Private land managers make decisions regarding the use of their environmental resources in response to information and incentives contained in the price mechanism. However, the price mechanism often fails to reflect adequately the information relating to the public good attributes of...

A rising saline aquifer in the Coleambally Irrigation Area constitutes a common pool resource, characterised by costly exclusion and rival utilisation for regional irrigators. The approach outlined in general terms in this paper is the application of formal, empirical techniques to guide the...

The potential supply of water quality mitigation actions from diffuse sources is difficult to assess, although important for designing policies to encourage such actions. In this paper the design and results of a Choice Modelling(CM) valuation to assess the potential supply of rural mitigation...

The Fitzroy basin in central Queensland is the largest basin in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area. The large quantities of sediment and nutrient export are of concern and come predominantly from diffuse sources in the grazing industry. The focus of the research reported in this paper was on...

Shortfalls in water supplies are perhaps the greatest practical NRM policy concern in Australia today, looming larger in many minds than the great international debates on greenhouse gasses, climate change and biodiversity. Because forest land cover uses more water than any other, wide expansion...

Making conservation program payments conditional on outcomes offers potential efficiency and innovation improvements over input based contracts. This paper explores the trade-offs involved in choosing the payment criteria for biodiversity tenders. A model where the budget for a conservation...

Rural residential development could have a positive or negative effect on the supply of ecosystem services. In most cases, the effect tends to be negative. One way of managing the impact is through a market based instrument. In this paper we present a development offset MBI as a way of cost...

Participation is a relative concept. Too much implies high costs of administration and many losers in a competitive process. Too little implies relatively few gains from trade are accessed. Thus the aim is to optimise rather than maximise participation. In this paper we outline some rules of...

The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, in developing recommendations for the Victorian Government on the future management of public lands forests along he Murray River, and in East Gippsland, commissioned an analysis of environmental protections values. This paper reports the results...

The Desert Uplands is a biogeographic region in central-western Queensland that lies within the rangelands area of Australia. In the region, many pastoralists are clearing the scrub and woodland vegetation in order to improve production for cattle grazing. Only limited production gains are...