Chapter 11 - Environmental monitoring, evaluation and reporting

Currently there is no effective framework to support a comprehensive, data-driven evaluation of the EPBC Act to determine whether it is achieving its intended environmental outcomes. This is a key cause of the lack of trust in the Act.

To determine whether the EPBC Act is operating effectively and efficiently, this Review has relied on diverse, disparate and, at times, patchy sources of information and the knowledge of contributors. In modern public policy, this is unacceptable.

The Commonwealth has a clear leadership and stewardship role in maintaining a healthy environment and Australia’s international commitments require a national-level view.

Assessing the relative effectiveness of how governments individually and collectively manage Australia’s environment is extremely difficult. The key reasons for this are:

• The current monitoring and reporting requirements in the EPBC Act do not span its operation and are not underpinned by a clear articulation of intended outcomes. Monitoring and reporting that is done lacks coordination and often focuses on bare minimum administrative reporting. Not all requirements for evaluation (such as reviews of key plans) have been met.
• A lack of long-term monitoring makes it difficult to establish a baseline against which to evaluate performance.
• There is no consistent approach to monitoring and reporting on outcomes across the national environmental management system. Meeting our international and national reporting obligations currently involves repeated, high-cost efforts.
• The mechanism established under the EPBC Act to provide the overarching national story on environmental outcomes – the national State of the Environment (SoE) report – has no clear purpose and no feedback loop. There is no requirement to stop, review and where necessary change course.

A comprehensive framework is needed to track whether the environmental outcomes articulated in the recommended National Environmental Standards are being achieved. The Ecologically Sustainable Development Committee should be responsible for developing and reporting on this framework. This is distinct from the role of the Environment Assurance Commissioner, who will be responsible for auditing whether the Standards are being adhered to by governments.

The key reforms recommended by the Review are to:

• develop a coherent framework to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the EPBC Act in achieving its outcomes. This should be framed around individual plans for each National Environmental Standard for MNES and be underpinned by a National Environmental Standard for environmental monitoring and evaluation of outcomes
• implement the EPBC Act monitoring and evaluation framework by embedding it in the governance and legislative reforms. The Ecologically Sustainable Development Committee should be responsible for the design and implementation of the framework, and delivering an annual statement on environmental performance
• revamp national SoE reporting to include future outlooks and require a government response
• accelerate development and uptake of the national environmental-economic accounts as a tool for tracking Australia’s progress toward sustainable management of the environment. Reporting on national environmental-economic accounts should be embedded in the Act.

Implementing a coherent monitoring and evaluation framework for the EPBC Act provides a springboard for a more consistent approach to national-level reporting efforts. This will improve the quality of reporting and enable an adaptive approach to environmental management.