Nature is critical to our wellbeing, and adequately measuring and reporting on its condition is a key part of building roadmaps to protect and restore Australian nature. Policy action must reflect all significant pressures facing nature. Acting on climate change alone is not sufficient to avert Australia’s nature crisis, and ALCA strongly recommends that the wording in emerging policy themes and draft descriptions in Measuring What Matters should reflect all pressures, not just climate change.

ALCA recommends three primary environmental indicators for the Federal Budget, namely: biodiversity (by way of protected areas), access to green space, and
greenhouse gas emissions per capita.

The Federal Government’s inaugural ‘wellbeing budget’ is a key opportunity to recognise and integrate the importance of protecting, restoring, and managing our environment to safeguard and improve Australia’s food security, health, and economic outcomes.

ALCA supports the introduction of a right to a healthy environment as an important pathway for recognising the inextricable importance of protecting and restoring biodiversity and ecosystems to our collective wellbeing.