Our natural wealth is too precious for us to assume that individuals and organisations will always do the right thing. Market mechanisms are good at encouraging many efficient practices. However, markets do not necessarily account for biodiversity values. Given these limitations, governments have a responsibility to protect the public good and secure our future by making sure there is a biodiversity ‘safety net’ in place.

However, regulation is generally best seen as a last resort. If effective voluntary action is taken to conserve biodiversity, governments will be able to assume a less prominent safety net role.

The regulation safety net
For over 100 years, Victorians have demanded that their governments regulate undesirable practices. Consequently, Victoria has a range of legislative tools, described earlier in this document, that directly or indirectly help to conserve biodiversity. These now form a vital part of the biodiversity safety net by regulating:

• access to, and management of, natural resources,
• pollution,
• the way we use land,
• the taking of flora and fauna, and
• the protection of heritage values.

Even with this safety net, a major area to tackle is the legacy of practices that have already endangered, and sometimes continue to endanger, a number of species. We have a strong legislative mechanism to protect threatened species and ecological communities. Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 is both a proactive Act working to abate threatening processes and to assist the recovery of threatened species, and our fail-safe mechanism. It contains powerful procedures, such as:

• listing,
• determination of critical habitats,
• action statements, recovery plans, and controls over disturbing protected flora and threatened fish, and
• cooperative agreements with public authorities and landholders.

These have been used since 1988 to list over 300 species, communities and ‘potentially threatening processes’, for example. The Flora and Fauna Guarantee legislation gives the strength to our safety net. It is our bottom line.

Best practice in regulating
The power vested in regulators must be wielded responsibly. Regulators must endeavour to act with transparency, certainty and efficiency.¹⁶

In accordance with the development principles outlined earlier in this document, we should ensure that the cost to individuals and organisations of complying with regulations is not disproportionate to the biodiversity values being protected. We need to keep monitoring and reviewing compliance costs, with the aim of reducing compliance burdens where organisations, for example, are making significant voluntary efforts to report on their activities which affect biodiversity and are acting to enhance biodiversity outcomes.

In a number of environmental spheres, regulators and their clients in the community are already developing a practice of partnership.

This can extend to partnerships in working towards biodiversity conservation outcomes. Regulators should be flexible in allowing their clients to determine the most efficient ways to achieve outcomes. In return, their clients should be willing to accept greater accountability for their actions. As is the case with the Nyah to South Australian Border Salinity Plan, and the EPA’s Accredited Licensee concept, clients should have opportunities to reduce compliance costs by adopting preferred practices.

This strategy has indicated some types of preferred practices that will assist in conserving biodiversity.

The underlying themes are prevention rather than cure, and cooperation rather than compulsion.

An effective approach to maintaining viable ecosystems and communities of flora and fauna requires the use of a judicious mix of information, education and regulation to reduce the harmful side-effects of our activities and take positive steps to sustain and enhance our biodiversity.