Caring for our Country

Funding

Environmental Stewardship Programme

Approximately 77 per cent of Australia's land area is managed by farmers, graziers, Indigenous communities, and other private land managers. As a result, effectively protecting Australia's environmental resources requires managing environmental assets on private land, and engaging private land managers in this effort.

The Environmental Stewardship Programme is a new Australian Government initiative that will focus on the long-term protection, rehabilitation and improvement of targeted environmental assets on private land or impacted by activities conducted on private land, including freehold and leasehold. The Stewardship Programme will be jointly administered by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

The Programme will take a market-based approach to environmental management. It will offer contracts to landholders who can provide environmental services on a cost-effective basis. These contracts will provide incentives through payments to selected farmers and other private land managers to achieve long-term environmental outcomes on their properties. Contract lengths may be up to 15 years duration, to allow for the time required by ecological processes to produce an outcome. For example most regenerating vegetation does not develop resistance to pests and weeds for 10-15 years.

Land managers will be selected for participation in the stewardship programme through auction, tender and other market-based mechanisms.

More about the Environmental Stewardship Programme

Reference Materials

Further information

To receive further information about the Environmental Stewardship Programme, please use our registration form.

Other market based approaches

Key

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