As Australia's primary environmental legislation undergoes a once-in-a-decade review, businesses and the government have spoken of the need to cut environmental bureaucracy (so-called "green tape") and speed up approvals. However, health experts insist that environmental protections must be strengthened.
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Why? Because the stark reality is that our health is fundamentally dependent on the health of the natural world - for clean air, water and soils, food security, protection against infectious diseases and a stable climate. Nature is also the source of over half of all medicines we rely on.
Last month, more than 180 health professionals and 19 health groups published an open letter to federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley, warning a failure to significantly reform Australia's environmental law, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act), will risk fuelling further public health crises. Signatories included Nobel laureate Professor Peter Doherty, former Australian of the Year Professor Fiona Stanley and nutritionist and dietician Dr Rosemary Stanton.
Despite being a wealthy, developed nation, Australia's environmental track record is among the worst of all countries. We lead the world in mammal extinctions, have the highest rate of biodiversity loss bar Indonesia, and have been recognised as a land-clearing and deforestation "hotspot". It is estimated that in Queensland and NSW alone, land clearing kills some 50 million mammals, birds and reptiles annually. Our scarce water resources are in decline, and some of our most precious marine environments, including the Great Barrier Reef, face collapse. Climate change constitutes one of the most serious threats to our natural environment and our nation's public health, and yet Australia is one of the highest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gases.
This degradation of our natural environment is, in essence, a dismantling of our life support systems. That it has occurred despite the existence of the EPBC Act is a clear indication that major environmental law reform is required.
Unfortunately, examples of failed environmental protections in Australia are plentiful.
To restore past damage and cope with future challenges, our environmental law will need to be vastly more effective than it is currently.
Earlier this year, we witnessed catastrophic bushfires and smoke pollution at a globally unprecedented scale. These resulted in widespread ecological devastation, a surge in hospital admissions for heart and lung conditions, and an estimated increase in more than 400 deaths. The fires were fuelled by our inaction on climate change, and made worse by historical and contemporary native forest logging and poor forestry management.
In the Murray Darling river catchment, years of overallocation of water to agriculture combined with multiple failings of governance and regulation have led to insufficient river flows to maintain water quality. The result has been algal blooms, devastating fish kills, and water which at times has been unfit for human and animal consumption. While recent rains have provided some reprieve, the state of this vital river system remains so dire that the viability of many of the ecosystems and human communities that depend on it are in doubt.
Political sympathy for extractive industries in Australia has repeatedly resulted in the prioritisation of water for mining over water for the environment and human and agricultural use. The Adani coal mine provides but one example. In 2017, Adani was granted a licence to extract 12.5 billion litres of water per year from the Suttor River system in central Queensland at a time when much of the region was in drought. In addition to supporting fragile and important ecosystems, including nationally significant wetlands, the Suttor River supports a broad range of agricultural and pastoral activities. Adani's annual allocated water quota is close to the amount used by all local farmers combined.
Adani has also been granted unlimited access to Great Artesian Basin water, despite evidence showing this vital underground system is becoming depleted, and it being the sole water source for much of rural Queensland.
Our environmental failures are also contributing to the outbreak and spread of disease. The emergence of Hendra virus in Queensland in 2009 was linked to extensive destruction of Australia's east coast forests and unsustainable land clearing for new housing estates and other projects. This resulted in bats, which can be animal hosts of Hendra virus, coming into closer contact with horses. Infected horses appeared to have contracted Hendra virus from bat urine or faeces, and were then able to infect people. As a result, four people lost their lives, before the development of a vaccine for horses.
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Importantly, with the world on its knees from the coronavirus pandemic, we must pay attention to the fact that land-use change by humans has been identified as the primary driver of almost half of all past emerging infectious disease outbreaks. Without improved environmental protections, we risk further and potentially even more deadly pandemics.
Over the next few decades in Australia, we expect marked population growth, service and infrastructure expansion, increased food and water requirements and escalating climate change. Despite the well-documented risks of the escalating climate crisis, we can be sure that the push from vested interests for ever more coal and gas extraction will remain strong.
To restore past damage and cope with future challenges, our environmental law will need to be vastly more effective than it is currently.
Given the failure of the EPBC Act to date, it is unlikely that its flaws can be addressed by amendments alone. Because of this, a broad alliance of environmental and health groups have called for an entirely new generation of environmental law, and new federal institutions to deliver it.
These institutions would need to operate at arm's length from government, to improve governance and accountability and remove the influence of politics from environmental assessments, advice and decision-making. We believe that they should include individuals with public health expertise to ensure that the fundamental interdependence of our environment and health are always considered.
Ultimately, the federal government must recognise that the EPBC Act is also legislation protective of health, and weakening environmental protection for short-term expediency will have health and financial costs in the longer term.
It must grasp the opportunity afforded by this review to strengthen, rather than weaken, our environmental laws in order to prioritise our environment, our health and our future.
- Associate Professor Katherine Barraclough is Victorian chairwoman of Doctors for the Environment Australia. Fiona Armstrong is executive director of the Climate and Health Alliance.