Dr Ken Henry AC attends Accounting for Nature workshop at Taree

So said Dr Ken Henry AC, board member of the not-for-profit organisation Accounting for Nature and chairman of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation,

Dr Henry, who was in Taree for an Accounting for Nature workshop and discussion panel with interested professionals and community members, was referring to the interest Accounting for Nature is receiving from big business.

"There are very big global businesses now that are saying, 'our customers want to know what impact we're having on the natural environment. Our workers want to know whether we're a good company to work for environmentally. Investors want to know, banks want to know, insurance companies want to know. And right now, we don't have an ability to demonstrate rigorously the impact that we're having on the natural environment.'," Dr Henry said.

Accounting for Nature has existed for around five years, and builds on 12 years of work by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

"They set themselves a challenge, an almighty challenge, really, which is, how do you measure the condition of the natural environment in a way that is easily understood, and can be repeated year after year after year?

"And so you can, by keeping track of the state of the physical environment, potentially stand the set of environmental accounts up against the national economic accounts, and see what the environmental price or environmental cost of economic development has been," Dr Henry said.

"Maybe one day we'll see that the environment is actually improving; it's possible. But we don't measure it at the moment. And without measuring it, how would you know, and people can make any sorts of claims.

"And of course, right now, businesses all over the world are making all sorts of claims about their impact on the environment, most of which are probably forms of greenwashing."

Accounting for Nature has been working with the Queensland government in the Burnett Mary region, an area as big as the Netherlands.

"We produced the first set of environmental accounts for that region; first time it's ever happened anywhere in the world that an area that large has had environmental accounts produced for it," Dr Henry said.

"We could at very little cost extend that across the entire Australian continent."

A group of local people, who met through the building of the First Steps Count Child and Community Centre in Taree, invited Dr Henry to give a talk and be involved in a discussion panel at the centre on Monday, September 18.

The group is particularly concerned about climate change, and the loss of biodiversity in particular, and has a loose connection with MidCoast Council.

Gerard Tuckerman, manager of natural systems MidCoast Council, was one of the council employees present. He said it wasn't an issue of "why would you" attend the workshop, but "why wouldn't you?".

"It's an opportunity to learn from a very eminent Australian who has contributed to the conversation nationally. We'd be crazy not to come along and just listen," Mr Tuckerman said.

"This is about getting ideas. And it's fantastic to have someone like Ken Henry; we're in a privileged position in the Mid Coast, to have him as a resident, and such an eminent thinker in Australia."

More than 80 people from around the Mid Coast, an eclectic mix of architects, builders, sustainable foresters, environmentalists, landholders and others, attended the workshop.

After a talk by Dr Henry, a discussion panel consisting of Worimi man and farmer from Gloucester, Josh Gilbert, Nigel Kuzemko of Carbon Fix Australia, and Annabel Kater of Australian Sustainable Timbers, questioned Dr Henry, while audience members were able to message in their questions via an onscreen QR code.

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