Environmental Offsets Act 2014
Under the Environmental Offsets Act 2014, an environmental offset is defined as an activity undertaken to counterbalance a significant residual impact of a prescribed environmental matter. Unlike mitigation actions which occur on-site as part of the project and reduce the direct impact of that project, offsets are undertaken at another location which contains the same environmental values.
Key features of the environmental offsets framework, include:
- the option to meet an offset obligation by means of a financial payment to a secured offsets fund, managed by the Department of Environment and Science (DES) and used to deliver strategic outcomes with the assistance of an independent committee.
- staging offset delivery for larger projects to ensure significant residual impacts are counterbalanced, by allowing offset credits or debits to be carried over to later stages of the project.
- mapping Strategic Offset Investment Corridors (SOICs), which identify some of the best places in the landscape for environmental offsets.
- a confidential record of landholders interested in having offsets on their land.
A single dataset is available for all offsets approved since 1 July 2014 in the form of an offsets register, maintained by DES and publicly available on the Queensland Government’s website. This register includes information on all permits that have been granted with an offset condition, as well as specific details on financial payments, land based offsets and advanced offsets, all of which are updated on a quarterly basis.
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