The overarching goal of this study has been to explore the potential application of a cap and trade approach to manage net recharge in the Coleambally Irrigation Area. This has involved the conceptual development of the instrument, the development of the necessary biophysical information base, economic assessment of alternative policy approaches, experiment testing of institutional frameworks, and ground-proofing of our research findings within the Coleambally region.

This project involved the design, development and trial of Catchment Care. Catchment Care is an auction-based system which aims to increase the cost effectiveness of funds for private on-ground natural resource management (NRM) actions distributed by the Onkaparinga Catchment Water Management Board (the Board).

The project managed salt loads to stressed rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin by undertaking pilot offsets in three areas of regional NSW where industry is expanding. The three pilot participants were: Ulan Coal Mine near Mudgee (Macquarie and Hunter catchments); Norske Skog Paper Mill in Albury (Murray catchment); and Moree spa baths (Gwydir catchment).

The overall aim of this project was to plan and develop a proposal for vegetation corridors to be established across the Desert Uplands through the use of an auction or other MBI-related voluntary landholder participation processes. The main issues to be addressed in the project were: how to involve landholders in a bidding process; how to assess the environmental/ecological values of different corridor options; how the auction/bidding process might work; and how to ensure that landholders and funding bodies achieve a "fair" deal.

The Auction for Landscape Recovery is a multi-partner, multi-disciplinary research project which operationalised an auction-based field trial in the Intensive Land-use Zone of the North Eastern Wheatbelt Regional Organisation of Councils, a highly biodiverse landscape in the northeast wheatbelt of Western Australia that is threatened by salinity and the effects of large scale clearing for agriculture. It is the first biodiversity/conservation auction trial to have been conducted in Western Australia.

This report is the final report from a research project funded under the National Market Based Instruments program. The report includes a number of summary findings about the potential for quantity control MBIs to address water quality issues in the lower Fitzroy river basin. The research tools applied to design and develop an MBI are outlined and discussed. The findings from this project should be more widely applicable in other regions of Australia where the process of assessing the suitability of particular MBI mechanisms is important. The focus of this report is to outline a number of the issues that have been considered, and to give a summary of the key findings.

EcoTender is designed to use a BushTender style auction mechanism to encourage private landholders to manage salinity, water quality, water quantity and biodiversity on their land. The trial is designed to test the feasibility of using one mechanism to simultaneously encourage land-use change for multiple environmental purposes.

EcoTender represents a significant advance towards implementing a comprehensive market-based approach to managing environmental problems. The design of a successful pilot requires implementation of an auction mechanism that can process the information elicited from landholders to ensure cost effective use of government funds.

This project is a scoping study into the use of insurance as a means of supporting changes in farming practices where risk is perceived to be a major barrier to implementation. The Lower Murray region, specifically within the northern Murray Mallee in South Australia, was used as a case study area.

The objective of this MBI pilot project, is to investigate the economic and environmental performance of two market based policy mechanisms for point-source salinity. The project uses economic experiments to test the performance of a salinity levy and a tradable salinity permit system  to manage river salinity concentrations in the Murray. The economic experiments use information from the Sunraysia irrigation region located along the Murray River in Northern Victoria.

This report is on a dryland salinity credit trade trial. The fundamental goal of the trial was to set an aggregate threshold for groundwater recharge volumes for each trial participant. Participants can then meet their goals through credits resulting from land management outcomes resulting in recharge reduction or through credit trade amongst participants. This allows individual under-performance if it is compensated by over-performance elsewhere.

The Farming Finance pilot to provides insights into the potential for using ‘investment leverage’ to deliver natural resource management policy outcomes. The central purpose of this pilot was to contribute to the development of approaches that complement the existing suite of policy tools, particularly in relation to encouraging more innovative, ecologically sustainable, and commercially attractive land uses.