The Guardian
- Adam Morton
|
Lisa Cox
With the Morrison government looking increasingly isolated on climate policy
and under pressure to fix conservation laws, will 2021 bring change?
|
Forest burned by bushfire in Wingello. Major government reports
have outlined the extent to which Australia’s unique environment
was in decline long before the fires hit.
Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
|
The trainwreck of 2020 was not limited to a global community hit by the
worst pandemic in a century. The Australian environment fared no better.
The year started amid the continent’s most widespread bushfires on record. As
the Guardian revealed, an estimated 3bn animals were killed or affected.
Subsequent major government reports outlined the extent to which the country’s
unique environment was in decline long before the fires hit.
The damage from the fires could not be divorced from the climate crisis, which
also triggered a third mass bleaching event on the
Great Barrier Reef
in five years.
But political debate on these pressing environmental issues –
specifically, the need to transform conservation laws or introduce a climate
plan to live up to the Paris climate agreement – remained stuck as the
Morrison government resisted meaningful action on both fronts.
Will 2021 bring a change? Adam Morton and Lisa Cox look at some of the major
climate and environmental questions the country will face this year.
Rising pressure to act on climate
Scott Morrison ended 2020 notably isolated on climate change,
having been embarrassed
when the British and French governments rejected his push to be given a
speaking slot at a global leaders’ climate ambition summit.
The prime minister appeared surprised by the snub, which left him in climate
pariah territory with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Russia.
If he
was surprised, he shouldn’t have been: the invitation to the summit
made clear only leaders offering substantial new commitments
would be given a slot, and Morrison had merely flagged that Australia may not
follow through on a widely condemned plan to use a carbon accounting sleight
of hand to meet national emissions targets.
A major political and diplomatic question will be how the government responds
to what is certain to be escalating pressure. The US will be key. The Biden
administration has no shortage of problems needing its attention, but has made
clear climate is near the top of its priorities.
The new president has
pledged
to use “every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world”
to do more. His climate envoy, John Kerry, set out the scale of the challenge
for business leaders at a G20 forum, including that
coal needed to be phased out five times faster
than it is now.
More than 120 countries, including the major powers of America, Asia and Europe, have mid-century
net zero emissions or carbon neutrality goals, but Morrison – despite calls
and rising action from business leaders, investors and state governments –
continues to resist, and deny that Australia is out of step.
The expectation is
this can only last so long, but the message from the incoming US leadership and the climate ambition
summit is that moving on the 2050 target alone will not be enough.
The focus ahead of the November climate conference in Glasgow will
increasingly be on what Australia – with
no meaningful policies
to reduce emissions from transport or major industry and which is still
promising a
“gas-led recovery”
and
approving new coal projects
– will do
before 2030
to live up to the commitment it made in Paris five years ago.
Relying on the states to increase support for renewable energy,
as many did last year, will not be enough.
Fixing failing environmental protection
In the wake of the fires, last year’s official assessment of the state of
Australia’s natural environment by Graeme Samuel, the former competition
watchdog chief, could hardly have been more dire.
An interim report in July found Australia’s environment was in
an unsustainable state of decline, and that the national conservation laws – the Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act – were ineffective and needed substantial
change.
Meanwhile, the auditor general’s office found the government and federal
environment department
were failing in their duty to protect nature.
Conservation groups were not surprised on either front. Australia has the
world’s highest rate of mammal extinction due to what is widely agreed to be
the failure of successive governments to protect the wildlife for which the
country is renowned.
Funding for environment programs was cut by more than a
third after the Coalition was elected in 2013. Some was restored last year,
much of it directed to “congestion busting” – increasing the pace at which
industry and business development proposals were assessed.
The government’s response was to try and fail to ram through legislation to
transfer responsibility for approving major developments that affect the
environment to the states and territories, barely giving lip service to the
need to strengthen environmental protection.
It is still yet to release Samuel’s final report, which it has been sitting on
since October. That will have to change when parliament returns next month if
the government lives up to its legislative requirements. It is also expected
to release the national environmental standards that Samuel said were needed
to accompany the devolution in assessment powers to the states.
Several questions will follow. Will the standards be designed to not just
maintain but improve the state of the Australian environment? Will they be
specific enough that they can be meaningfully and legally tested?
And, given the government has rejected the push for an independent environment
regulator, can the public be confident the new standards will be enforced?
Attention will also turn to whether the Senate crossbenchers will continue to
oppose the government’s legislation if there are not steps to improve the
monitoring and health of the country’s growing list of threatened species – at
least 170 of which still have no plan for their recovery.
Will the Great Barrier Reef bleach again?
Australia’s most globally recognisable natural landmark
suffered through its third major coral bleaching event
since 2016 last year. Most of the damage was near the southern end around
Mackay – an area that was mostly left untouched in 2016 and 2017. It means
reefs along the full length of the 2,300km wonder have been severely affected
over the past five years.
There are still healthy and vibrant areas and some damaged coral will recover,
but a significant amount of shallow water coral died.
As recently as a few weeks ago, there were concerns this summer might be a
fourth year of severe bleaching out of six. But Prof Terry Hughes, from James
Cook University, says the risk has reduced since Christmas thanks to cooler,
cloudier and wetter weather, in part due to the cooling La Nina over the
Pacific.
An
assessment
by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests the risk of
bleaching is greatest north of Cairns, and a warmer than expected February
could still change projections, but Hughes says the chance of a non-bleaching
year is “pretty good”.
It is a less positive story in the west. The CSIRO has forecast a
marine heatwave for the Western Australian coastline early this year, with temperatures expected to hit the highest level in a decade.
The Ningaloo Coast and Shark Bay, both world heritage listed areas, are
threatened by warming ocean temperatures that could affect ecosystems and
fisheries that have not recovered since a marine heatwave in 2011.
|
A koala affected by 2019-20 bushfires is released back into native
bushland following treatment at the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park.
Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images
|
Saving the Koala
The capriciousness of New South Wales politics was on full display last year
when the deputy premier, John Barilaro, threatened, but failed to resign
ostensibly over a policy designed to protect koalas, just months after the iconic species was devastated by the summer
bushfires.
A compromise deal between the governing Liberal and National parties over the
koala state environmental planning policy
failed. Instead, NSW reverted to an old koala policy, from 1995, with a promise to
develop a new one this year.
It meant that, despite a state inquiry finding the species was on track for
extinction in NSW by 2050, nothing new has been done to improve its
protection.
Whether that can be addressed will be a test for both state and federal
governments. It is linked to the broader issue of ongoing habitat destruction,
one of the main threats to not just the koala, but Australian wildlife
generally.
Sussan Ley, the federal environment minister, has set an October deadline for
the threatened species scientific committee to assess whether east coast koala
populations have been affected enough to warrant a national endangered listing
– a step that should trigger greater protection.
Meanwhile, the government continues to sanction clearing of the forests that
koalas rely on. Late last year Ley approved a
quarry
proposal that would clear 50 hectares of koala habitat near Port Stephens in
NSW.
It is a similar story at state level. The NSW environment minister, Matt Kean,
has set a target to double the state’s koala population by 2050, but
forestry
operations and
mining
proposals in koala and other threatened species’ habitat continue, and the
state government has continued to
weaken
land-clearing laws.
Stalling on electric vehicles
Analysts say the shift to EVs is inevitable, with new models forecast to match
fossil fuel vehicles on price by as early as 2025, but Australia trails other
countries in their uptake, with fewer affordable models available.
A long-delayed Morrison government electric vehicle policy – now rebadged as a
broader “future fuels” strategy – was due late last year, but has yet to be
released. A
leaked draft
suggests it will not include direct incentives for consumers to switch to
battery-powered cars.
Other countries have seen a climate and economic advantage in moving now.
Britain and Japan – major countries that, like Australia, use right-hand-side
drive cars – announced late last year they would ban the sale of new petrol
cars by 2030 and 2035 respectively and introduce incentives to drive the
change.
Australia
appears headed in the other direction
with no significant incentives, and with some states planning to introduce
road-user charges on EVs and hybrids. Victoria and South Australia are heading
down this path, and NSW is considering it.
Academic analysis has suggested this
would further deter uptake
of the technology unless offset by other support. Meanwhile, national
transport emissions continue to rise.
The forest wars (redux)
Court decisions loom large over native forest logging in two Australian states
this year, and an industry that spent much of last year under siege.
A judgment is due next month in a case brought by the Bob Brown Foundation
against Tasmania’s state-owned forestry agency, arguing its native forest
logging is inconsistent with federal laws. Conservationists argue the forest
agreement in the state is not valid as it lacks a legally enforceable
requirement that the state protect threatened species.
It follows a similar case in Victoria last year, when a federal court judgment
banned logging in 67 coupes in Victoria’s central highlands on the basis that
the state’s agency, VicForests, had breached a regional forestry agreement
between the state government and Canberra.
In basic terms, the ruling challenged a controversial effective exemption from
environmental laws granted to logging under the agreement. The agency is
appealing.
Major retailers are increasingly refusing to sell paper logged by agencies
without forest stewardship council, or FSC, certification - and
both the Tasmanian and the Victorian agencies have failed
to get it.
It means the court decisions could have significant ramifications for plans to
continue native forest logging at current levels until 2030, in Victoria’s
case, or indefinitely in Tasmania. And they could have major ramifications for
threatened species protection.
Links
