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Project looks at tax incentives to help the environment

January 03, 2006

Martin.thumb.jpgThe University of New England’s Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law (AgLaw Centre) has received a Land and Water Australia grant to investigate the use of tax incentives to boost private investment in the environment.

Professor Paul Martin (pictured here), Director of the AgLaw Centre, said the Federal Government’s increasing need to direct financial resources to the health and welfare of Australia’s ageing population made the introduction of privately-funded conservation measures “absolutely imperative”. “There might, for example, be tax incentives for primary producers using minimum-till procedures or maintaining green corridors, or implementing weed removal or soil conservation programs,” he said.

The $70,000 grant will allow the AgLaw Centre to work creatively with its collaborators, including the national financial planning organisation Godfrey Pembroke, the Sydney-based accounting firm Dormer’s, and the Macquarie University Centre for Environmental Law. Contributions from those collaborators will be worth an additional $80,000 and, with a $40,000 contribution from the AgLaw Centre itself, total funding for the project will be $190,000. “We’ll be combining the knowledge of our collaborators with our own tightly-focused research, documenting the result, and then evaluating the options that emerge legally and politically,” Professor Martin explained.

“The project seeks to marry existing taxation structures (such as managed investment schemes, tax-leveraged donations, and growth or research-financing initiatives) with market instruments such as tradeable credits, offsets, and ecosystem services,” he continued. “We aim to deliver privately funded conservation arrangements on both public and private lands, accelerated investment into technologies and services supporting sustainability goals, and fair sharing of the burdens of ‘public good’ conservation costs.”

“This is the AgLaw Centre’s first nationally competitive grant,” Professor Martin said, “and the project fits perfectly with the Centre’s aim of using its expertise in law, government policy, agriculture and natural resources to contribute to developments in both sustainability and primary industry. The project has the support of NSW Farmers and WWF Australia.

“We believe it is Australia’s first major attempt to use taxation and market instruments together to create a strong positive investment incentive for sustainability. Most prior endeavours have focused on cost offsets, not the possibility of more generous incentives.”


Media contact: Professor Paul Martin, Director, AgLaw Centre, UNE (02) 6773 3811 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at January 3, 2006 04:12 PM