Environmental Services Scheme (ESS)
To combat continuing land degradation, salinity, declining biodiversity and other environmental issues, the NSW Government commenced a groundbreaking scheme that will reward rural landholders who help the environment through implementing good land management.
Traditional sources of farm revenue have not recognised the value of the services farmers provide to the environment. Good land management can slow the march of salinity, reduce acid sulfate in soil and improve water quality.
On 13 June 2002, the then Minister for Land and Water Conservation launched the Environmental Services Scheme (ESS) seeking expressions of interest from landholders, or groups of landholders, to establish 20 working examples of properties where environmental services can be identified and a value placed on them.
The overall aim of the scheme is to identify the environmental benefits provided by changed land use activities to enable them to be valued by the community. Eventually, the goal is to create a market for trading these environmental services.
Another objective of the scheme is to look at some of the practical issues that will arise in the development of a market to support the environmental services produced on-farm.
These include the costs associated with including environmental services within rural production, how to define and create ownership of the services produced, and the types of financial, contractual and incentive arrangements necessary. For more details click here.
The ESS project is led by an Environmental Markets Team jointly established between Forests NSW, the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources, and NSW Agriculture. Other agencies are also contributing.
The main focus of the project is the integration of production-based land uses with those which produce environmental services, including salinity benefits, carbon sequestration, biodiversity enhancement, acid sulfate soils mitigation, soil and water quality improvement.
The approach developed by the project team to implement the project has involved six main strategies:
- Identifying the types of environmental services that would be examined;
- Determining the best ways to measure a range of environmental services;
- Developing and implementing a cost-effective process for competitive selection of the trial participants;
- Preparing and executing the necessary contractual arrangements for engaging selected applicants;
- Establishing systems for monitoring the production of environmental services from land use changes and contract compliance;
- Evaluating the benefits and costs to the farm business of land use changes for environmental services.
Six individual environmental services were selected:
- Carbon sequestration - related to greenhouse gases and air quality
- Terrestrial biodiversity benefits - related to improvements in the value of vegetation as habitat for other life-forms
- Salinity benefits - related to improvements in stream water salinity
- Soil benefits - related to retention of soil on the property
- Water quality - related to retention of nutrients on the property
- Acid sulfate soil benefits - related to reduction in the production and export of acid products from acid sulfate soil regions.
Indices were established for each of the selected environmental services which express the quantity of service produced in clearly understood units, for example, tonnes of sediment retained. Additionally, toolkits were developed to estimate these indices for each property and land use change.
The toolkits were based on existing, or in some cases, newly developed, biophysical models. They were developed by Technical Working Groups composed of scientific experts in the relevant fields including State, Commonwealth and University organisations.
An overview of the environmental service indices developed for use in the NSW Environmental Service Scheme
The toolkits were used as part of the process to select the properties for inclusion in the trial. One of the toolkits, the Carbon Sequestration Predictor (CSP), was developed to allow rapid estimates of the potential for land use changes involving revegetation to create increased carbon sinks.
It is freely available to anyone interested in estimating the carbon benefits of changing land use practices.
Carbon Sequestration Predictor [Excel file - 7.6 Mb]
Right click and save this file.
Help file [PDF - 190 Kb]
The CSP requires minimal data inputs and is capable of continuous improvement using new data on carbon sequestration potential in areas where this is limited, for example in low rainfall zones.
A biodiversity toolkit has also been developed for use by advisers with some ecological experience to assist landowners in assessing the benefits to biodiversity that are likely to result from a change in the way they use their land.
The Toolkit is a product of collaboration between key government departments and stakeholders in NSW and Victoria including DIPNR, DEC and DPI (Forests NSW). It has been designed to:
- Score the current biodiversity value of a site.
- Estimate the magnitude and direction of change in biodiversity value resulting from land use change.
- Incorporate these current and potential values into a Biodiversity Benefits Index.
The toolkit is unique in that it has been designed to cover a wide range of alternative vegetation options, including commercial and environmental native tree plantings as well as other typical land use changes on farmland
Contracts have now been signed with 24 individual landholders covering approximately 11,000 ha of land use change. The properties selected for the project were chosen to represent a range of locations, enterprise types, land use changes and environmental and production benefits.
Monitoring and evaluation is being conducted over the five years of the contracts to determine the impacts of these changes on resulting environmental services provided. Further development is planned for the CSP and other toolkits.
A comprehensive progress report on the findings and lessons learned from experience with the ESS project is now available. Click here to download (PDF 1 Mb).
Further information
Further information about the Environmental Services Scheme can be obtained from:
Dr. Alastair Grieve
General Manager, Environmental Science
Forests NSW
Locked Bag 23
Pennant Hills NSW 2120
(02) 9980 4269
Links
Click here for links on the Environmental Services Scheme
Click here to view a related article from the Bush Telegraph (April 2003)
Papers
An overview of the environmental service indices developed for use in the NSW Environmental Services Scheme A.M.Grieve, Environmental Markets Team. Forests NSW. Internal paper, June 2003
ES-indices.pdf [52 Kb]
Carbon sequestration predictor for land use change in inland areas of New South Wales -background, user notes, assumptions and preliminary model testing. Version 2.0. K.D.Montagu, A.Cowie, A.Rawson. B.Wilson. B.George. Forests NSW, Sydney. Technical Paper No. 68, September, 2003. ISSN 1324-4345
ESSCarbonv20.xls [7.5 Mb]
Grieve, A.M. and Uebel, K. (2003). Developing new income streams for farmers – NSW Environmental Services Scheme: Progress Report on Outcomes and Experience Developed during its Implementation, October 2003. Forests NSW internal document.
essREPORT.pdf
Posters
Click for link to poster re scheme SFNSW-Esscheme-A3v4.pdf [212 Kb]
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