Environmental Economic Accounting for the Mitchell River catchment

Project Description

This project produced a pilot set of Ecosystem Accounts for the Mitchell River catchment in far north Queensland. The Ecosystem Accounts were constructed using recently standardised methodologies from the The United Nations’ System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA). SEEA EA provides a framework for organising data about habitats and landscapes, measuring ecosystem services, tracking changes in ecosystem assets, and linking this information to economic and other human activity.

For tens of thousands of years prior to European invasion and settlement, the ancestors of today’s Traditional Owners of the Mitchell River catchment socialised the landscapes of the region as they managed land and water, fulfilled custodial responsibilities under customary law and maintained an economic system that sustained their way of life. This active management by Traditional Owners continues in many localities today, albeit under constrained conditions.

Ecosystem accounts can be useful for informing policy direction in the following ways.

‘Past-to-present’ trajectories of ecosystem extent, condition, and supply and use of ecosystem services could help identify emerging problems and inform possible policy directions for addressing those problems.

Accounts can be used to track the effectiveness of policy interventions against pre-defined targets for ecosystem extent, condition or biophysical service supply.

However, because ecosystem accounts only report the values of services that are supplied by ecosystems, they are not well suited for informing decisions on alternative development proposals at specific locations.

Project Personnel and Beneficiaries

The SEEA Ecosystem Accounts for the Mitchell catchment will be useful for land managers in the private and public sectors, including Traditional Owners. The Accounts will also be useful for decision makers in state and federal government.

The Ecosystem Accounts report the extent and condition of ecosystem assets in the Mitchell catchment, the levels of pressures on those assets (e.g. due to feral animals, invasive weeds and soil erosion caused by cattle grazing), and quantity and value of the contributions that the catchment’s ecosystem assets make to benefits that flow through to human society.

Findings from constructing the pilot ecosystem accounts have been supplied to the Queensland and Australian Federal Governments – and will be used to inform on-going development and application of Ecosystem Accounts at regional, state and national levels. Findings will also be fed back to the United Nations Statistics Division internationally.

Outcomes to Date

The pilot Ecosystem Accounts for the Mitchell catchment identified that ecosystem assets are under multiple pressures, even in a remote, sparsely populated location like the Mitchell. Pressures due to feral animals and invasive weeds are particularly damaging and widespread. Feral animals and invasive weeds reduce Mitchell ecosystems’ capacity to supply multiple ecosystem services.

The Accounts also emphasise the multiple important contributions of Indigenous Traditional Owners in caring for Country in the Mitchell.