[Photo of logging coop with caption "Australia is on a par with the Amazon for forest destruction"]
The environment debate is at a crossroads in Australia. With climate change and land and sea degradation of growing concern, the need to act is more pressing than ever. Yet conservation has all but dropped off the political agenda and consequently, it appears, out of the media.
The environment movement is mystified, especially given the consistently high level of community awareness over the past decade. Conservation groups continue to enjoy strong membership and support, but their influence over the 'public debate is negligible.
Having successfully persuaded society that degradation is real and serious, the next step - turning good intentions into effective action - is proving much harder to sustain. The question of how to regain the environmental momentum will be a central theme when international experts gather in Sydney on Thursday at the Southern Crossings: Pointers for Change conference, organised by the Australian Association for Environmental Education.
The association's vice-president, Mr Geoff Young, said a coordinated approach to education across all sectors was a key next step if the social and economic values that had caused the environmental crisis were to be turned around. He said environment groups had played a crucial role as advocates to bring environmental issues to the public attention, but the challenge now was the "how to" of effecting change. "Environment groups are no longer the main focus of where the action is."
The federal Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, yesterday agreed that the environment as an issue had lost its political impact, but said it was only in the sense that the need to act was no longer a matter of political dispute. Senator Hill said the debate had moved on from easy, single-issue confrontations to more complex but softer community action, such as Landcare. Many green groups had lost relevance because they had not moved on from advocacy to action, he said.
Under coalition environment policy, that means encouraging local projects such as tree-planting. That is all very well, says the new executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Mr Don Henry. But while thousands of Australians are spending their weekends planting trees, the Government has failed to adopt a strong policy to deter the states from allowing large-scale land clearing of 500,000 hectares a year, a rate comparable to the Amazon Forest destruction.
Mr Henry said that only governments had the scope to address the big issues such as climate change by setting the pace for the necessary changes in industrial practice and community habits. "The issue is not public awareness but political efforts to get it off the agenda because it is viewed as too hard."
He said the community was rallying behind the conservation movement - membership in the foundation was up 25 per cent - but there was a high level of frustration at government inaction. "One of the surprising things in Australia is this big disconnect between public concern and the wish for action, and the lack of action by the mainstream political parties and politicians, which are a long way behind where the public expectation is. It is very different to the United States and Europe."
An Australian Bureau of Statistics survey published in November found that 71 per cent of Australians were concerned about one specific environmental issue, and 46 per cent believed the quality of the environment had declined over the past decade. The environment is consistently among the top five priorities listed by voters.
The level of awareness of major issues such as the Jabiluka uranium mine is as high as at the height of the Franklin River blockade, which in part swept the Labor Party into federal office in 1983. In 1996, the coalition regarded the green vote as so crucial that it bought it with the I promise of directing $1.2 billion from the Telstra sale to conservation.
The creation of the Natural Heritage Trust so effectively neutralised the environment as an electoral issue that it barely rated a mention in the 1998 election, which has suited both parties just fine, says Mr Phillip Toyne, a former deputy secretary of the federal Environment Department and executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation. "I know politicians wanted to flatten it out as an issue because it collided so often with the economic policies they were pursuing," Mr Toyne said.
However, in truth, the amount of new money is small, once budget cuts to the department are taken into account, and the range of problems addressed quite narrow, he said. The big issues - land clearance; loss of species diversity, greenhouse and urban pollution - have been left unresolved.
There are two schools of thought on the essence of the problem is that the environment is now part of the mainstream, and the community believes something is done about the big-picture while they do their bit locally. The other school of thought says no one is kidding anyone, but people feel frustrated and disillusioned the face of political indifference.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature program leader for conservation, Jamie
Pittock, said many groups had not adapted to the coalition's style, where
getting a positive result no longer meant public barneys but making gains
behind closed doors. "There is a perception that the Natural
Heritage Trust fixed the problem and it is being managed, but there will
come a time of reckoning when the funds run out and the Government will
be faced with hard decisions of who then gets funds and where from," Mr
Pittock said. "That will encourage debate around tire time of next election."