Experts advocate crucial reforms for climate protection
Professor Rosemary Lyster and Associate Professor Ed Couzens have recently submitted a proposal to the Australian government’s Nature Positive Plan urging critical reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBCA). The submission comes at a pivotal moment, emphasising the urgent need for legislative changes to effectively address biodiversity loss and climate change.
The submission outlines the importance of incorporating a greenhouse gas trigger into the EPBCA, a measure aimed at ensuring that the Minister considers the greenhouse gas emissions likely to be emitted from projects assessed under the Act. With climate change looming as one of the most pressing global challenges, the inclusion of such a trigger is seen as paramount in aligning Australia's environmental policies with its international commitments, including the Paris Agreement targets.
Prof Lyster and A/Prof Couzens highlight the imperative of meeting Australia's Paris Agreement targets and emphasise the need for comprehensive legislative instruments to achieve and surpass these goals. The reforms that the submission urges the parliament to endorse not only aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to protect and restore biodiversity, crucial for maintaining ecosystem health and resilience.
The submission also addresses the concept of 'Nature Positive' and its role in guiding environmental law reform. The experts stress the importance of ambitious goals and unified action in combatting biodiversity decline. They caution again the dilution of the ‘Nature Positive’ concept, advocating for a clear, robust and unified approach to conservation planning.
Recommendations from the submission include:
Including a greenhouse trigger in the EPBCA as a Matter of National Environmental Significance.
Clarifying and entrenching the lead role of the ‘Nature Positive’ concept in bringing together all of Australia’s different plans, policies, programs and strategies.
Defining ‘landscape scale’ and commit to increasing connectivity, both physically through avoiding fragmentation of habitats and in spirit through affirming the inextricable natures of cultural and natural heritage and the environments in which they are found.
Indicating that offsetting should best be understood as a temporary convenience, not an entitlement, and that it should soon cease to be an available option.
Entrenching the principle that EIA does not cease at approval, but remains an ongoing requirement through regular monitoring and periodic review.
Please click here to read the submission.
Header Image by Matt Palmer on Unsplash.