This seminar will provide an overview of the role of carbon offsets in Australian climate policy and an introduction to the scandals and debates concerning their integrity. The seminar will explain how Australia’s carbon pricing mechanism (the ‘Safeguard Mechanism’) works and its relationship to the Australian carbon credit unit (ACCU) scheme. The seminar will focus particularly on ‘human-induced regeneration of even-aged native forest’ (HIR) projects and whether the credits issued to these projects, which now cover an area the size of Iraq across Australia’s rangelands, represent real, additional and permanent abatement.

About the Speaker

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Andrew Macintosh is a leading environmental law and policy scholar and is the Associate Dean (Research) at the ANU College of Law. His research is cross-disciplinary, involving the application of legal, economic and political science methods to the study of environmental policy problems and processes. Much of his work has centred on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and Australian environmental impact assessment processes. He is regarded as one of Australia’s preeminent experts on carbon offsets, land sector carbon abatement and federal environmental law. His research has been published in the most prestigious environment journals in the world, including Nature Climate Change, Climatic Change and the Journal of Environmental Law, and he was awarded the Schlamadinger Prize for Climate Change Research in 2012.

Andrew’s work has a strong policy orientation and he regularly advises governments, corporations and non-government organisations on environmental law and policy. He is currently the Chair of the Australian Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, a Director of the Port of Newcastle, a member of the Australian Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund Expert Reference Group, and a member of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory User Reference Group. He was previously the Chair of the Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee and an Associate Member of the Australian Climate Change Authority. He is also an editor of the Environmental and Planning Law Journal.