Environmental offsets policy

Summary

We have laws in place to protect our animals, plants, habitats, and natural areas. Your actions may have negative residual impacts on them. Environmental offsets can help balance these impacts, but they should only be considered after you have made efforts to avoid or mitigate the effects. It is important to understand that offsets do not make an unacceptable impact acceptable.

The ACT Environmental Offsets Policy is a notifiable instrument established under section 226 of the Planning Act 2023.

Both the Commonwealth and ACT Governments are committed to streamlining the process for obtaining environmental approvals under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The goal is to maintain high environmental standards while making the approval process easier and supporting a stronger economy.

The primary objectives of the Policy are:

1. To ensure areas of high conservation value or irreplaceable assets are avoided, or avoided and mitigated:
   1. environmental offsets are considered only after feasible and appropriate avoidance and mitigation measures have been taken.
   2. the use of environmental offsets cannot be used to make inappropriate actions6 appropriate.
2. Should impacts be acceptable, to ensure the impacts from the loss of ecological communities and habitat are balanced by commensurate gains in extent or quality elsewhere.

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