RenewEconomy - Michael Mazengarb
A
review of Australia’s primary environmental law has delivered a well
reported and damning assessment of its effectiveness, or lack of it. But
perhaps its greatest failure is that it completely ignores the impacts
of climate change on the Australian environment.
The interim
findings of a review of the federal Environmental Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act), being undertaken by former
ACCC chair and professorial fellow at the Monash Business School Graeme
Samuel, were published on Monday, detailing how Australia’s environment
is on an “unsustainable” trajectory.
The review found Australia’s
environmental laws are ineffective, and “do not enable the Commonwealth
to play its role in protecting and conserving environmental matters that
are important for the nation.”
“It is not fit to address current or future environmental challenges,” the report says.
However,
while the report has flagged a range of possible reforms to Australia’s
environmental laws, it has stopped short of recommending that climate
change considerations are incorporated as part of Australia’s
environmental laws.
Climate change was ignored by the review, and
it appears the EPBC Act will continue to lack any consideration of the
contributions that projects like coal and gas developments can have on
global warming, nor will the environmental laws consider the need to
address climate adaptation measures.
Greenpeace
Australia campaigner Jonathan Moylan told RenewEconomy that climate
change was already causing damage vulnerable part’s of Australia’s
ecosystems and that it was imperative that Australia’s core
environmental law was responsive to the impacts of global warming.
Moylan
added that it was disappointing to see climate change ignored, given
the clear impacts it has had on the Australian environment in recent
times.
“Species extinction, habitat destruction, and the repeat
mass bleachings of the Great Barrier Reef are monuments to the failure
of the Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act,” Moylan
said.
“However, as it stands the government’s response to the
review will fail to stem and indeed exacerbate the tide of threats to
biodiversity, air, water and the climate. It is extraordinary that after
a summer of deadly bushfires we still have no mention of the biggest
threat to biodiversity – climate change – in our main national
environmental law.”
“We
need a new generation of environmental laws that are effective in
protecting nature, governed by an independent, transparent and
accountable regulator and access to justice,” Moylan added.
The
review of the EPBC Act was commissioned by federal environment minister
Sussan Ley, who expressed a desire to see the obligations imposed by the
EPBC Act wound back
in an effort to reduce “green tape”.
In launching the review, Ley indicated the Morrison government wants to see the EPBC Act amended to reduce the
opportunity for environmental groups to use the Act as the basis for legal challenges, with a range of project developers, particularly those in the fossil fuel industries, complaining of “environmental lawfare”.
“This
is our chance to ensure the right protection for our environment while
also unlocking job-creating projects to strengthen our economy and
improve the livelihoods of every-day Australians. We can do both as part
of the Australian Government’s COVID recovery plan,” Ley said.
While
the review did not seek to expand the scope of the environmental
protections provided by the EPBC Act, it found the laws were ineffective
and inefficient, and that they failed to deliver meaningful protections
of Australia’s vulnerable environmental systems.
“Australia’s
natural environment and iconic places are in an overall state of decline
and are under increasing threat. The current environmental trajectory
is unsustainable,” the report says.
“The EPBC Act is ineffective.
It does not enable the Commonwealth to protect and conserve
environmental matters that are important for the nation. It is not fit
to address current or future environmental challenges,” Samuel added.
In
many ways, the findings of the review are perplexing, as they identify
many of the shortcomings of the existing EPBC Act, but mostly offers
recommendations for how the scope of protections established by the act
can be narrowed.
One notable example is the approach the review
has taken to consideration of groundwater protections that apply to
proposals for new coal and gas projects.
There had been calls to
loosen the environmental laws for coal and gas projects, particularly
concerning the “water trigger” which requires the federal government to
consider the impacts of coal and gas projects on water resources before
awarding approval for a project.
The review has resisted the calls
to abolish the “water trigger” altogether, but said that its
application should be limited to situations where impacts of coal and
gas projects on water resources present a risk to threatened species,
world heritage sites and wetlands of international significance, or
where there are issues that cross state borders.
The regulation of more general impacts on water resources should be handed back to state governments, the review recommended.
Such
suggestions have been deeply criticised by environmental groups, which
say state governments lack the ability to consider environmental issues
of national concern.
“The review outlines the catastrophic impact
of twenty years of failure in Australia’s environment laws, impacts that
have been in plain sight throughout the operation of the EPBC Act. This
is a law that was introduced by a Coalition Government and administered
by Coalition governments for 14 of those 20 years,” The Wilderness
Society’s Suzanne Milthorpe said
“Now this Coalition Government is
asking us to trust them on immediately handing environmental safeguards
to the states while promising at some time in the future to make
changes of an ill-defined nature to improve environmental standards.”
The EPBC review will continue to receive submissions on the interim findings and is expected to be delivered in October.
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