30 November 2008

MARKET-BASED INSTRUMENTS: Presentations and videos from Designer Carrots National Market Based Instruments Forum now available

The National Market-Based Instruments (MBI) Forum was held in Brisbane in late September. Now available are many of the PowerPoint presentations, as well as video interviews exploring the MBI experiences of a wide range of people.

By using policy tools called market-based instruments (MBIs), governments, regional NRM groups and others natural resource managers are applying the economic principles of supply and demand to the management of the natural resources such as water, biodiversity, habitat, water quality and forests. MBIs rely on market signals to positively influence behaviour.

A ‘market’ is any place where sellers of a good or service can meet buyers of that good or service. Markets are historically associated with the buying and selling of tangible products or intangible items such as stocks and shares. However, harnessing the competitive pressure of commercial markets is increasingly being used as a policy tool to reduce the costs of securing environmental outcomes and to create greater flexibility for delivering natural resource management (NRM) outcomes.