Nature positive at Monash

The Monash Nature Positive Network is a multi-disciplinary network of leading researchers developing new research and engagement projects designed to address some of the critical policy challenges associated with the nature positive goal.

Key questions that the network is exploring include:

  • How do we translate the global nature positive goal into action at different scales?
  • Can we use existing science to develop policy and decision-support tools to help us measure and monitor nature positive outcomes?
  • How do we best drive behavioural change to reduce adverse impacts and promote improvements in the state of nature?
  • What types of legal and policy measures are required?
  • How can we better value and integrate different knowledges and perspectives, particularly those of First Nations peoples?
  • How can we ensure that interventions to address climate change also support nature?
BIODIVERISTY FINANCE

Explore our previous webinar:

Biodiversity Finance: Counter-pressures and pathways forward

This session examined the global biodiversity finance crisis, including the estimated $700 billion annual funding shortfall and the financial and economic pressures undermining conservation and restoration efforts worldwide.

Hear from Megan Evans (UNSW) and Paul Elton (ANU), with insights and moderation by Benjamin Thompson (Monash University), as they unpacked the impacts of sovereign debt in biodiversity-rich countries, the risks of loan-based finance, and the growing emphasis on private sector solutions. Moderated by Associate Professor Anita Foerster, Director of Green Lab, the discussion also highlighted the scale of harmful subsidies in Australia across energy, transport, agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, and considered the reforms needed to enable more equitable and effective biodiversity finance outcomes.

Watch the webinar recording here

Explore our previous webinar:

What does the community value, and what does this mean for national environmental reforms?

Hear from Professor Liam Smith, Director of Monash BehaviourWorks, and James Trezise, Director of the Biodiversity Council, as they share insights from the Council’s 2025 Biodiversity Concerns Report, which surveyed community attitudes towards nature conservation. They discuss how the survey has supported public and policy advocacy and how its findings can help guide a reinvigorated nature-positive reform agenda during the new federal term of government.

This session was moderated by Associate Professor Anita Foerster, Director of Green Lab at Monash Business School.

Watch the webinar recording here

Explore our previous webinar:

Nature-related Risks and Directors Duties - what is the current state of play?

Join us to hear from Zoe Bush, Australian barrister and author of 2023 legal opinion on the legal duties of company directors to address nature risks and impacts, followed by a discussion of emerging corporate responses, featuring Laura Bacon (Australian Institute of Company Directors) and Mark Beaufoy (Kings Wood Mallesons and Monash Law Faculty).

Watch the webinar recordings here

Explore Our previous Webinar:

A Nature-Positive Australia – Why It Matters and How to Achieve It

In September-October 2024, leading researchers from Monash University held a three-part webinar series designed to open up a conversation about how our research in biodiversity science, behavioural science, law and finance can help to realise a nature-positive Australia. Presenters explored the scientific basis for the global nature-positive goal, its integration into Australian legal and policy frameworks, and the role of sustainable finance.

Watch the webinar recordings here

What does Nature Positive mean?

Biodiversity loss and environmental degradation threaten our society and our economy. We depend on natural processes and ecosystems for clean water, clean air, a stable climate, fertile soils, and pollinating our crops. Yet these vital ecosystem services are being dangerously undermined by pollution, deforestation, land-use change, unsustainable resource extraction and climate change.

Nature positive aims for measurable improvements in the state of nature against a defined baseline, to safeguard the wide range of ecosystem services provided by nature that underpin human wellbeing.

Why does it matter?

There are important opportunities in Australia right now to address alarming rates of biodiversity loss and environmental degradation in line with the global nature positive goal.

In 2022, the Australian Government signed up to ambitious new nature targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and released its Nature Positive Plan, which sets out reforms to national environmental laws and introduces a nature repair market. Many of these reforms are only now taking shape. In 2024, the Government also released their Sustainable Finance Roadmap which aims to realign private capital to help address climate change and other key sustainability challenges like nature loss.

Who are we?

We are an interdisciplinary group including researchers from the biological sciences, social and behavioural sciences, law, business and economics. We bring considerable expertise, experience and policy insights that can help Australia realise the nature positive goal in a timely way.