From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Protecting Australia's environment is a matter of urgency, or at least that's what the Albaneze government campaigned on two and a half years ago. But now with environmental legislation stalling in the Senate and a series of announcements lacking detail,
there's a sense that the government's priorities have shifted. Today Director of the Australia Institute's Climate and Energy Program, Polly Hemming on the rhetoric of nature positivity and the inaction at hides. It's Tuesday, October eighth. Polly, thank you for joining me. Start. Could you paint a picture of what the Albnezy government has promised when it comes to protecting the environment.
So after the twenty twenty two election, Environment Minister Tanya Plebisek gave an address to the National Press Club where she released the State of the Environment Report, which had been delayed by the previous government.
Today, as part of my statutory duty as Minister, i am publicly releasing the twenty twenty one State of the Environment Report. It's one of the most important documents in environmental science.
And it basically laid bare just how serious the state of Australia's environmental decline is.
We deserve to know that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent. We deserve to know that threatened communities have grown by twenty percent in the last five years, with places literally burned into endangerment by catastrophic fires.
She really indicated that this was going to be a new regime and that the environment would be front and center.
In twenty twenty two, Australians voted for the environment, They voted for action on climate change.
The Albanizi government committed to no new extinctions. They said they would conserve thirty percent of terrestrial and marine environments by twenty thirty. But really the centerpiece and what the minister keeps coming back to, and what she really signaled in her first speech to the Press club, was about fixing broken laws that had been letting everyone down, letting the environment down.
The previous government was told loud and clear that Australian environmental laws were not working and they did nothing to fix that. Almost two years ago, the Morrison government received an official review into the environmental protection and biodiverse the Conservation Act.
These laws that she's referring to, they're always referred to as nature laws. It's a big body of legislation that's about one thousand pages long that is called the Environmental Protection and Bidiversity Conservation Act. And that's what she means by nature laws. And they said they would have kind of draft nature reform laws by the end of twenty twenty three and proposal for an independent Environmental protection Authority. What that translated into, I think in about December twenty
twenty two was the government's Nature Positive Plan. Literally that's the title.
Right, So this term nature positive, where does it come from?
It's been compared to the term net zero. There is a global initiative that came up with an official definition of nature positive.
I'm extremely pleased to share that we've achieved a Montreal moment for nature. De kun mean Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is a major win for our planet and for all of humanity.
And it's meant to be the equivalent of the one point five degrees goal in the Paris Agreement that exists for climate ambition.
And I think the next step for many of our countries, certainly including Miami in Canada is to develop legislation to enshrine the targets that we've agreed to here in Montreal as.
Part of the In December twenty twenty two, this Nature Positive ambition was codified in the Global Biodiversity Framework, which was basically meant to commit the world to halting and reversing biodiversity loss by twenty thirty. So the definition itself, like the technical definition, is halt and reverse nature loss by twenty thirty on a twenty twenty baseline and achieve full recovery by twenty fifty.
Our government is getting on with our goal of delivering a nature positive Australia, anature positive Australia, which means.
The Australian government has adopted the terminology of nature positive. They've also included it in legislation. However, they haven't used that technical global definition that was codified in the Biodiversity Framework, and it just says that regard has to be had about whether there's improvement and there's no timeline. Basically, these things are going to be determined by government agencies. So you can see already there's a lot of wiggle room there.
It's treated a bit like interpretive dance by government and industry. You know, it's more a vibe or a feeling. And as a result, the Australian government's definition of nature positive has I guess been scrutinized and criticized by a number of scientists working in this area.
So it sounds like the phrase nature positive is really being used as branding and has become removed from its actual definition. But what does that mean for the environment, for actual outcomes?
Amid all these terms, amid all the talking, big promises, handringing about the environment, at no point as the Australian government ever said we will stop doing harm. They've never said we will stop subsidizing harm. So it's fine to talk about this idea of nature positive. But I mean, if Kohalas are being killed because their habitat is being destroyed, the way to save them seems pretty obvious. You stop destroying their habitat. Governments have made announcements about not doing
harm before. In fact, labor governments stopped the Franklin River from being dam Labor governments halted mining exploitation in Antarctica. They stopped logging in the Dane Tree, They protected the Tasmanian wilderness. Instead of our leaders saying and this is state and federal leaders instead of them saying we are
going to stop harm from happening. There's this assembly line of constant announcements that are not necessarily bad, but they're largely about making it look like something is happening rather than doing anything meaningful. And the nature positive retric is a central part of that.
Coming up after the break, the push for a federal body to protect the environment and why it's stalled. Federal government has adopted this language around being quote nature positive, and it's going hard. This week it's hosting what's been billed as the first ever global Nature Positive Summit. So what should we expect?
So, I think we've probably established that Australia's environment is in a pretty bad way, according to the government's own State of the Environment would report. I think the term is that it is officially poor and deteriorating. Ecosystems are collapsing for a number of reasons, climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, pollution. We've got one of the worst extinction
rates in the world. So as part of its efforts to address this situation, the Australian government announced last year that Australia would be hosting the world's first global Nature Positive Summit.
Hi, everyone, I'm so excited that Australia is hosting the world's first global Nature Positive Summit.
The summit will bring together leaders and experts to get agreement on the next steps to turbocharge investment and reporting on nature. The Australian Government's doing more than ever.
To mat and this seems like a pretty good thing. You know, when you think about nature or the environment, probably you think a summit like this would feature scientists, cologists, conservationists, policymakers, academics, traditional owners. If you look at the agenda of the summit, it's largely a financial event. And I really want to read you one of the program sessions because it just gets to a really important point I want to make.
So there's a session called Unlocking the Future of Biodiversity Markets, and this session is going to delve into emerging opportunities for the convergence and interoperability of carbon and biodiversity markets. The session will highlight the role of markets as a key mechanism to unlock new sources of finance to achieve local and global nature positive goals, and for the absence of any doubt, I just want to reassure everyone listening
who wonders what any of this means. It doesn't mean anything. This is the worst kind of financial jargon, and it kind of feeds into that really vague terminology around the environment. We're now hearing about nature based solutions, natural capital, green finance, climate finance, and that's kind of what this whole summit is about. It's not about how do we stop doing harm.
It's this idea that while it's very sad that our ecosystem a collapsing, the government can't afford to protect or restore the environment, and so the private sector needs to step in. And what has been proposed and what the basis of this summit is is that environmental markets and financial instruments are the means by which the private sector will want to voluntarily invest in the protection of the environment because there is some kind of profit to be made.
Okay, So presumably the federal government would like to be able to announce that there is some movement in this space, that it has some sort of nature positive news to share. Do you think there will be anything?
So if I take that question literally and we think about the term nature positive, positive implies that things are getting better. Australia's greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, land clearing is increasing, native forest logging is still happening. The more gene skate is on the brink of extinction. So I don't even know if we're heading towards nature neutral here, let alone nature positive. So we're one of the richest
countries in the world. If the government was actually committed to this concept of nature positive, what we would be hearing from Minister Plibisec at the Nature Positive Summit would be first announcements about ending harm. You can't be nature positive until you stop being nature negative, so an internative forest logging, an end to subsidizing fossil fuels and end to new fossil fuel projects, and then you would start on the positive stuff. So there would be announcements about
how to build on that. We're going to give money to farmers to help manage their lands. We're going to give our First Nations people the resources to live on
and care for their land with no strings attached. We're going to dedicate the resources to the protection and restoration on the environment, as if our lives depended on it because our lives do depend on it, and I think if none of that is in her speech, if there are no announcements like that at the Nature Positive Summit, then it's going to be more buzzwords and more delay.
But poly there are laws being put together right now, aren't there. Environmental laws are being debated in the Senate that would put in place a federal body to protect the environment, a federal EPA. So what difference would that make.
I think it's really important to clarify two things that while these environment laws they're kind of framed as this enormous camera of all the things that will protect our ecosystem, they're actually not their development laws, and they're designed to protect the environment in that context only, so the EPA would never be a silver bullet for protecting the environment from all bad things that are happening. So yes, these
things are really important. These laws have a specific purpose, but the way they're sold under the auspice of nature laws is that they are everything that is required in Australia to protect the environment, and only once these laws are reformed can the environment be protected. Until then, the government's hands are basically tied. While the Nature laws are
being delayed. There are over twenty gas and coal projects waiting for approval that can now be approved under the old regime, and Minister Plibisec can say, well, guys, I didn't really want to do this, but I have no choice because we don't have the right nature laws in place. So it really suits a government who is supportive of fossil fuel expansion to blame these broken laws.
Polly, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks Ruby.
Also in the news today, the New South Wales government is investigating a coal mine in great To Sydney after reports the min's operation caused damage to a culturally significant
piece of artwork. Local indigenous leaders have likened the damage to Rio Tinto's blasting of a sacred cave in juk and Gorge, claiming the owners of the coal mine are trying to cover it up in the same way, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says Australia will not apologize for its comments condemning Iran's recent missile attacks on Israel. Last week, Iran launched a direct attack against Israel in response to Israel's dual assassinations of Hamas leader
Ismaalhania and Hesbola's chief, Hassan Nasrala. Defat's statement comes after the Australian ambassador to Iran was summoned to a meeting with the Iranian Foreign Ministry due to what it called Australia's repeated bias commentary on Iran's actions against Israel. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. See tomorrow.
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