Practical and Theoretical Underpinnings of INFFER (Investment Framework For Environmental Resources)

INFFER (Investment Framework for Environmental Resources) was developed to help investors of public funds to improve the delivery of outcomes from environmental programs. It assists environmental managers to design projects, to select delivery mechanisms, and to rank competing projects on the basis of benefits and costs. The design of INFFER and the activities of the INFFER projects are based on extensive experience of working with environmental managers and policy makers. This experience has highlighted a number of important practical lessons, that have strongly influenced the design and implementation of INFFER. These lessons include the need for simplicity, training and support of users, trusting relationships with users, transparency, flexibility, compatibility with the needs and contexts of users, and supportive institutional arrangements. In additions, the developers have paid close attention to the need for processes that are theoretically rigorous, resulting in a tool that deals appropriately and consistently with projects for different assets types, of different scales and durations, consistent with Benefit: Cost Analysis. The paper outlines theoretical considerations underpinning the way that INFFER deals with asset valuation, time lags, uncertainty, and the design of the metric used to rank projects.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Lessons from implementing INFFER with regional catchment management organisations

Investment in natural resource management (NRM) by regional organisations in Australia has been widely criticised for failing to achieve substantial environmental outcomes. The Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER) is a tool for developing and prioritising projects to address environmental issues such as water quality and biodiversity decline, environmental pest impacts and land degradation. It aims to achieve the most valuable environmental outcomes with the available resources. During 2008 and 2009 INFFER has been implemented with a number of catchment management organisations (CMOs) throughout Australia. In this paper, we report on lessons from and implications of this experience. Data on implementation were collected in formal and informal ways from staff of organisations that were using INFFER and state agencies, including: an on-line survey, benchmarking questions at training workshops, a formal on-going monitoring and evaluation process tracking the use of INFFER by CMOs, and comments made in correspondence and informal feedback to the INFFER team. In this paper we describe issues that arise when implementing INFFER with regions and organisations, and how the INFFER team has attempted to address these. Key issues include a desire to consider the community as an asset and emphasise capacity building, a rejection of the need for targeted investment, and various difficulties associated with specific aspects of the Framework. Existing institutional arrangements, and the legacy of past institutional arrangements, remain serious barriers to the adoption of methods to improve environmental outcomes from NRM investment. A lack of rigour in investment planning has become accepted as the norm, and resistance to processes to improve rigour is common. However, many CMOs want to achieve better environmental outcomes with their limited funds, and we report on our efforts to work with them to achieve this by using INFFER.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Changing the direction of environmental investment in Australia: Learnings from implementing INFFER

Investment in natural resource management (NRM) by regional organisations in Australia has been widely criticised for failing to achieve substantial environmental outcomes. The Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER) is a tool for developing and prioritising projects to address environmental issues such as water quality, biodiversity decline, environmental pest impacts and land degradation. INFFER is an asset-based, targeted, and outcome-focussed approach to environmental investment, and as such is a very different and more rigorous approach to prioritising possible environmental projects than used previously by most catchment management organisations (CMOs) in Australia. From 2008 to 2010 INFFER has been trialled with CMOs. Evaluation and benchmarking data obtained at 2-day INFFER training sessions with seven CMOs in three eastern Australia states are reported. Before commencing to use INFFER, CMO staff are generally confident about the current decision-making processes for environmental investment used within their organisation. In some cases, this initial perception challenges their acceptance of a new approach to investment decisionmaking. Key issues when implementing INFFER include concerns about changing the direction of CMO investment, concerns about compatibility with funder requirements, and various issues associated with specific aspects of the Framework. Perceived complexity of INFFER, existing institutional arrangements, and the legacy of past institutional arrangements remain serious barriers to the adoption of methods to improve environmental outcomes from NRM investment. Despite these difficulties INFFER is being used by a number of CMOs. However, it is likely that widespread adoption of INFFER, or indeed any other transparent and robust process, will only occur with greater requirement from governments for environmental decision making by regional NRM bodies that is more focused on outcomes and cost-effectiveness.NRM investment planning, NRM investment prioritisation, regional catchment management organisations, NRM policy, environmental planning, environmental prioritisation, environmental policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q50, Q58,

Lessons from implementing INFFER with regional catchment management organisations

Investment in natural resource management (NRM) by regional organisations in Australia has been widely criticised for failing to achieve substantial environmental outcomes. The Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER) is a tool for developing and prioritising projects to address environmental issues such as water quality and biodiversity decline, environmental pest impacts and land degradation. It aims to achieve the most valuable environmental outcomes with the available resources. During 2008 and 2009 INFFER has been implemented with a number of catchment management organisations (CMOs) throughout Australia. In this paper, we report on lessons from and implications of this experience. Data on implementation were collected in formal and informal ways from staff of organisations that were using INFFER and state agencies, including: an on-line survey, benchmarking questions at training workshops, a formal on-going monitoring and evaluation process tracking the use of INFFER by CMOs, and comments made in correspondence and informal feedback to the INFFER team. In this paper we describe issues that arise when implementing INFFER with regions and organisations, and how the INFFER team has attempted to address these. Key issues include a desire to consider the community as an asset and emphasise capacity building, a rejection of the need for targeted investment, and various difficulties associated with specific aspects of the Framework. Existing institutional arrangements, and the legacy of past institutional arrangements, remain serious barriers to the adoption of methods to improve environmental outcomes from NRM investment. A lack of rigour in investment planning has become accepted as the norm, and resistance to processes to improve rigour is common. However, many CMOs want to achieve better environmental outcomes with their limited funds, and we report on our efforts to work with them to achieve this by using INFFER

Practical and Theoretical Underpinnings of INFFER (Investment Framework For Environmental Resources)

INFFER (Investment Framework for Environmental Resources) was developed to help investors of public funds to improve the delivery of outcomes from environmental programs. It assists environmental managers to design projects, to select delivery mechanisms, and to rank competing projects on the basis of benefits and costs. The design of INFFER and the activities of the INFFER projects are based on extensive experience of working with environmental managers and policy makers. This experience has highlighted a number of important practical lessons, that have strongly influenced the design and implementation of INFFER. These lessons include the need for simplicity, training and support of users, trusting relationships with users, transparency, flexibility, compatibility with the needs and contexts of users, and supportive institutional arrangements. In additions, the developers have paid close attention to the need for processes that are theoretically rigorous, resulting in a tool that deals appropriately and consistently with projects for different assets types, of different scales and durations, consistent with Benefit: Cost Analysis. The paper outlines theoretical considerations underpinning the way that INFFER deals with asset valuation, time lags, uncertainty, and the design of the metric used to rank projects

Integrated assessment of public investment in land-use change to protect environmental assets in Australia

A framework for comprehensive integrated assessment of environmental projects is developed and applied in partnership with a regional environmental body. The framework combines theory with practice, bringing a pragmatic and efficient approach to the rigorous assessment of projects for a large number of environmental assets in the north central region of the state of Victoria, Australia. Key features of the study include extensive participation of decision makers and stakeholders, integration of a comprehensive set of information about projects, explicit assessment of uncertainties and information gaps, and analysis of the most appropriate policy mechanism for each project. The process of applying the framework involved four steps: identification of around 300 important environmental assets in the region, filtering the list of assets to remove those that are less likely to provide opportunities for cost effective public investment, development and detailed assessment of projects for a subset of assets, and negotiation of funding for projects. The analysis assisted the environmental body to make strong business cases for a number of environmental projects, resulting in funding for those projects. Implications for land-use policy include that environmental projects vary widely in their cost-effectiveness, requiring careful targeting of funds if environmental benefits are to be maximised. Many existing environmental programs use simplistic analyses to support decision making, resulting in missed opportunities for substantially greater environmental benefits. Promoting adoption of improved analytical methods is very challenging, requiring changes in mind-set and culture in environmental organisations. Widespread adoption is unlikely unless funders create incentives by rewarding those project proponents who undertake rigorous and comprehensive project assessments that focus on achievement of environmental outcomes

Changing the direction of environmental investment in Australia: Learnings from implementing INFFER

Investment in natural resource management (NRM) by regional organisations in Australia has been widely criticised for failing to achieve substantial environmental outcomes. The Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER) is a tool for developing and prioritising projects to address environmental issues such as water quality, biodiversity decline, environmental pest impacts and land degradation. INFFER is an asset-based, targeted, and outcome-focussed approach to environmental investment, and as such is a very different and more rigorous approach to prioritising possible environmental projects than used previously by most catchment management organisations (CMOs) in Australia. From 2008 to 2010 INFFER has been trialled with CMOs. Evaluation and benchmarking data obtained at 2-day INFFER training sessions with seven CMOs in three eastern Australia states are reported. Before commencing to use INFFER, CMO staff are generally confident about the current decision-making processes for environmental investment used within their organisation. In some cases, this initial perception challenges their acceptance of a new approach to investment decisionmaking. Key issues when implementing INFFER include concerns about changing the direction of CMO investment, concerns about compatibility with funder requirements, and various issues associated with specific aspects of the Framework. Perceived complexity of INFFER, existing institutional arrangements, and the legacy of past institutional arrangements remain serious barriers to the adoption of methods to improve environmental outcomes from NRM investment. Despite these difficulties INFFER is being used by a number of CMOs. However, it is likely that widespread adoption of INFFER, or indeed any other transparent and robust process, will only occur with greater requirement from governments for environmental decision making by regional NRM bodies that is more focused on outcomes and cost-effectiveness

Integrated assessment of public investment in land-use change to protect environmental assets in Australia

This is a pre-publication version of: Pannell, D.J., Roberts, A.M., Park, G., Alexander, J., Curatolo, A. and Marsh, S. (2012). Integrated assessment of public investment in land-use change to protect environmental assets in Australia, Land Use Policy 29(2): 377-387.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q20, Q50,