Adapting the Ecological Knowledge System for Coastal and Marine Environments: report and webinar

Extending Biodiversity Markets Offshore

Australia's Nature Repair Market enables landholders, organisations, and Indigenous groups to undertake biodiversity enhancement projects and sell credits representing measured improvements, creating financial incentives for conservation and restoration. The market depends on the Ecological Knowledge System (EKS)—a CSIRO-DCCEEW partnership—to supply transparent, science-based data on ecosystem states, management actions, and expected biodiversity gains. Originally designed for terrestrial environments, the EKS uses state-and-transition models and national datasets to quantify outcomes consistently across the country.

Coastal and marine ecosystems present distinct hurdles. Nearshore areas such as mangroves and saltmarshes may adapt more readily, but deeper waters suffer from limited observability, sparser long-term monitoring, and different ecological dynamics, complicating comparable assessments. These gaps threaten to sideline marine repair projects at a time when Australia's oceans face mounting pressures, including warming waters, acidification, and coastal development.

The push to extend the EKS arrives as the market matures and early projects roll out, with restoration practitioners and policymakers seeking to include blue carbon and habitat recovery initiatives. Without adaptation, marine projects could face higher uncertainty in credit certification, deterring investment and slowing progress on nationally significant areas like the Great Barrier Reef catchment or seagrass meadows vital for fisheries and carbon sequestration.

Tensions arise between enforcing uniform national standards—which facilitate market liquidity—and allowing tailored marine methods, which better reflect reality but risk fragmenting the system. Data scarcity in offshore zones amplifies risks of inaccurate baselines or overstated benefits, potentially undermining market credibility if credits prove unreliable. Indigenous knowledge integration and climate adaptation forecasting remain additional layers under active consideration but add complexity to rapid rollout.