Following the publication of the UN’s shocking report, we ask three experts to review and rank commitments from the Coalition, Labor and the Greens
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| Fires burn through ancient old-growth forests – home to many threatened animal species – in Tasmania in January. Experts say more needs to be done to protect old-growth forests from logging and climate change. Photograph: Par Avion Tasmania |
With the election less than two weeks away, Guardian Australia asked the Coalition, Labor and the Greens to explain how they planned to respond to the crisis. Three of the country’s leading scientists assessed what the parties had to say.
The Coalition
- Policies include: review but keep existing environment laws; a $100m environment restoration fund to clean up coasts and waterways, protect threatened species and reduce waste; $189m over four years for the “direct action” climate solutions fund, in part for revegetation of degraded land.
- The environment minister, Melissa Price, says: “The Coalition is committed to meeting its international emissions targets and to investing in the protection of our native species and their habitats. We are investing billions of dollars to deliver a cleaner environment, underlining the critical role of a strong economy in supporting positive environmental outcomes.”
- Richard Kingsford, director of the UNSW Centre of Ecosystem Science: “It’s not adequate. We don’t know anything about what they’re doing about the burgeoning list of threatened species. We have very little commitment from them on long-term monitoring and state-of-the-environment reporting. There’s nothing in there about expanding our protected areas network. There is nothing there on how we can deal with the threats to biodiversity and they have plans that will exacerbate the threats to biodiversity. The other thing is there is no investment in monitoring. You can’t manage the environment when you don’t know what is there, or how it is faring. There is some progress towards emissions targets but we’re not stopping emissions under current policy and that’s bad for biodiversity.”
- Euan Ritchie, Deakin University wildlife ecology expert: “The overall impression is that the Liberal policies are less strategic, smaller in scope and less focused than the other parties, with no explicit, cohesive plan dealing with the root causes. The $100m for the environmental restoration fund next year is definitely not enough money and is about reducing the negative impact of problems as opposed to stopping the problems in the first place, which we know would be cheaper and more effective. The $10m for predator-free enclosures to allow reintroduction of threatened species would be a welcome step as part of a comprehensive species conservation strategy. However, on its own, it won’t be effective … It will help some species, but it will miss many others and it will not stop more species from becoming threatened or extinct.”
- Philip Gibbons, ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society: “The Liberals have got a pretty poor track record in this area. Environmental funding has declined by about 40% since they came into power in 2013, and there is no recognition that any of the pressures that have been identified by the UN are a real issue. They’ve got no proposal for legislative form. They haven’t mentioned in any of their campaign material that they consider land-clearing a problem. In fact, it’s the opposite – they talk in terms of red tape. And they say expenditure on the environment is only made possible because of economic growth, whereas the [UN assessment] says the problems with the environment are due to economic growth.”
Labor
- Policies include: a new federal environment act; a science-based national environment protection authority; reversing the Coalition’s reduction of marine protected areas; a $100m native species protection fund; $200m over five years to double indigenous rangers; $200m for urban rivers and corridors.
- Labor’s environment spokesman, Tony Burke, says: “It is now clear we are on the pathway to a million extinctions, we are potentially facing the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet [and] Australia remains the extinction capital of the world. This reinforces the need for Labor’s comprehensive policy agenda to fight extinction.”
- Kingsford: “These are steps in the right direction, but I think we haven’t heard enough about the necessary changes in environmental legislation that Labor plans. We’re not sure how strong a piece of legislation it will be. Will it be able to pick up on cumulative developments? How much national oversight will there be on nationally and internationally important issues? These important issues should not be left to the states. Their policies talk about threatened species, but that is only a subset of biodiversity. There’s not much focus on the rest of biodiversity to prevent it becoming threatened. The science has moved on to ecosystems now – we need to move on to a larger scale because we’re losing that battle on species. [But] on climate change, they should be applauded for really grappling with this. A 45% emissions reduction target seems like real commitment, as is their commitment on renewables.”
- Ritchie: “Their intent is positive; however, they don’t cover all the issues that matter and the dollar values are just not enough to result in real change. It’s good to see mention of “increasing the pace” at which threatened species recovery plans are put in place and acted upon. We have an evidence base that shows that recovery plans, when implemented, help to prevent extinction. However, the scale of investment is still too small for what we need. Spending 2% of GDP on the environment would put us in the top half of OECD countries for environment investment, which is appropriate for a country with our wealth of biodiversity and ecosystems. On environmental law reform, this is all good intent, but the devil will be in the detail and it will require state and territory cooperation, which may be hard to negotiate. A new EPA is a good idea if it’s properly resourced and given autonomy, independence and real teeth to hold governments, organisations and individuals accountable.”
- Gibbons: “Labor demonstrate a stronger commitment to the environment than the Liberal party, but they still skirt around some of the key drivers of biodiversity loss identified by the UN. They have at least committed to look at our rate of land-clearing and it’s positive that they are looking at new environment laws and particularly a new EPA. But changing laws alone is not going to solve the problem, you have to look at the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. Agriculture is the underlying driver of land-clearing in Australia and all parties have a policy of trying to expand our agricultural exports. We really need to decouple that growth from land-clearing and its impact on biodiversity.”
The Greens
- Policies include: new environmental laws; a federal environmental protection authority independent of politicians; a $2bn nature fund; expanded science-based network of marine parks; ending native forest logging.
- The environment spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, says: “Our planet is in crisis, our environment is in collapse and politicians have sat on their hands for too long and done nothing … The Greens are offering voters a real investment in protecting nature, and stronger environmental laws to help avert this crisis.”
- Kingsford: “I think they’ve got the most comprehensive understanding of the level of threat and the state of play than the other parties, but it lacks the details to really see how it could be implemented. All the parties need to do better on linking the environment with the economy, which has been missing a lot. The other issue is we’re not addressing the threats enough. We’re essentially treating the symptoms such as threatened species and not the cause of how we are driving biodiversity loss.”
- Ritchie: “The Greens policies appear the most advanced and, if adopted, most likely to result in positive environmental outcomes. Their policies about new environmental laws are based on expert advice. They also propose a “nature fund” to tackle invasive species, habitat destruction and climate change. These are the three biggest threatening processes for Australia’s biodiversity, and tackling these threats is likely to have widespread positive impacts for the Australian environment. Two billion dollars won’t be enough, but it’s a great start.”
- Gibbons: “The Greens overall probably have a great commitment to the environment, which probably isn’t that surprising, but they can be a bit more ideological about it because they know they are not going to be in government. They have a similar policy to Labor in having an overhaul of environment laws and an EPA. They don’t really talk about the key drivers of biodiversity loss in their policy, such as agricultural production and urban growth, but it is good they are strongly committed to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and they have the strongest climate change policy of any of the parties.”
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