Marsden Jacob Associates

Marsden Jacob Associates has been engaged by the National Water Commission to advise on issues relating to the Third Assessment of the National Water Initiative.

For more information contact Dr Jeremy Cheesman in the Melbourne Office. 

We are pleased to announce the opening of our Canberra office in Mackay Gardens, Turner.  The office provides an on-the-ground presence to serve our clients in Canberra. Please see Contact Us for more details.

Siobhan Davies has recently joined the MJA team as a senior consultant, and will manage our Canberra office. Siobhan has over 20 years experience in economic analysis and modelling across a broad range of economic policy issues such as micro-economic reform, regulatory policy and analysis, natural resource management, environment protection and climate change adaptation.

MJA’s report was published as an appendix to the Commission’s final report in April 2010 (link).

The Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) has commissioned MJA to undertake a mid-term review of the Environmental Stewardship Program, focussing on Box Gum Grassy Woodlands.  The program primarily involves a ‘reverse auction’ market-based instrument designed and implemented to conserve native vegetation values on private land through voluntary actions.  The review will assess the efficacy and efficiency of the program at this interim point, and explore lessons and key learnings for future investments of this kind by the Commonwealth.

Please contact Jim Binney in our Brisbane office (T: 07 3229 7701), or Kym Whiteoak in our Melbourne office (T: 03 9882 1600), for more details.

As part of developing the Basin Plan, the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) has engaged a consortium lead by Marsden Jacob Associates to develop socioeconomic profiles of communities of the Basin, and to assess the resilience and adaptive capacity of Basin communities in the context of the Basin Plan.

The MJA-led consortium also includes EBC, RMCG, DBM, Tim Cummins, Anthony Hogan, and Geoff McLeod.

The project forms a major component of the Authority’s strategy to develop a sound understanding of the social and economic circumstances of the Basin communities, and to assess the likely social and economic impacts of setting alternative Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDLs) for those communities as part of the Basin Plan.

SDLs are environmentally sustainable limits on the amount of water that can be taken in future from the Basin’s water resources. The MDBA will develop SDLs in the proposed Basin Plan, to be published once the MJA-led consortium’s work is complete, in mid-2010.

More than 20 regional consultations, and a survey of approximately 2,500 Basin households are planned as part of the project.

The understanding gained from our work will assist the Authority to maximise the economic, social and environmental outcomes of SDLs, within the constraints of the physical hydrology of the Basin, and the water reform objectives of the Water Act (2007) (Cth) and Water for the Future.

After the proposed Basin Plan is published the MDBA will launch extensive consultation with Basin communities, to finalise the Plan in 2011.

Please contact Rozi Boyle or Jeremy Cheesman in our Melbourne Office (T: 03 9882 1600) for more details. 

A six week consultation is now taking place for new legislation which will allow Australian, state and territory governments to significantly expand and accelerate energy efficiency for appliances and equipment in the future.

The Commonwealth Government has published the consultation Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) authored by George Wilkenfeld and Associates, Rozi Boyle of Marsden Jacob Associates, and Winton Sustainable Research Strategies. The RIS, and information about the public consultation process, can be found at http://www.energyrating.gov.au/library/details201001-ris-national-MEPS-labelling.html

In addition to exploring opportunities to improve and streamline the existing appliance energy efficiency program, the Consultation RIS weighs up the advantages of:

• An easier regulatory environment for governments, retailers and manufacturers with more national consistency, more efficient implementation, control of product imports and stronger compliance and enforcement;

• An expanded energy efficiency program allowing for the inclusion of non-electricity-using products such as insulation, products using other energy types such as natural gas and products with environmental impacts not related to energy such as mercury in light bulbs;

• Additional practical information for consumers allowing for the inclusion of labels or ratings on product advertising and over time the possible inclusion of greenhouse gas labelling and intensity standards; and

• The collection of mandatory industry reporting on imports, sales and supplies.
  

This consultation is the first step in a commitment by the Council of Australian Governments, through the release of a National Strategy on Energy Efficiency in July 2009, to look at new national legislation for minimum energy  performance standards (MEPS) and energy labelling.