Interest in coastal and marine restoration is rapidly accelerating in Australia, fueled by developments such as the Blue Carbon methodology. However there still exist a number of barriers to achieving restoration at scale, including legal barriers. In particular, the lack of fit-for-purpose permitting pathways for restoration has been identified as a major roadblock to restoration projects1,2.
Alongside this, there is significant interest developing in the concept of multi-habitat restoration, or the explicit restoration of more than one habitat concurrently. Whilst there are compelling reasons for undertaking restoration at this scale, the legal permitting process for this type of endeavour is likely to be enormously complex, spanning multiple types of activities, jurisdictions, regulators, and legal and policy instruments.
This paper will present the results of an early study in this area where we investigated the range of permits required for a multi-habitat restoration project in Queensland. It is intended to provide a sense of the complexity involved in the process, and identify some future areas for law reform.