Appendix A Practice change and public: private benefits
A. 1
Introduction
The Landholder Driving Change( LDC) project is one of two Major Integrated Projects that are working closely with farmers to improve water quality in north Queensland. The LDC project is working with the grazing community in the Bowen-Broken-Bogie catchments of the Burdekin. This component of the LDC will explore incentive options including traditional incentives, marketbased mechanisms and non-financial incentives to accelerate adoption of more sustainable grazing practices and the remediation and maintenance of gully systems that are contributing high sediment loads to the Great Barrier Reef( GBR).
This document, prepared by Natural Decisions, contributes to the Exploring New Incentive project being led by James Cook University( JCU). Specifically, this piece of work contributes to the first Objective of the RFQ:
Assess each improved grazing management practice against the following criteria: 1) what is the minimum acceptable standard and current practice; 2) likely degree of public net benefit of the practice; 3) private net benefit to landholders; 4) whether the practice requires significant upfront costs; 5) whether it requires significant on-going maintenance costs; 6) whether there are significant non-financial related barriers to adoption.
Using the results above, assign each practice to the soundest broad policy tool choice. These include financial incentives for practices with sufficiently high public benefits( can include extension / technical advice as well), extension only for those with sufficiently high private benefits and high public benefits, no action for those with low amounts of public and private benefits and potentially regulation if practices are below minimum standards.
Where the costs( upfront and / or maintenance) appear to be excessively high, we have also considered a category termed‘ innovative conservation financial mechanism’. This acknowledges that a financing mechanism may be warranted but it is unclear as to what it might be.
IMPORTANT NOTE / CAVEAT: This document has been developed from a‘ first principles’ perspective regarding whether an incentive mechanism might be warranted on the basis of public and private net benefits. It does not represent the views of landholders in the LDC project or the Project Panel but is presented as a basis for discussion and testing as part of the LDC Exploring New Incentives project. There has also been some scope change following discussion with Andrew Brooks regarding gully classification and the limitations of the Water Quality Risk Framework with respect to gully classification.
Landholders driving change: Exploring new incentives | 53