diverse area that has already been extensively cleared for development in and around Sydney. A number of threatened species and ecological communities only occur in the region and were already under pressure when the project started.
We recognised immediately that the scale of proposed development, even after planning the development areas to avoid impacts as far as possible, would require a substantial conservation program to provide offsets under both Commonwealth and State biodiversity protection legislation.
Given the history of development in Western Sydney and the cost of land, offsets can be difficult to acquire, especially at scale.
This raised three big questions for the preparation of the conservation program:
Would DPIE be able to secure enough land to offset the impacts of development over the 30 year timeframe of the strategic assessment?
Would the cost of those offsets be a barrier to development?
What is the best way to design the conservation program to maximise the benefits to the environment and achieve strong environmental outcomes at a landscape scale
These were serious issues for the strategic assessment. Without a way to find and pay for enough offset sites and deliver a suitable environmental benefit, the assessment would fail.
The solution
We tackled the problem in three steps:
Avoiding impacts to reduce the extent of offsets required
Understanding offset availability and pricing
Developing a conservation program to deliver the greatest environmental benefits at the most reasonable price
For step one, we worked with DPIE on a range of amendments they could make to the proposed development areas to reduce clearing of native vegetation and threatened species habitat. This reduced the area of offsets that would be required and freed up more areas to use as potential offsets.
For step two, we built on data from vegetation mapping and the NSW Government’s offset credit market to estimate the availability of offsets over the life of the strategic assessment. It was clear from this analysis that securing large scale offsets in Western Sydney will be an ongoing challenge and that the conservation program needed to be carefully designed.
Step three required more thought. We helped DPIE design a conservation program based on the following principles:
Maximise the environmental value of the offsets by protecting land that plays the most important role in the function of the remaining ecosystem across the Cumberland Plain. For example, securing the largest and highest quality areas of biodiversity and areas that maximise connectivity across the landscape
Seek to create new national parks in addition to protecting biodiversity through covenants on private land
Restore vegetation in previously cleared areas to promote the recovery of biodiversity in the Cumberland Plain
Manage landscape scale threats (e.g. weeds and inappropriate fire regimes) to help maintain and improve the condition of biodiversity over the life of the strategic assessment
Use a small proportion of the funding for conservation to secure offsets outside the Cumberland Plain, where land is cheaper and larger areas can be protected at lower cost
We applied the Structured Decision Making approach to analyse and compare different ways of applying these principles to conservation in the Cumberland Plain. In each round of analysis, we created alternatives, scored them against a set of performance measures and weightings that were developed in consultation with DPIE, and then shared the findings with DPIE, the Commonwealth environment department and other stakeholders. These results fed into the creation of more alternatives, analysis, and discussion until after several rounds and more than a dozen alternatives we developed a strategy that delivered solid environmental benefits for a reasonable price.
The outcome
The ongoing engagement with the State and Commonwealth regulators and DPIE throughout the process gave all parties confidence that the conservation program could be implemented successfully to deliver a sufficient environmental benefit at a reasonable cost.
The NSW Government has already announced two new proposed National Parks as part of the conservation program, and is in the latter stages of finalising the approval of the strategic assessment.
Open Lines’ creative and rigorous approach to problem solving allowed the strategic assessment to overcome a potentially project-stopping obstacle, and the results helped the client plan for and fund conservation activities with the confidence that these would satisfy the regulator.