Preparation of Annual Ecology Budget Must be Mandatory for Government

Shashi Sharma

Western Australia’s 2021-22 Budget has highlighted a record general government operating surplus estimated at $5.6 billion, and a $2.8 billion operating surplus forecast for 2021-22. The estimated 2021-22 Federal Budget deficit is $106.6 billion. We are accustomed to receiving annual budgets from the governments. As a budget is a financial plan that includes income and expenditure statements, let me call it ‘Economy Budget’.

Furthermore, governments mainly provide economic information and associated social implications of various activities planned for the year. The annual Economy Budget is usually very light on information on the health and wellbeing of our natural resources, which are vital for our life. The impact of any business, industry or government initiatives on our natural resources such as clean air, water, biodiversity, land, and ocean health is rarely well covered in the Economy Budget documents.

I strongly believe that it must be a mandatory requirement for governments to present a comprehensive annual ‘Ecology Budget’, similar to the traditional annual Economy Budget. The proposed Ecology Budget should focus on the value of natural resources and include information on:

  • status of the Western Australia’s environment and government actions to safeguard it.
  • ecological footprint of the annual Economy Budget.
  • state’s annual consumption of natural resources and the capacity of natural resources to meet the demand. 
  • actions taken and being planned to efficiently manage the natural resources. 
  • key environmental issues such as the status of the generation of solid wastes, amount of greenhouse gas emissions and habitat loss, etc. 
  • actions for enhancing carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation including estimated costs of these actions.

The Ecology Budget will enable us to know if we use resources more than nature can regenerate in a year. It will aid in our strategic planning and in tracking the status of the health and wellbeing of the natural resources, and how government actions and plans are impacting them. This will help in priority-setting and in designing policies that deliver a range of environmental and economic benefits. It will be prudent to take into account the ecological capacity – the regeneration ability – of our natural resources. This knowledge of resource limits will help guide decision making on economic development. 

Without an Ecology Budget obligation, governments will continue to focus on economic benefits, undermining the value of natural resources and the necessity to conserve them for present and future generation. Western Australia’s mineral and petroleum industry has a value of about $174 billion. This highly regarded industry sector makes a very large contribution to the economy of Western Australia. The Ecology Budget will allow us to better understand the true value of all such sectors and the development initiatives of the state and federal governments. 

It is about time that civil society organisations in Western Australia insist and ask the government to prepare an Ecology Budget annually as a mandatory requirement. 

Shashi Sharma

president@wanaturalists.org.au