The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) has been struggling to cover demand for its services since 2013 when the Federal Government ended its funding. The states have also cut funding so they have had to depend increasingly on donations and pro bono services.

There was good news in the October Budget where this funding has been restored with $9.8 million over four years going to the EDO and Environmental Justice Australia plus a commitment for continuing funding of $2.6 million pa after that.

NSW has two million hectares of public native forests along the coast. They are home to diverse wildlife and myriad forest ecosystems. Currently the primary use of these forests is timber production. Native forest logging takes place under regional forest agreements that are supposed to provide for ‘sustainable forest management’. Yet there are numerous examples of scarce hollow bearing trees and trees that provide koala habitat being felled. Forestry Corporation has been fined by the EPA multiple times for breaching forestry rules.

The loss of large areas of forest during the Black Summer bushfires has made the habitat provided by these forests all the more critical. Several species have been added to the threatened list since the fires, such as the koala, gang-gang cockatoo and greater glider.

These forests are also important for filtering water, slowing floodwater flows and storage of carbon. Forests can also provide opportunities for tourism and recreation both active and passive, such as bike riding, sightseeing and bushwalking.

Petition signed by over 21,000

In an attempt to end native forest logging a petition was launched by NSW Young Greens Indigenous Officer Takesa Frank and the Nature Conservation Council. It received more than 21,000 signatures which has forced parliament to respond.

The petition called for the NSW government to:

• develop a plan to transition native forest logging to 100% sustainable plantation forestry by 2024
• in the interim place a moratorium on logging until the regulatory framework is applied in line with the Natural Resources Commission recommendations
• immediately place high conservation value forests into the National Park estate
• immediately ban the use of native forest materials as biomass

The responsible Minister for Agriculture, the Hon Dugald Saunders, was dismissive. He claimed that the views of the 21,000 people who signed the petition are insignificant.

Some of the government’s arguments made in their response can be refuted, for example:

1. Cutting down native forests is environmentally sustainable
   Response: Current practices are destroying biodiversity such as loss of koala habitat and increasing the number of threatened species.

2. Only a minority of people care about the issue
   Response: A huge survey commissioned by the forestry industry in 2016 found that 70% of people in cities and 65% in regional areas are against native forest logging.

3. Native forest logging is financially viable
   Response: This industry is barely making a profit.

4. Logging native forests will help overcome the shortage of construction timber
   Response: The timber used by the construction industry is almost exclusively plantation pine. Meanwhile our native forests are chipped and shipped overseas for paper products.

5. It is better to use local timbers than those from overseas
   Response: Illegally logged timber is already banned from being imported to Australia, and many imported products meet the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, a standard that NSW Forestry Corporation does not meet, because of its unacceptable impacts on biodiversity.

6. Logging native forests employs 20,000 people
   Response: The number of jobs is a twentieth of the total the minister claims, at 1,000 jobs across the whole of NSW. There are 20,000 jobs in the sustainable plantation industry

Cost-benefit analysis of the industry In the South Coast

A study by Frontier Economics found that there is economic benefit from ceasing native forest harvesting in the Southern and Eden forest regions of NSW. The economic analysis measures the stream of costs and benefits over a 30 year period to 2051. The net result was a gain of $62 million if the state-owned native forests are no longer harvested.

The report took a simplified approach by restricting the analysis to compare the existing operations with the creation of a mountain bike park. This covered:

• costs: loss of value of harvested wood and construction and maintenance of mountain bike recreation area
• benefits: avoided costs of harvesting wood and processing, value of carbon credits, economic value of recreation

More complex factors were not included such as the value of wildlife saved and visitor tourism apart from mountain biking.

In conclusion, Frontier Economics found that Forestry Corporation NSW’s hardwood business made a normalised profit of $0.4 million in the financial year 2020, and an average normalised profit of $2.3 million over the five years to 2020. This is a very small profit and significantly smaller than the $64 million five year average over the same period earned by their softwood plantation business.

This poor return should be taken in context with the economic benefit from ceasing native forest harvesting and obtaining environmental and recreational services from the forest. This, along with the environmental concerns, has led Victoria and WA to decide to cease logging their native forests and to provide significant financial support to the industry to transition to a greater focus on plantation operations and other sectors of the economy. Now it’s time for NSW to also make the commitment.

Private land forestry

Currently, logging operations on private property in many areas have dual oversight from both the state government and local councils. Local councils have the ability to limit and control logging operations within their region. Just this month the National Party tried to revive the ‘koala wars’ by introducing a bill before the NSW parliament to remove this control. Fortunately several Liberal MPs threatened to vote against the bill and it has been withdrawn.

There is a plethora of international agreements that relate to the protection of the Earth’s biodiversity. The overarching convention is the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that was signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Examples of other agreements are the Ramsar Convention that aims to protect internationally significant wetlands and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). They don’t all work in isolation thank goodness! There is a Liaison Group of the Biodiversity-related Conventions.

The most recent major strategic plan to address the sad state of global biodiversity was the agreement to adopt the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2010–20 period. The meeting was held in Aichi Prefecture in Japan; hence the name.

However, according to an assessment by the United Nations, none of the 2020 Aichi targets were met. At the moment, committing to the Aichi targets is voluntary and results from each party are self-reported to the CBD. Because these agreements are non-binding, the path to translating and implementing targets into national legislation is unclear.

One major reason for the lack of progress has been the continuation of subsidies and other incentives potentially harmful to biodiversity. An estimated $500 billion in government subsidies potentially cause environmental harm, according to the UN report.

Progress in establishing protected areas

One area of progress is the target relating to the establishment of protected areas. The objective was that by 2020, at least 17% of terrestrial and inland water, and 10% of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved. This target has been nearly met with 15% of land and 7% of oceans being protected by 2020.

What happens post 2020?

The countries that signed the CBD have their own COPs (Conference of the Parties) just like the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 15^th meeting is a whole series of meetings with the first held in 2021 to develop a strategic plan post 2020. This meeting was hosted by China from the city of Kunming. Parties to the CBD adopted the Kunming Declaration to keep the political momentum of the negotiations delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Kunming Declaration recognised that progress has been made in the last decade, under the 2011–20 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity but expressed grave concern that such progress has been insufficient to achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. It acknowledges that:

the unprecedented and interrelated crises of biodiversity loss, climate change, land degradation and desertification, ocean degradation, and pollution, and increasing risks to human health and food security, pose an existential threat to our society, our culture, our prosperity and our planet.

The declaration includes a long list of principles that are being developed into a Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework for actions. The framework is built around the recognition that urgent policy action is required to turn around the trend of biodiversity loss. The objective is that the trend should stabilise in the next 10 years (by 2030) and allow for the recovery of natural ecosystems in the following 20 years. The ultimate goal is to achieve the Convention’s vision of ‘living in harmony with nature by 2050’.

The 30 × 30 pledge

The Declaration notes a first step, the pledge by many countries to protect and conserve 30% of land and sea areas through well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures by 2030. This known as the 30 × 30 pledge.

More than 100 countries have pledged to adopt this goal including the USA. Joe Biden announced his commitment a week after he became president.

There are lots of other goals in the Kunming Declaration. The details of measures to achieve these goals will be hammered out at COP15 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montréal, Canada, from 5–17 December 2022.

Australia’s response

The Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, in releasing the 2021 State of the Environment Report, announced that Australia will aim to exceed the 30 × 30 agreement. This will require additional 50 million hectares of landscape to be protected. This does not need all to be in national parks.

Under the government’s plan 20 places and 110 species will become the focus of conservation efforts selected based on several factors including their uniqueness and risk of extinction. The areas include the forests of Far North Queensland, Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory and Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

This announcement raises many questions. As the Chief Conservation Officer of the World Wildlife Fund points out, Australia has more than 1,900 listed threatened species. This plan picks 110 winners. It’s unclear how it will help our other ‘non priority’ threatened species such as our endangered greater glider.

Given the powers that the states have over management of protected areas and land clearing, how will the selection of the additional protected areas be determined? Can it be on a bioregional basis that ignores state boundaries. How will the ocean areas be defined – as sanctuary zones?

An article on the NPA NSW website explains the task at hand. The WWF commissioned protected areas spatial analyst Dr Martin Taylor to estimate what it would take to create a truly ecologically representative network of protected and conserved areas as part of the 30% target.

Protected land objectives required for NSW

In NSW, 7.6 million hectares of land occurs in the National Reserve System, equivalent to just 9.6% of the total land area. Moreover, more than 60% of ecosystems have less than 15% of their area protected.

Achieving significant progress towards protecting 30% of NSW would require not just a significant expansion of legal protection, but also revegetation and rewilding of millions of hectares of long-cleared lands in the sheep and wheat belt. This would require significant investment from state and federal governments as well as corporate and philanthropic support through natural capital markets. In some cases creation of new protected areas may be contested by some locals. It is also becoming less realistic as global heating and extreme weather events worsen.

Completing the transition out of native forest logging could secure an additional two million hectares of public native forests. Transfer of Crown lands, including large areas of travelling stock routes with high conservation values, to NPWS or Indigenous communities for conservation management, would need to be a major contributor to the 30% target. Supporting First Nations to voluntarily declare additional Indigenous Protected Areas could play a key role. Purchases of large pastoral stations in the Western Division could provide land justice for Indigenous communities through handback or co-management, and diversify rural economies as global heating increasingly makes some grazing and farming enterprises sub-economic.

The Biodiversity Conservation Trust’s capacity to support private landholders to establish conservation agreements would need to be greatly expanded – without relying upon perverse offsets – including through innovative partnerships that also deliver carbon outcomes with social, cultural and economic co-benefits.

Australian cities are good at growing – for decades their states have relied on it. The need to house more people is used to justify expansion out and up, but it is the rates, taxes and duties that flow from land transfers and construction that drive the endless development of Melbourne and Sydney in particular. Property development is the single largest contributor to Victorian and New South Wales government revenues.

For example, the City of Melbourne’s draft spatial plan proposes new suburbs to the west and north. It’s continuing on a course mapped out in the post-recession 1990s, when Australian governments focused on building on or digging up our great expanses. The plan neither questions the rationale for growth nor, apparently, the deeper effects of the pandemic.

The city council is understandably anxious to attract people back to the centre. The city plan presumes a return to Australia’s high population growth of the 2000s. Expectations of a renewed influx of students, workers and tourists from overseas are based more on hope, however, than reason.

The drivers of population growth are more uncertain and we can no longer depend on global mobility at pre-pandemic levels. Birth rates are falling across the developed world, online international education is improving, and research suggests pandemics will persist while cities encroach on the habitats of so many other species.

Meanwhile, the towers thrown up in the heady years of growth are half-empty and cracking, poorly ventilated, reliant on central air conditioning and not built for more extreme weather or low energy consumption. Melbourne and Sydney’s showcase regeneration projects at Docklands and Barangaroo are more dismal and deserted than ever.

Better needn’t mean bigger

Now is not the time for anyone to announce that their city will become “bigger and better”. Cities don’t have to get bigger to evolve, and sooner or later all will have to reckon with the concept of degrowth.

Australia must become less reliant on imports of skilled workers, students, tourists and materials. We can make better use of local resources and produce much more of what we need here.

Australian cities have very good bones. They have amazing cultural scenes. Their biomedical capabilities are among the world’s best. Our education sector remains eminently exportable online and via existing overseas campuses. The manufacturing sector still has a base to build on and provide many more of the products Australians need. And our renewable energy capacity is unlimited.

We can support our local hospitality and cultural venues better, and increase intercity and interstate patronage. We can invest in research and development and maintain wealth through innovation and production, rather than the eternal consumption of land.

Rethink what we build and why

Adapting to global environmental conditions means rethinking not just what and how we build, but why. Before designating land for yet more housing estates, for example, let’s consider that a million homes – 10% of Australia’s housing stock – were empty on census night last year. Nearly 600,000 were in Victoria and New South Wales.

Think tank Prosper Australia has for years demonstrated shocking numbers of vacant dwellings unavailable for rent. A hefty vacancy tax – much greater than the Victorian rate of 1% of property value, while NSW still has none for Australian owners – would lead to many more homes being released onto the market.

The property developers’ argument that we have to build more because that’s the only way to make housing more affordable has been repeatedly refuted by years of careful research.

Tens of thousands of upmarket dwellings have been added to the inner cities of Melbourne and Sydney over the past 20 years, with no reduction in prices across the board. While upmarket unit prices might drop a little when vacancy rates in that submarket increase, their developers are keenly alert to any dip in profits. At the slightest hint of surplus they just stop building.

If housing affordability is the object of urban expansion, let’s grasp that nettle: the only way to achieve it is to build affordable housing, it’s that simple. More than enough land is available within the urban growth boundaries for residential development.

Recent research from Prosper shows there are 84,000 undeveloped housing lots on nine Australian master-planned estates alone. This does not include the many inner-city regeneration projects already under way. Social housing in these areas should be the focus of urban planning before any more land is released.

What about ‘under-developed’ urban lands?

Further expansion of the inner cities of Melbourne and Sydney can only encroach onto low-lying, flood-prone industrial lands that were long ago deemed unsuitable for residential development. It would be folly, or very expensive, to build housing there.

These areas are and still can be used for manufacturing, however, and not just the new niche urban manufacturers that gentrifying councils so love to love. Older industries that are even now being displaced from Fishermans Bend in Melbourne and Blackwattle Bay in Sydney can easily coexist with artisanal bakeries and coffee roasters.

The imperative to promote sustainable local production is stronger than ever now that the pandemic and war have exposed the vulnerabilities of global supply lines. Our diminishing industrial lands really should be kept for industry, until such time as sea-level rise claims them as wetlands.

This is not an argument for decreasing construction activity: there is much work to be done retrofitting existing buildings. These need to be re-clad, better ventilated, opened to passive cooling and adapted to a warming climate.

The ongoing regeneration projects in Melbourne and Sydney need a lot more attention. Docklands, Darling Harbour and Barangaroo could become useful with some serious interventions. The emerging Fishermans Bend and Blackwattle Bay developments have already released more land than their planners know what to do with.

A forward-looking city plan would consolidate and advance what that city already has. That’s the way to build revenue streams that are environmentally, socially and politically sustainable.

Kate Shaw, Honorary Senior Fellow in Urban Geography and Planning, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.