Understanding the pressures and impacts on Australia’s marine environment is critical to effective biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource use. The marine environment in Australia is influenced by a wide range of different pressures that impact on different parts of the marine ecosystem in different ways. Managers, regulators and proponents are grappling to provide practical approaches that can effectively assess the cumulative risks and impacts to ecosystems. Such approaches must be able to respond to a diversity of uses and provide:

1. an understanding of the state and trends of shared values of the marine environment,
2. an understanding of the state and trends of the pressures and uses acting on values and
3. options for assessing cumulative risks to environmental values that can accommodate a range of spatial and data contexts.
4. Practical and repeatable guidance for how to conduct an assessment of cumulative risk and impact

The NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub has been progressing research to establish understanding in first three of requirements to support Australia’s marine managers, regulators and proponents by providing. This document provides a snapshot of our progress to delivering on these requirements.