 The
Blackwood Basin, Western Australia
The Blackwood Basin is situated in south-west Western Australia
extending from Augusta on the coast to Kukerin in the wheat belt
covering 2.35 million hectares. The Basin is home to 40,000 people
and contributes $550 million to the Western Australian economy.
More than 60% of the catchment area is used for some form of agricultural
production.
Pilot Study 1: Roads and Salinity
This pilot is aimed at reducing and/or controlling the impact
of salinity and water logging on roads in the Blackwood Basin.
Spatial risk modelling is being conducted using a GIS, and salt
risk mapping, to identify stretches of road at risk of damage
from rising water tables in the future and for which preventative
works may be feasible. This will be combined with hydrological
models to provide an estimation of the most appropriate places
for revegetation to reduce local ground water levels, and thus
provide road protection to these "at risk" roads. The
end result will be a model estimating the costs and benefits of
road protection in different locations. This pilot is best described
as a quasi-market, where the negotiations will take place between
a limited set of sellers (i.e. landholders with roadside property
ownership), and limited buyers (e.g. WA Roads).
Pilot Study 2: Beyond Fencing
Most conservation mechanisms currently in operation tend to focus
on single landowner, site-specific actions (e.g. fencing remnants)
on relatively small scales (e.g. within a given paddock) and often
struggle to deliver high-level strategic outcomes at a regional
scale. However, in many landscapes there are larger agglomerations,
or "nodes", of high conservation value land, often involving
multiple landholders, that could make a greater contribution to
regional conservation targets when considered as a whole. This
pilot will attempt to look at how market based mechanisms might
be designed to deliver the best outcomes, based on encouraging
participation as individuals or as coalitions of stakeholders
within conservation nodes (e.g. into a conservation co-op). A
second aspect may involve designing market-based instruments (MBIs)
that leverage competition for resources between these nodes.
 Return
to top
|
