Terrestrial biodiversity conservation and natural resource management

The ongoing ecological harm to Australia’s land, water and air, and the loss of the species that depend on them, is overwhelming our environmental laws. Australia’s large landmass and relatively small population, coupled with historical factors and poor environmental stewardship pose a significant management challenge.

Australia has international obligations to ensure biodiversity protection and the sustainability of land, water and air; and to protect places of cultural and environmental significance. Australia can show greater leadership as a biodiversity rich, wealthy country. Australia invests insufficient resources and energy in protection and restoration, due to factors including a lack of information about the condition of the environment and of long-term strategic natural resource planning. Public resources are inevitably limited and so attention must turn to using private sector resources more effectively to create greater national capacity. Fragmentation of governance institutions, laws and efforts, due to many factors, has added to the difficulties of achieving a sustained and coordinated response.1 The problems Australia must deal with involve increasingly complex causes that demand a far more comprehensive and coordinated response in the future than has been demonstrated to date.

A multi-pronged approach to biodiversity conservation and natural resource management (NRM) law reform is needed. Real reform will be costly, and some initiatives will encounter opposition, but more effective environmental law is essential to the long-term viability of ecological systems, agricultural production, and community amenity and wellbeing. Meeting the challenges requires the commitment of the Commonwealth and state governments to implement an effective mix of land use and other environmental forms of regulation, economic incentives, and voluntary instruments.