Following a presentation by Peter Cosier of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists in 2017, a proposal to undertake work to build a set of accounts for Bruny has been bubbling away.

The basic idea is very simple. Just as we have economic accounts for businesses, farms, councils, states and the nation, so we’d like to build environmental accounts for how we are doing with rivers, forests, beaches and wildlife that can be aggregated up to the national level.

Doing this, however, is more complex than the simple idea.

Bruny is a perfect test-bed to try ideas out: it is small, but diverse, and as the Bruny Life survey showed, over 90% of residents are passionate about keeping our environment in good condition.

There is an old saying: “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” and environmental accounts attempt to do just that: measure the environment.

We have so far spoken with the local Natural Resource Management body NRM South, to most of the community groups on Bruny, to Tasmanian Land Conservancy and to the University of Tasmania.

Interest is certainly there, and we have a meeting with various government bodies, the university and tourist operators coming up in April 2019, where we will try to develop a process to move from ideas to action.