The Western Australian Restoration Economy: A roadmap towards a sustainable industry with better environmental outcomes

Ecological restoration is key to jointly tackling the twin environmental challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously restoring nature loss. As a large, sparsely populated, and politically stable country, Australia, and particularly Western Australia, which occupies a third of Australia’s landmass, is in a unique position to take advantage of major investment as the world pushes towards a carbon neutral and nature positive future. The restoration economy could be an important component of developing sustainable futures in Western Australia, but, until now, has been constrained by a lack of market analysis and evaluation.
We define the restoration economy as: “The market of businesses, investors, consumers, and government initiatives engaging in or driving the economic activity related to ecological restoration”.
This project was carried out to understand the size and scope of the Western Australian Restoration Economy and, as such, we undertook a market-based assessment and gap analysis. A draft roadmap identifies actions to lift Western Australia’s ability to deliver meaningful, large-scale ecological restoration across the State – as individuals and collectively.