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Good practice Imported

Australia's Nature Repair Market — National Biodiversity Certificate Scheme

Australia · Canberra · See the Australia profile · See the Canberra profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 64% 40/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Under the Nature Repair Act 2023, Australia's Clean Energy Regulator runs the world's first legislated national voluntary biodiversity market. Its first project (438 ha of NSW native forest replanting) was registered in August 2025; a second followed by May 2026.

438 ha
Area of first registered project (registered 13 August 2025)
2 projects
Projects registered under the scheme (2023 launch to May 2026)
137 AUD billion
Estimated broader biodiversity-linked market opportunity (government estimate) (current estimate)
Australia's Nature Repair Market — National Biodiversity Certificate Scheme Australia's Nature Repair Market — National Biodiversity Certificate Scheme

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Clean Energy Regulator (Australian Government)
Period
2023-present
Keywords
biodiversity certificates, native vegetation restoration, market-based conservation, statutory registry

Context

The Nature Repair Act 2023, passed by the Australian Parliament, establishes tradeable biodiversity certificates administered by the Clean Energy Regulator (CER). The Nature Repair Rules 2024 set out the process, and the first approved method, replanting native forest and woodland ecosystems, was determined on 1 March 2025.

Objectives

Create a legislated national voluntary biodiversity market in which each registered project earns a biodiversity certificate that is personal property, able to be held, sold to private buyers, or deposited with the regulator, tracked via the public Biodiversity Market Register.

Activities

The first project, 438 hectares of previously cleared land in north-east New South Wales, was registered on 13 August 2025 (project ID NR001014) and was dual-registered under the Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme, so it will also earn carbon credits as the replanted trees grow. A second Nature Repair Market project was registered in New South Wales by May 2026.

Results

Only two projects had been registered in the scheme's first roughly eighteen months, even though government estimates put Australia's broader biodiversity-linked market opportunity at AUD 137 billion, of which only a small fraction currently flows through this legislated scheme itself.

Conclusions

The market is still in its earliest stages.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — No project or scheme cost figures are disclosed in the source; cost_band inferred as medium, reflecting the cost of establishing and administering a national regulatory/registry scheme, pending disclosed figures.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Statutory scheme with no stated end date, active since the Act's passage in 2023 with the first project registered August 2025; timeline_band set to long as an open-ended national programme.
Staffing & skills
Clean Energy Regulator (Australian Government) — scheme administrator

Conditions for success

  • an approved government-determined restoration method for each project (e.g. native forest/woodland replanting)
  • a public Biodiversity Market Register for transparency and certificate tracking
  • dual-registration possible with the Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme for co-benefits

Common failure modes

  • only two projects registered in the scheme's first ~18 months against a government-estimated AUD 137 billion broader market opportunity, indicating very slow initial uptake

Where it fits

Governance type
national statutory scheme, government regulator-administered
Scale
national, currently 2 registered projects
Income level
high-income (Australia)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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