What is natural resource management?

Australia’s environment, with its iconic areas such as the Great Barrier Reef, the Wet Tropics, the Snowy River and the Australian Alps, along with our coastal areas, forests, rivers, wetlands and unique wildlife is at the centre of our national identity and our economy.

Australia derives a significant proportion of the nation’s wealth from its environmental assets, including agriculture, mining and tourism.

These environmental assets provide crucial ecosystem services such as regulating the climate, purifying water, absorbing and transforming wastes, preventing disease and providing the genetic resources that are the basis for many medicines.

There will be significant costs to the Australian economy and the welfare of all Australians if these assets are allowed to degrade. They are very expensive, and sometimes impossible, to replace.

While most ecosystem services are unpriced, and do not have a monetary value, the Great Barrier Reef adds more than $5 billion to the Australian economy each year, and food exports annually total around $24 billion, although annual production losses due to degradation are around $1.2 billion.

Australia’s natural resources are under grave threat from climate change, water scarcity, pollution, the legacy of past land management change such as inappropriate land clearing, feral animals, weeds, and unsustainable farming practices and inappropriate development, particularly in coastal and peri-urban areas.

The Australian Government recognises that national leadership is required to redress the decline in the health of Australia’s landscapes, protect its national environmental assets, facilitate sustainable and productive natural resource management and use, support viable rural communities and better engage with Indigenous Australians in these actions.

The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry share responsibility for delivery of the Australian Government’s environment and sustainable agriculture programs, which have traditionally been broadly referred to under the banner of ‘natural resource management’.

This website is hosted by the Australian Government. It provides information about Caring for our Country – the Government’s $2 billion investment in natural resource management. The planning and implementation of Caring for our Country is based on national priorities for natural resource management.

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Caring for our Country