Media releases
BETTER ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT FOR AUSTRALIA
10 March 2009
Environmental scientists from around Australia and the world are meeting with senior environmental managers from regional, state and Commonwealth agencies this week to examine the art and the science of good environmental decision making.
The focus of the 2009 Fenner Conference on the Environment is to identify ways of improving the way Australia makes decisions about its environmental investments and manages conservation priorities.
‘As a nation we’re failing hopelessly to secure our most precious and unique natural asset – Australia’s biodiversity’ says Professor Hugh Possingham FAA* from the University of Queensland, and Director of the Applied Environmental Decision Analysis (AEDA) centre.
‘Since 1990, there have been seven major natural resource programs in Australia collectively worth $6.5 billion. Yet the National Audit Office has repeatedly said it has difficulty in identifying their impact.
‘We must do better. Improved coordination is needed between policy makers, researchers and environmental managers to ensure that Australia’s environmental practices are appropriate, well targeted and comprehensively monitored to achieve desired outcomes.’
Professor David Lindemayer FAA from the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society will speak at the conference and is particularly concerned with our failure to measure the outcomes of our investment:
‘Billions of dollars are spent managing Australia’s biodiversity and we know very little about how effective this investment has been. It’s a situation that simply wouldn’t be tolerated in our corporate sector.’
The conference will feature a number of other national and international environmental experts speaking on a broad array of topics from prioritisation and adaptive management, to monitoring techniques and tools for decision making. The international speakers include:
Professor Marc Mangel from the University of California will be speaking on policy-relevant science; and
Professor Jim Nichols from the US Geological Survey will be addressing the how, what and why of monitoring for conservation.
Professor Ted Lefroy, Director of Landscape Logic says the Fenner Conferences are ‘all about making the best science available to environmental policy and management.’
‘A combination of art and science lie at the heart of effective policy so our hopes are high that this particular Fenner Conference will make a real contribution to taking this debate forward.’
‘We’ve attracted a diverse audience of researchers, policy makers and environmental managers to this conference’ he says. ‘That’s significant because these groups usually meet to talk amongst themselves, and don’t necessarily understand each other’s worlds.’
Fenner Conferences on the Environment are staged with assistance from the Australian Academy of Science. The 2009 conference is being run by AEDA and Landscape Logic, two research hubs supported by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts’ Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities (CERF) program which funds world class, public good research.
*FAA: Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
What: 2009 Fenner Conference:The art and science of good environmental decision making
When: Tuesday 10 March – Thursday 12 March
Where: Shine Dome, Gordon St, Acton, Canberra
More information on the conference and speakers is available at: http://www.conferenceplus.com.au/fennerconf/2009/
