We recommend 3 practical steps:
1️⃣Embed adaptation across all levels, from policy goals and legislation objectives to guidelines and plans.

2️⃣Map and protect climate refugia with detail guidelines

3️⃣Enhance climate resilience e.g. through planting climate-tolerant species and enhance connectivity.

Good news: More recent policy documents are more likely to consider climate change.

Common strategies they adopted:
🌳safeguarding climate refuges
🐨connecting habitat so wildlife can escape extreme heat, fires or droughts
💰targeting funding
🌊avoiding offset sites vulnerable to climate impacts.

The paper assessed the extent to which climate change is considered in biodiversity offset policies and voluntary conservation programs in Australia.

Only 44% of offset policies and 27% of voluntary programs considers climate change – and most lacked details on implementing these strategies.

A @aunz.theconversation.com piece summarising the research.

It highlights how conservation law reform and state level reviews are a great chance to get it right.

Climate change must be considered at every level, actions must be clear, well-funded, and practical.
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Want genuine progress towards restoring nature? Follow these 4 steps theconversation.com/want-genuine... via
@aunz.theconversation.com

#4: Effective implementation through transparent enforcement and monitoring mechanisms.
Even the best policy principles will fail if there is no compliance and matters are subject to discretional bias.
Effective monitoring should explain why, where, and how loss and gain happened

#3: Securing Net Gains Beyond Development Impacts
Beyond compensation for development impacts, additional conservation actions are required. To do this, we need significantly more funding and resources for habitat restoration, weed and disease management etc.

#2: Fully Compensate Biodiversity Losses from Development.
Any biodiversity loss from development should be fully compensated. Impacts on species and ecosystems that are irreplaceable must not be permitted. We cannot afford to accumulate new losses beyond what we’ve already lost.

#1: Legislate absolute net gain rather than relative net gain
Improvement of biodiversity over time must be measured relative to a fixed baseline, rather than a declining baseline.
Speeding at 120km/h on 60km/h road, slowing to 110km/h is still speeding. It needs to drop below 60!