Minority report of the Australian Greens
While the Australian Greens support
many of the recommendations of the majority report, there are some key
recommendations that we cannot support, and there are also some issues of
importance that we believe have not been given adequate consideration. For
instance, we believe that the primary role and the raison détre of
protected areas is the protection of biodiversity, a point which the majority
report does not give adequate consideration and is in danger of being lost in
the consideration of other secondary uses of protected areas. We are also
extremely concerned that the report fails to come to grips with the threat to
our biodiversity and to our protected areas posed by climate change.
Consideration of biodiversity conservation in the face of the impacts of
climate change has significant implications for the management of our reserves
and protected areas, and we believe managing the resilience of these
systems will emerge as the major conservation issue of coming decades.
Australia is one of the most biodiverse nations on Earth. It
has up to 10% of the world's biodiversity, 80% of which is native to Australia. It
is one of only 17 megadiverse nations in the world, and the only so-called
'developed' nation which is megadiverse. As such we have a special
responsibility to protect this biodiversity.
Protected areas such as
national parks and nature reserves are key elements in our efforts to conserve
and protect biodiversity. The Commonwealth National Reserve System (NRS) is
vital in delivering these protected areas.
The National Strategy for the
Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity recognises that: "...central
to the conservation of Australia's biological diversity is the establishment of
a comprehensive, representative and adequate system of ecologically
viable protected areas integrated with the sympathetic management of all other
areas, including agricultural and other resource production areas".
Protected areas are the most
cost-effective tool for protecting and enhancing biodiversity values and
protecting ecosystem benefits. It is far cheaper to protect existing ecosystems
that to restore degraded systems.
Australia has a number of domestic and international
obligations to protect our biodiversity which we are not meeting. The report of
the Australian National Audit Office on The Conservation and Protection of
National Threatened Species and Ecological Communities (2007), which was
recently tabled in Parliament, is extremely critical of the Commonwealth's
approach and its failure to protect our biodiversity.
The report was highly
critical of the performance of the Department of Environment and Water
Resources (DEW) in administering the Environment Protection Biodiversity
Conservation (EPBC)Act and protecting threatened species. It highlighted the
fact that, although the Commonwealth government committed in 2000 that it would
have recovery plans for 583 threatened species in place by 2004, seven years
later in 2007 only 22% of the plans have been completed.
Funding
Australia is significantly under funding its national reserve
system.
Commonwealth, State and
Territory governments have committed to ensuring that 80% of the number of
extant regional ecosystems in each of the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation
for Australia (IBRA) regions[1]
will be represented in the NRS by 2010-2015. At current rates of progress this
commitment seems unlikely to be realised.
WWF reported in its
submission to the inquiry[2]
that to achieve this target another 22 million hectares needed to be added to
the NRS, with a budget of between $300m to $400m. This would require spending
of $40m/yr for 5 years. Unfortunately investment by the Commonwealth is less
than one tenth of this per year.
Given the current lack of
adequate investment and Australia's poor performance in protecting its biodiversity,
funding for biodiversity protection needs to significantly and urgently
increased to ensure the completion of the national reserve system.
Ensuring the adequacy of the
extent and funding of a comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) system
of protected areas becomes even more pressing in the face of the additional
threats to protected areas posed by climate change.
Other uses of protected areas
The key role of protected areas
is the conservation and protection of Australia's biodiversity. It is absolutely essential that other
uses of these protected areas must be compatible with biodiversity protection
and must not compromise management of that biodiversity.
The Australian Greens are
concerned that the majority report places too much emphasis on other uses of
protected areas, and too little emphasis on their main purpose in biodiversity
conservation. We are deeply concerned to ensure that other uses of protected
areas do not comprise their biodiversity values. In far too many cases, these
protected areas are the few remaining remnants of important biodiversity that
faces a range of threats, including fire, weeds, feral pests, hydrological
changes and climate change. Incompatible uses of protected areas can add to
these threats and undermine their role in the conservation of biodiversity.
The Australian Greens do not
support recommendation 11, which essentially encourages State and Territory
governments to increase the allowable use of protected areas for activities
such as horse riding and 4WDs which we believe are incompatible with protected
areas. The long-term viability of protected areas as places of biodiversity
conservation needs to be paramount in giving consideration to the short-term
benefits to the community of incompatible recreational and other uses.
Where other uses of protected
areas are determined not to compromise their primary role, community uses of
protected areas must be matched by sufficient resources for the additional
demands this places on their management, and ongoing evaluation of the impacts
of these other uses is absolutely crucial.
There is need for better
integration of natural resource management and protected areas under the
National Heritage Trust (NHT). The Gascoyne Murchison region provided a particularly good example of this
during the committee hearings. Representatives of the regional NRM group did
not demonstrate an understanding of the proper role and functions of protected
areas, and their evidence to the committee focused more on discrediting
protected areas as a means of advocating for reducing further areas of
rangelands being included in conservation estate.
Regional Forest Agreements
The Australian Greens are
particularly concerned by the comments made in the majority report concerning
Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs), and consider that these comments represent a
one-sided view of RFAs that is not informed by the evidence.
A recent landmark case
concerning the Wielangta forest in Tasmania clearly demonstrated the inadequacy of the RFA system
in protecting biodiversity. The case challenged the RFA itself, the exemption
for logging under the EPBC Act, and the capacity of the EPBC Act to protect
endangered species.
Forestry operations that are
taken ‘in accordance with’ an RFA are exempt from the need for federal approval
by Section 38 of the EPBC Act. In considering the reasoning behind this
exemption, Justice Marshall found that:
"...the
exemption provided by s 38 provides an alternative method by which the objects
of the EPBC Act may be achieved in a forestry context. Accordingly, it is not
sufficient (for the s 38 exemption to apply) that there is mere lip service
paid to an RFA....Forestry operations will be conducted in accordance with the
RFA if they are conducted in accordance with the requirements set out in the
RFA."[3]
This implies that there is a
clear intention that conservation objectives of the EPBC Act are achieved
through the management provisions of the RFA. However, in considering the
extent to which the Tasmanian RFA was able to meet its obligations to conserve
iconic threatened species, Justice Marshall found that:
"It
is unlikely the State can, by management prescriptions, protect the eagle. As
to the beetle and the parrot, the State must urge Forestry Tasmania
to take a far more protective stance in respect of these species by relevant
management prescriptions before it can be said it will protect them. On the
evidence before the Court, given Forestry Tasmania's satisfaction
with current arrangements, I consider that protection by management
prescriptions in the future is unlikely."[4]
The Judge then went on to say
that:
"An
agreement to ‘protect’ means exactly what it says. It is not an agreement to
attempt to protect, or to consider the possibility of protecting, a threatened
species. It is a word found in a document which provides an alternative method
of delivering the objects of the EPBC Act in a forestry context.
Clause
68 of the Tasmanian RFA says that the protection will be achieved through the
CAR (comprehensive, adequate and representative) reserve system or by applying
relevant management prescriptions. If the CAR reserve system does not deliver
protection for a species, the State should ensure that the relevant management
prescriptions do ... otherwise it is not complying with its obligation to protect
the species. To construe clause 68 otherwise would be to turn it into an empty
promise. [5]
This is a very clear finding
both that this particular RFA was not delivering on its promise to conserve
biodiversity, and also that, to the extent that they allow logging practices
that are incompatible with biodiversity conservation, there are serious
problems with the extent to which the RFA system as a whole can protect biodiversity.
The outcome of the case also
made it clear that the Commonwealth had failed to uphold the Tasmanian RFA or
the EPBC Act through the five-year RFA review process when management
prescriptions and other processes to protect threatened species were examined.
In light of this finding both the use of RFAs and their review by DEW need to
be re-examined, and the comments of the majority report on the performance of
RFAs seem highly inappropriate.
The forest industry opposes
forest ecosystems being added to the conservation estate, claiming that once
forest ecosystems are added to the conservation estate they are not properly
managed and effectively ignored. These claims were not able to be substantiated
in the hearing process during cross-examination. The Australian Greens are
concerned that statements by the National Association of Forest Industries that
they were not able to substantiate, are used in the majority report to
make dubious and highly contested points about degradation of biodiversity of
forests protected in the national parks system
Marine protected areas
Although Australia is
an acknowledged leader in marine conservation, significant progress still needs
to be made for Australia to meet its commitment to the 2012 target for marine
protection under the Convention on Biological Diversity. There are still large
areas of Australia's waters that are either not represented or are
under-represented in protected areas, and many of these do not have adequate
sanctuary zones. There are still a number of states in Australia that
either do not have a system of marine protected areas, or where the existing
system is inadequate.
Evidence to the inquiry
indicated that the incorporation of marine planning into NRM regional group
responsibilities under NHT(2) has not been successful. Regional groups have
neither adequate resources nor the expertise to adequately address regional
marine planning. While increased resources to Regional NRM Groups, as
recommended in the majority report could help them address marine issues, the
Australian Greens believe a better approach would be to establish regional
marine planning groups which have sole responsibility for the marine
environment, including ensuring planning for the provision of marine protected
areas.
The Australia Government has
a key role to play both in leadership and the resourcing of the development of
the marine conservation estate.
Climate change
Climate change will have
significant impacts on Australia's, aquatic, terrestrial and marine biodiversity. The
Australian Greens are concerned that the very significant and growing threat
posed to our system of protected areas by climate change is not adequately
considered in the majority report. This is of great concern for a number of
reasons.
Australia's protected area system faces many serious threats,
most of which are canvassed in the majority report. However, climate change has
the potential to overwhelm these threats, to make some of these threats more
severe particularly fire, but also weeds and pests, and to decrease the ability
of ecological communities conserved by protected areas to be able to cope with
some of these threats.
The likely impacts of
decreased rainfall and increased average temperatures along with increased
climactic variability and extreme climactic events has significant implications
for biodiversity conservation, particularly given the highly fragmented nature
of our current reserve system. The ability of different ecological communities
to either adapt to these changes or to translocate as climactic zones shift is
unknown, as is the likely extent and rapidity of change. While slow and gradual
change may allow some species and communities time to adapt and translocate,
many may not be able to, and it is clear that the possibility of sudden changes
and climactic 'tipping points' pose a substantial threat, particularly to
isolated communities.
These knowledge gaps have
important implications for both the adequacy and the management of our reserves
and protected areas for biodiversity conservation in the face of climate
change. We urgently need to improve our understanding of both the likely future
impacts of climate change and of the resilience of ecological communities to
these types of change. This has recently been highlighted by research by CSIRO
into coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef world heritage area, which
indicated that much more stringent management of adverse impacts (such as
nutrient outflows from coastal rivers) along with more extensive sanctuary
zones was necessary to ensure the reef was resilient enough to be able
to recover from more frequent and severe bleaching events.
It is crucial that we
consider the manner in which the range of threats faced by protected areas
interact. A case in point is given by the recent research by the Bushfire CRC[6]
into the increase in both the frequency and intensity of 'megafires', which has
also become a major area of research in the US. It is clear from this research that these fires can
exceed the resilience of our ecosystems and make it easier for weeds and pests
to invade.
Given all these
considerations, it seems highly unlikely that in our heavily-fragmented
landscape that our current reserve system will be resilient enough to cope with
these impacts. This is why the Australian Greens believe that it is essential
that the NRS be modified and extended to build-in resilience and adaptation.
We believe managing the resilience
of these systems will emerge as the major issue of coming decades, and argue
that a new 'R' has to be added to the CAR system to ensure that it is
comprehensive, adequate representative and resilient in the face of climate
change (CARR).
Northern Australia
Ecosystems in northern Australia are
particularly under-represented in the conservation estate. There has recently
been an increased push to develop the north, including the possibility of
extensive irrigated agriculture being considered by a taskforce as part of the
Prime Minister's $10 billion water plan. Given the growing pressures to develop
its abundant natural resources, there is now a growing urgency to complete the
protected area system of the north. The relatively undeveloped status of the
north together with the unique and often pristine nature of its ecosystems
provides the nation with an opportunity to bring the wealth of experience
gained from the mistakes of the past in the south together to plan for the
long-term sustainable development of the region.
The biggest threat both to
biodiversity conservation in the north and to sustainable development is
the continuation of an ad hoc project-by-project approach. It is
imperative that we identify the biodiversity values of the north, put in place
a CAR reserve system and develop sustainable regional plans, which then enable
informed decisions about individual developments. Such an approach should also
be attractive to industry in that it provides greater certainty. It would also
provide a basis for industry engagement in private-public conservation
partnerships in the context of the surety of their long-term commitment to
sustainable development in the region. This kind of approach requires
significant leadership and resources from the Commonwealth for it to succeed.
Recommendations
The Australian Government
must demonstrate leadership and renewed national commitment to protected areas
through:
- Substantially and urgently
increase funding of the National Reserve System in order to meet existing
targets
- Ensure that the next round of the
National Heritage Trust (NHT 3) better integrates natural resource management
(NRM) and the National reserve System (NRS)
- Increase funding for research into
and management of threats to protected areas (including fire, pests and weeds)
- Give greater priority to
consideration of the impacts of climate change on protected areas and
significantly increase research funding for predicting and assessing the likely
impacts of climate change on the resilience of our ecosystems
- Ensures protected area planning
incorporates the concept of resilience
- Increase funding for marine
protected areas
- Complete the protected area system
in northern Australia as a matter of urgency, and commit resources to
long-term planning for sustainable regional development.
Senator Rachel Siewert
Australian Greens
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