Understanding water quality impacts on natural resources, identifying pollutant sources, determining ecologically relevant targets to protect significant environmental assets is a complex and challenging endeavour. Furthermore, assessing the socio-economic and political feasibility of relevant actions to meet those targets, including a realistic assessment of costs has rarely been tackled with success in Australia and overseas (Roberts et al, 2012). Nowhere is this more starkly evident than for the Great Barrier Reef (Brodie et al, 2009).

Water Quality Improvement Plans (WQIPs) are being developed for river basins on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchment.  An acknowledged weakness of previous plans has been a lack of integrated bioeconomic assessment of the benefits and costs of achieving pollutant reduction targets.

BMRG collaborated with Natural Decisions and TropWater to utilise robust, transparent evidence-based processes to develop a region wide WQIP. The development of the Burnett-Mary WQIP has focused on the development of ecologically relevant targets, which were evaluated through the application of a purpose-built bioeconomic model, based on detailed biophysical information available from both Paddock to Reef paddock-scale and catchment scale modelling.

This information was used as an input to an integrated benefit: cost assessment using INFFER (Investment Framework for Environmental Resources). INFFER (Pannell et al, 2011) uses the principles of benefit: cost analysis to undertake integrated assessments of projects that aim to achieve environmental outcomes. Bioeconomic modelling analysis can inform the cost component of INFFER, particularly the costs associated with management practice changes on private land to achieve environmental targets.