Megan C Evans

I am a Senior Lecturer in Public Sector Management within the School of Business, UNSW Canberra. I am an interdisciplinary social scientist whose work aims to inform the design, implementation and evaluation of environmental laws, policies and tools.

My research has contributed significantly to environmental policy in Australia and internationally: key examples include work on forest regeneration carbon offset integrity that triggered the Independent Review of Australian Carbon Credit Units (Chubb review), the development of the Australian government’s biodiversity offset policy under federal environmental laws, and work on the economics of land-based carbon offsets that informed the establishment of the $500 million Land Restoration Fund in Queensland. I was a member of Professor Graeme Samuel AC’s Consultative Group as part of the Independent Review of the EPBC Act in 2020, and have engaged extensively with the federal government’s Nature Positive law reform process.

I recently completed an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship (2020-2023) which examined the growth of private sector investment in biodiversity and natural capital, and currently supervise five PhD students researching various aspects of environmental policy and governance. I hold undergraduate degrees in mathematics and ecology (UQ), a PhD in environmental policy (ANU), and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Conservation Letters.