The Insights Report outlines the approach underpinning the tracker, and key findings.
Context & purpose
Australia’s biodiversity is in decline, with ecosystems under increasing pressure from habitat loss, invasive species, climate impacts, and land degradation. Despite the urgency of this challenge, the true level of investment remains unclear, making it difficult to track & assess investments in biodiversity and nature.
In this context, the Australian Land Conservation Alliance, with the support of Cyan Ventures, has developed Australia’s first Nature Spend Tracker to provide a structured method to record nature-related spending. It is Australia's first systematic attempt to trace flows of money spent on nature, a landmark step toward greater financial transparency.
By estimating the expenditure on nature in 2023, 2024, and 2025, the Tracker also provides the evidence base needed to assess the current level of expenditure and how funding levels change over time.
Methodology & data challenge
For the Tracker, expenditure on nature has been defined as expenditure on activities that aim to deliver focused and specific biodiversity benefits to Australia.
Specifically, activities in scope include those that aim to conserve biodiversity, restore degraded areas, sustainably manage land, and those related to research, education, and stewardship purposes.
The data used has been selected for its alignment with the Tracker’s scope and methodology, as well as data accessibility, consistency, credibility and comparability across jurisdictions and over time.
Nevertheless, data constraints mean the figures reported in the Tracker are only estimates of the expenditure on biodiversity, rather than the true level of spending.
Summary of key insights
In FY25, the Australian Federal Government was estimated to spend $649 million on biodiversity programs; five programs make up 91% of that total.
In FY25, States and Territories were estimated to spend $635 million on biodiversity. Most jurisdictions show rising biodiversity-related expenditure over FY23 to FY25, indicating an increase in reported allocations over time.
Overall, biodiversity-related expenditure at the State and Territory level is generally reported at a broad and aggregated level, often bundling together multiple environmental objectives. This is particularly the case for Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. A conservative approach has been adopted to estimate the expenditure in these States.
The latest data showed that philanthropic spending for nature is up to $231 million.
Global literature valuing nature estimates private sector investment could be as much as US$102 billion. Australia’s current evidence base is insufficient to produce a robust estimate, instead relying on discrete elements of domestic biodiversity and carbon offset markets as a proxy. In FY25, the private sector was estimated to spend $203 million on the New South Wales and Victorian biodiversity offset markets alone.
