Neil Byron

Neil Byron is an environmental economist and policy analyst. He was the Commissioner responsible for environment, agriculture and natural resource management issues in the Productivity Commission from April 1998 to March 2010.

Neil is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Director of Earthwatch Australia and was previously a non-executive Director of a multi-national plantation forestry company in New Zealand.

Since January 2012, Neil has been an Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Applied Ecology and the University of Canberra. He researches and advises on economic, social and environmental policy.

As a Commissioner with the Productivity Commission, Neil presided over 26 public inquiries and directed the Commission's environmental economics program.

Neil is currently the Chair of the Review of Biodiversity Legislation for the Government of New South Wales.

He has also been a director of numerous commercial, public sector and not-for-profit organisations, and has strong governance, strategy and corporate planning experience.

Other appointments were: at the Bureau of Agricultural Economics in Canberra; teaching resource and environmental economics and development economics at ANU; Chief Technical Adviser of an UN Project in Dhaka, Bangladesh; the founding Director of the graduate program in Environmental Management and Development at ANU; and Assistant Director General of the Centre for International Forestry Research, based in Indonesia.

Chair of the Institute for Active Policy established by Global Access Partners (since November 2011)

Commissioner or the Productivity Commission (1998-2010)

Director of Earthwatch Institute Australia (since April 2010)

Member of the Independent Science Panel for Great Barrier Reef (since August 2009)

Member of the Knowledge Panel of NSW Marine Estate Management Authority (since March 2013)

Chairman of the Trust for Nature Foundation (since April 2012 and from 2002 to 2007)

Director of Tiaki Forestry Company of New Zealand (2007 to 2011)

Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (since 2010)

Member of the World Commission on Protected Areas of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (2005-2010)

Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare (1994-2000)

• NSW Government—independent review of all  legislation dealing with biodiversity and native vegetation, with a view to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of the system of conserving biodiversity
• Department of the Environment—Examined whether the existing product stewardship model is still the most appropriate, effective and sustainable way to manage used oil in Australia
• Productivity Commission—inquiry into barriers to adaptation to climate change
• National Water Commission—evaluation of the legacy of the portfolio of 28 projects conducted under the Australia-China Environment Development Partnership since 2007

Productivity Commission (2013), Barriers to Effective Climate Change Adaptation, http://www.pc.gov.au/projects/inquiry/climate-change-adaptation

 

Aither (2013), Third independent review of the Product Stewardship (Oil) Act 2000, http://www.environment.gov.au/resource/third-independent-review-product-stewardship-oil-act-2000