The Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand (EIANZ) is Australasia’s peak professional association that supports environmental practitioners at all stages of their career. It is a not-for-profit and registered charity.

The Institute supports environmental practitioners and promotes independent and interdisciplinary discussion on environmental issues. The Institute also advocates environmental knowledge and awareness, advancing ethical and competent environmental practice.

Our members come from all areas of environmental practice and are at the forefront of challenging and complex issues such as climate change, sustainability and preserving biodiversity.

Special Interest Sections are Institute-wide groups that bring together members with a shared area of interest. These groups are open to all members and work towards improving environmental practice through information sharing, the development of guidance documents, seminars, workshops, and other activities.

Project: Project Support for the 2024 Impact Assessment Symposium: Transitioning to a Nature Positive Clean Economy – What are the Challenges for Impact Assessment?

Summary

The aim of the project is to prepare outcomes from the EIANZ 2024 Impact Assessment Symposium and to use these, along with the student’s research and engagement with environmental professionals, to develop a position statement and background paper for EIANZ on managing the impacts of the transition to a nature positive clean economy in a way that also addresses socio-economic concerns.

The EIANZ Impact Assessment Symposium is a two-day annual event organised by the EIANZ Impact Assessment Special Interest Section. The 2023 symposium attracted 228 participants. This year’s event will be in Brisbane in late August with the theme: “Transitioning to a nature positive clean economy – what are the challenges for impact assessment?”

All governments in Australia and New Zealand are broadly supportive of two key environmental and social objectives:

•              Nature Positive: Halting and reversing the loss of nature

•              Transitioning to a clean, low-carbon environment.

Meeting the second objective requires a significant investment in infrastructure: new transmission lines, wind and solar farms, pumped hydro, battery energy storage etc. New and expanded mines will also be needed for the critical minerals to support the energy transition.

Whilst this transition will provide positive social and economic benefits, and have the long-term objective of protecting our environment against damaging climate change, such developments also have their own impacts on the natural and human worlds. This has the potential to undermine the nature positive goals and policies currently being developed and implemented by governments. As well, there is the potential for negative socio-economic impacts, for example, disruption of agriculture practices and impact on viewscapes.

The symposium will explore these issues.

Prior to the symposium, the successful student will undertake guided research to gain a background understanding of the above issues. This will include relevant reports, case studies, media articles, government policies, strategies and guidance documents, and discussions with environmental professionals.

The student will attend the symposium in Brisbane (attendance, flights and accommodation funded), act as a note-taker and collate the key outcomes from the symposium. EIANZ intends to turn these into a communique that can be publicly released immediately following the symposium.

With collaboration and guidance from the supervisor and members of the EIANZ Special Interest Section on Impact Assessment, the student will prepare a draft background paper and position statement on the symposium theme. Position statements articulate EIANZ’s position on environmental issues on behalf of its members. Current position statements can be found at: https://www.eianz.org/news-publications/position-statements-2