The Queensland government has joined with the Federal government in another attempt to convince the World Heritage committee not to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”, signing off on a report on their progress.
In September last year it was revealed that the federal government spent more than $500,000 sending Environment Minister Greg Hunt and senior public servants on a flurry of overseas lobbying trips to avoid an embarrassing “in danger” listing for the Great Barrier Reef, resulting in a decision in May to put it on the “watch list” for now.
The government’s dedicated taskforce travelled to most of the 21 countries on the committee, plus other nations. The environment department also has 4.8 full-time equivalent staff to manage the relationship with the World Heritage Committee, costing $734,000 in 2014-15.
At the time, conservationists questioned why resources are being poured into lobbying rather than better addressing problems facing the reef, such as pollution, coastal development and climate change.
One of the promises made to avoid the ‘in danger’ classification was that Queensland would restore the land clearing laws that Campbell Newman “took an axe to.”
After laws were relaxed under the then LNP state government in 2013, land-clearing rates tripled, undermining efforts to conserve wildlife and reduce carbon emissions.
However, the legislation to tighten the laws was defeated last week. Apparently some landholders are concerned about the prospect of re-tightened regulations and their possible impact on property values and business certainty.
To pass the law, the Queensland Government needed the support of the crossbenchers, and after two nights of debate, Independent MP Billy Gordon unexpectedly sided with the Katter Party and the LNP to vote down the legislation.
Within ten years of what looked like the end of broad-scale land clearing in Australia, most state vegetation laws across the country have been relaxed.
In Queensland, 296,000 hectares of bushland was cleared in 2013-14 – three times as much as in 2008-09 – mainly for conversion to pastures. These losses do not include the well-publicised clearing permitted by the government of nearly 900 square kilometres at two properties, Olive Vale and Strathmore, which commenced in 2015.
Government data show that clearing in catchments that drain onto the Great Barrier Reef increased dramatically, and constituted 35% of total clearing across Queensland in 2013-14. The loss of native vegetation cover in such regions is one of the major drivers of the deteriorating water quality in the reef’s lagoon, which threatens seagrass, coral reefs, and other marine ecosystems.
The increases in land clearing are across the board. They include losses of over 100,000 hectares of old-growth habitats, as well as the destruction of “high-value regrowth” – the advanced regeneration of endangered ecosystems.
These ecosystems have already been reduced to less than 10% of their original extent, and their recovery relies on allowing this regrowth to mature.
The inconsistency between the federal government’s Direct Action policy and Save the Reef message and the relaxation of state restrictions on vegetation and approvals for coal mining and port expansion indicates they have no coherent plan, with one hand fighting against the other.
Take the federal government’s 20 million trees program. At a cost of A$50 million, it aims to replace 20 million trees by 2020 to redress some of the damage from past land clearing.
Yet just one year of increased land clearing in Queensland has already removed many more trees than will be painstakingly planted during the entire program.
The Australian government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) is paying billions of dollars to reduce carbon emissions from industry. But the carbon released from Queensland’s land clearing in 2012-2014 alone is estimated at 63 million tonnes, far more than was purchased under the first round of the ERF (at a cost to taxpayers of A$660 million).
Unless they can be made to stop the lobbying and start real action through regulation, greed will kill the golden goose and Queensland, and the world, will be the poorer for it.
