Australia has a distinctive environment, with rich remnant biodiversity, mega-diversity (Kirkpatrick 1994), and World Heritage listings, but it persists with Eurocentric settler practices, exploiting its natural resources, and rolling back its ecological frontiers. Valuing nature and transitioning to sustainability are advocated by experts, academics, green political parties, environmental NGOs, and, increasingly, by civil society. However, attention to environmental policy waxes and wanes according to national circumstances, with the major parties typically more accommodating of pressures to develop than protect the environment. Ecology and climate change are therefore persistent challenges that are routinely subject to political contestation and polarization. While recurrent developmentalism, environmental impacts and policy failures are central to Australian politics today, they are not prominent in political or policy-based analysis. This chapter presents an overview of the key issues.

Item Type:	Research Book Chapter
Keywords:	Australian environment, environmental exploitation, environmental protection, environmental policy, statist developmentalism
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Political science
Research Field:	Environmental politics
Objective Division:	Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards
Objective Group:	Environmental policy, legislation and standards
Objective Field:	Environmental policy, legislation and standards not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Crowley, K (Associate Professor Kate Crowley)
ID Code:	142153
Year Published:	2020
Deposited By:	Office of the School of Social Sciences
Deposited On:	2020-12-16
Last Modified:	2021-01-28
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