The conservative government of Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has stunned stunned scientists, environmental groups, climate change policy experts by going against a campaign promise and opening up millions of hectares of bushland to be clear-felled for farming purposes.
The government this week passed the Vegetation Management Framework Amendment Bill, which effectively removes protection of two million hectares of mature and recovering bushland.
The government has hailed it as a victory for the farming industry, but scientists and environmentalists said the impact could be catastrophic. “These changes will lead to an increased extinction risk for wildlife, cause soil erosion, water pollution and release millions of tonnes of CO2,” WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O’Gorman said.
Climate change policy experts suggested that if followed through the decision could outweigh any gains contemplated under the Federal Coalition’s Direct Action policy, which relies heavily on tree planting.
“If this goes ahead on a large scale, Direct Action will be academic,” said one. “The simple equation is that if you cut down half the trees in Queensland, we’re stuffed.”
The “at-risk” bushland is estimated to hold about 184 million tonnes of C02- more than Australia’s bipartisan 5 per cent emissions reduction target out to 2020. The Howard government then refused to ratify it. But it’s worth noting that a Labor government had given Howard a big helping help in Kyoto, but a conservative government has delivered a massive and expensive headache to Abbott and his team.
There is a certain amount of irony in the decision because it was the stopping of rampant clear-felling in Queensland that allowed Australia to wrangle a soft target in the original negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol.
That so-called Australia clause allowed Australia to claim credit for not cutting down so many trees. It meant that Australia was allowed to lift its emissions under the first stage of the Kyoto Treaty, rather than reduce them.
This graph above indicates the reduction in land clearing in Queensland (represented in dark green) since 1990 – the baseline for Australia’s emissions calculations. The level of clearing were on par with those of the Amazon basin before 2002, even after the initial reductions. But clearing was reduced by further bans on broad-scale clearing in 2006, and the 2009 expansion of clearing restrictions to previously cleared and now regrowing bushland with high conservation value.
Those protections are now being described by the Newman government as a “sorry chapter” in public policy. The Minister for Natural Resources and Mines Andrew Cripps said the decision would allow landholders to “get on with the job of providing food and fibre for Queenslanders.”
Of further concern to environmentalists is that many parts of this clearing could be done without any government intervention – state of Commonwealth. “Landholders will save time and money with the introduction of self-assessable codes for routine vegetation management activities,” Cripps said.
The new law, says WWF, also allows landholders to make a defence of “mistaken belief.” Illegal and “unexplained” clearing currently accounts for 12.5 per cent of all clearing in the state.
Newman had promised before his election that he was “committed to retain the current level of statutory vegetation protection”, but environmentalists believe he has been simply rail-roaded by the extreme right of the Nationals.
Run-of from farmland is one of the major contributors to damage to the Great Barrier Reef, and there is concern that these laws remove protection of key riverine environments. WWF also says that homes for at least 163 species of endangered and vulnerable native plants and animals – including koalas, wallabies, cockatoos, cassowaries and quolls were now at risk.
