EPBC Act review calls for better protection of our natural environment

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) today welcomed the release of an independent review of Australia’s key environmental legislation – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act - and called on the Australian Government to act on the Review’s key recommendations.

“Numerous assessments completed for the Government show that we are failing to meet our national and international conservation obligations,” said Dr Paul Sinclair, ACF Healthy Ecosystems Program Manager.

“New waves of extinctions are currently threatening significant parts of Australia and our national environment laws have failed to protect them.

“Australia’s ecosystems are our life support systems, and we’re doing a very poor job looking after them. Our clean water, air, food and great places to enjoy don’t get pumped out of a machine; they’re provided by our natural environment.

“It’s time to get serious about looking after our natural environment, implement these recommendations and provide the scale of investment needed,” Dr Sinclair said.

A recent Government-commissioned report: Australia's Biodiversity and Climate Change: A strategic assessment of the vulnerability of Australia's biodiversity to climate change (August 2009) found that our environment has suffered low levels of capital investment for decades.

The Review details over 70 recommendations to make the Act more efficient and able to effectively protect Australia’s ecosystems and biodiversity. Key recommendations include:

• Establishing a new independent National Environment Commission responsible for monitoring, compliance and auditing activities under the Act;
• Creating a new greenhouse gas “trigger” to regulate developments adding greenhouse gas pollution to the atmosphere;
• Setting up a Environment Reparation Fund to resource action to repair damage to the environment;
• The development of a set of national environmental accounts to measure the health of the environment;
• Moving towards protecting regional scale ecosystems and the threatened species to are sustained by them; and
• A range of measures to enhance public participation.