UNSW Canberra
Research Field: Biodiversity Conservation
Governments around the world have introduced laws, policies, and markets that aim to protect the environment, but species continue to go extinct at an alarming rate. Many of these efforts – including biodiversity and carbon offsets – can often sound good in theory, but not work so well in practice.
Megan’s research aims to understand and inform how governments and businesses can more effectively protect the environment. She uses tools and methods from a range of fields – including public policy, conservation science and environmental economics – to help design environmental policies, study how they work in practice, and learn what improvements are needed. She is working to understand how different industries might become carbon neutral, and what actions governments and the private sector need to take to transform our economy into one where both people and nature can thrive.
Megan has informed policy at Federal and State levels including the Australian Government’s Environmental Offsets Policy and the Queensland Government’s Land Restoration Fund. She has also provided evidence to the Senate Inquiry into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021.
Megan received her PhD in 2017 through the Australian National University and is now a Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow for the School of Business, UNSW Canberra.