It’s alarming to think that this might be just our first taste of dangerous climate change across the state, but that’s exactly what the evidence suggests. 

While Premier Anna Bligh has had huge jump in the polls, largely attributed to her response to the immediate disaster situations we experienced earlier this year, the real work in responding to the floods has barely begun.

A Commission of Inquiry has been set up to look at every aspect of the floods, ranging from assessment of the immediate response to much further-out issues like land use planning.

They are also looking at the way dams were managed. Wivenhoe dam was at 148 per cent when the floods started, so this is bound to turn up some interesting answers.

The other major government action we’ve seen is the development of the Queensland Reconstruction Authority, a whole new department — led by the Premier herself – devoted to coordinating the state’s huge recovery and rebuilding effort.

Six sub-groups have been formed, each working on a specific issue – Transport, Economics, the Environment, Communication, Human and Social Recovery and Building Recovery. Each of these is developing a ‘roadmap’ of actions to be provided to the Reconstruction Authority for incorporation into their plan, ‘Operation Queenslander’.

Some are well-advanced, like the environment roadmap, but there’s a lot of work ahead and a lot hinges on how well it’s delivered.  

Queensland Conservation has picked up a whole lot of new work even as Brisbane locals picked up the pieces after the devastation. Its team  has put together a submission to the flood inquiry, as well as being one of the only NGO groups in the premier’s ‘environment’ subgroup.

We’re working hard to ensure that as our state rebuilds, it does it right.  As the organisation that represents Queensland’s environment groups, including SCEC, ‘doing it right’, means many things.

Here are the three ideas we’re advocating most strongly.

Planning for a new climate

Firstly, we need to be much more careful where we put our homes, roads and public infrastructure. It doesn’t make sense to put homes in places that will flood up to the rafters more and more frequently as our climate spins out of control. Nor does it make sense to have sewage facilities on river banks, or industrial sites on floodplains.  When these sites flood, they not only bring contamination to local waters but also the marine waters downstream, ruining reefs and silting up seagrass beds. Not good news if you’re a dugong. 

Building to reduce emissions

Secondly, it’s crucial that we rebuild with the new generation of green buildings that’s emerging across the globe. Queensland Conservation’s executive director, Toby Hutcheon, calls this “[…] a great opportunity to transition Queensland away from climate-harming designs and practices”.

Modern designs are affordable highly energy-efficient homes that produce enough electricity to cover their own needs, and harvest enough rainwater to be almost self-sufficient. Queensland Conservation is working hard to get this opportunity recognised – it’d be a terrible waste to rebuild houses from the seventies as if it’s still the seventies.          

Building Environmental resilience

People aren’t the only victims of extreme weather – animals, plants and entire landscapes have been left vulnerable after the floods and storms.

Thus, our third point focuses on restoring natural areas to a state of resilience. ‘Resilience’, in this context, is the ability of the environment, and all that depend upon the environment – individuals, communities and businesses – to withstand and readily recover from severe weather events after having implemented practices that establish a stable climate and sustainable environment to the greatest extent possible.

Building a resilient environment means restoring vegetation and repairing riparian zones so that they can fulfil their natural functions. It means implementing innovative ideas such as restoring natural features and protecting coastal wetlands. This assists environmental resilience and provides a buffer between ocean and coastal settlements. The bigger picture is that the entire reconstruction effort must be about both recovery and resilience.

Toby Hutcheon sums it up like this: “In an age of increasingly dangerous climate change, it is the resilience we build to future impacts that will ultimately be the most important achievement of the flood recovery.”

Barney Foran: Research Fellow, Institute of Land Water and Society, Charles Sturt University.

Carbon tax or not, Australia’s carbon emissions will keep rising, driven by rapid rates of population growth and increasing affluence. Most of the carbon is domestic but we also own the carbon that China and other manufacturers emit when they make stuff we purchase from our malls and big box stores.

The ‘Bigger Australia’ much loved by Kevin Rudd and the top end of town surfaced again in the last federal election when both major parties scrambled for a ‘right-sized Australia’ driven by disenchantment in marginal electorates where services are tight and solutions oft promised.

Unseen in the election dog-whistling was a science-based population futures report, Long-term physical implications of net overseas migration: Australia in 2050, researched and written by Dr. Jonathon Sobels of Flinders University and Dr. Graham Turner of CSIRO and other authors. This was an update and elaboration of CSIRO’s 2002 study, Future Dilemmas.

The new Physical Implications study highlighted the many resource and environmental challenges that come with rapid rates of population growth, in the absence of revolutionary changes, in how Australia conducts its business of day-to-day living. By 2050, these challenges include a doubling to a tripling of greenhouse emissions, a looming oil dependence, increased traffic congestion and critical water shortages in three capital cities.

This is bad news for the legions of corporate suits who see rapid population growth as the only way to maintain their cash flow in an economy based on house building, personal consumption and mining.

The news was so bad that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) chose Christmas Eve of 2010 to release the report with a frontispiece demeaning the science-based modelling as contested, and not to be believed. As judged by a lone economics reviewer, the physical-economy analysis did not conform to the assertions and beliefs of an economics-centric world.

However the three components of the study, while strongly related, were independently sourced thus ensuring greater robustness than if they relied on a single analytical idea. The middle tier or regional scale of analysis in particular gives the key insights for national population policy and the consequences of a bigger Australia. As most inbound migrants ended up in discrete areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, the report found that if things were already partially crook in those areas, it could only get crooker under the rapid population growth that a bigger Australia requires to gather steam.

As most Sydney-siders know, the geography that gives its beauty and attractiveness is also a beast when several million more people have to be settled by 2050. Unless the multi-billions that are promised at each election time are spent quickly, and over and over, the city function and economic product will stall in a gridlock of disgruntled ratepayers in the far-flung suburbs. In western Sydney where most population growth occurs, water and soil quality and biodiversity resources can only trend downwards given the experience over the last twenty years of development.

As cost and time over-runs on its Wonthaggi desalinisation plant dominate the media headlines for Melbournians, they might ponder how many more engineering projects they’ll have to pay for with another two million people. The green wedges, meant to buffer biodiversity losses in the face of development, have been discarded by an incoming government intent on bettering the previous bunch. Still Melbourne has easier topography and better public transit that its arch rival Sydney and with strong ongoing investment, might just retain its liveable city status.

Perth’s long-term future is here now as its second desalination plant nears completion, its surface dams receive trickles rather than floods and its groundwater aquifers approach their extraction limits. The region’s sandy soils transmit sewage and farming nutrients easily and promise increasing eutrophication and algal blooms in its rivers and estuaries. Set in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, rapid increases in land clearance to indulge the suburban dream will pressure nature’s diversity even more than in the recent past.

But this future is not hardwired, provided public policy is built on three cores. The first is to stabilise national population to a 26-28 million level by 2050. The second is to be as mean as possible to each Australian by introducing an integrated carbon-water-land taxation base that penalises profligate use of critical resources and provides the funds to refurbish and make anew. The third is to do what we must do and quickly. Ten star houses, nearly independent of power and water grids, are here now. All cities need fluent transport in an oil-lean future, so why not rapid transit for all now? Our households are bulging with stuff we don’t need and don’t want, our bodies also. So why not a lifestyle where enough is enough, rather than more being our common mantra?

Today’s population policy is driven by the Dolly Parton syndrome, where bigger is better even if it is top heavy and somewhat false. Using science to explore Australia’s future gives the view that we’d probably be better off, leaner and smaller. However if Australians want the quality of life we now enjoy, then the challenges are already daunting and we’d better start the grand transition today.

In essence, this means that the 100-year ARI flood is one with a probability of occurring once in every 100 years. The theory behind this is an argument that buildings have a life of around 100 years and thus if built above the 100-year ARI flood level, they would not flood in their life.

So the whole basis of the protocol turns on probabilities. What would happen if you started to examine the floods that had occurred in a particular area, calibrated those floods to the probabilities and you started seeing that you had say four flood events in 25 years, where those events ranged between 1 in 40 and 1 in 88 year events?

This is more or less what had happened in Noosa through the 1960s to the 1980s.

There’s something wrong, isn’t there. The planners and engineers started to get worried. The probabilities say that the flood frequencies should not be this high.

The simple fact is that our flooding knowledge relies on rainfall knowledge and this is derived from data. We have been collecting rainfall data systematically in Queensland since the major flooding that occurred here in 1893.

That’s right — we have a little over 100 years of rainfall data. Curious isn’t it, that with a little over 100 years of rainfall data, we are designing to a flood event that is supposed to occur only once in that period. Any statistician would tell you that to have a significant level of confidence about the 100-year ARI event, you would want 1000 years of data underpinning it.

Now add to this, the issues of climate change and sea level rise and it is very apparent that some significant caution should be applied when considering whether or not to commit development into floodplains or determining what minimum floor heights should be applied in those areas already committed for development.

In Noosa in the 1990s, the Noosa Shire Council at that time took two decisions:

• First it decided not to commit any further lands in the floodplain for development; and
• Second, implement minimum floor heights across all potentially flood prone urban areas.

In each case, the decision took into account river flooding (where the water comes from a rainfall event in the catchment), storm surge (where a low pressure system sucks up the water on the coast forcing it inland through the river mouth), sea level rise, wind setup (where the wind across a body of water pushes up water on the far side), the effects of wave action (created by boats and 4WDs moving through the floodwaters) and freeboard (a buffer against error or in case of unforeseen circumstances). This gave rise to heights of some 0.5-0.8m above the 100-year ARI flood event.

In 2003, the State Government implemented State Planning Policy 1/03 Mitigating the Adverse Impacts of Flood, Bushfire & Landslide and its associated Guideline. This policy relies on an equivalent of the 100-year ARI flood event. There is no allowance for any of the additional factors that were used by Noosa above.

In 2005, the State Government implemented the South East Queensland Regional Plan. This plan saw extensive areas below the 100-year ARI flood event placed in the Urban Footprint across the south east and particularly in areas of the Sunshine Coast and Moreton Bay Regional Council areas.

In 2009, the State Government amended the plan and had the opportunity to correct these mistakes. It did not do so and in fact in the Moreton Bay Regional Council area the State Government, despite the objection of the council, actually extended the commitments in flood prone areas.

Quite simply, the headlong rush to accommodate population has resulted in appropriate caution being set aside. The lessons from 1974 were quickly forgotten.

One wonders whether those from 2011 will be just as quickly forgotten.

I’m sure you would agree that good discussions are stimulating, perhaps even as stimulating as caffeine.  And this time, we changed topics as many times as we took large sips from our coffee mugs. And then all of a sudden, my neighbour said something that made me sit back in my seat.

“I’m not sure if using solar power is the best thing we can do to alleviate climate change.

“I’m not even sure the science is all that accurate,” he said with a great look of certainty.

I rapidly reminded him that I’ve lived off the grid with solar power for the past seven years. It works well too. I’m not saying it’s the single solution to climate change, but it certainly makes sense in a sunny country with rising electricity prices. I haven’t seen an electricity bill for many years now.

The recent years of rain and cloudy summers means I have to monitor the system more, it also means I have to burn through the odd 20 litre can of petrol to power the back-up generator.  Petrol prices rise so I’m careful about my energy use. Living with solar power is really no different to living with tank water. You know you have a limit so you adjust your usage accordingly.

There are no power lines on my property, no clearing was needed to run overhead or underground cables to my house and my lights remain on even when the rest of the street is suffering a summer blackout. Virtually every hour of every day is a ‘switch your lights off earth hour moment’.

What’s more, I told him, I really do think there is a benefit to not being yet another consumer contributing to the burning of coal to power the massive generators housed conveniently out of sight, and miles away. I was about to say that 97 per cent of climate scientists have shown … and then I could see his attention drift off. I’d lost him and there was no point trying to convince him any further. We both awkwardly took a hurried sip of coffee.

So where does my neighbour get his information to help him form his opinion? How many people think the same as he does? The media, and quite a few, as it turns out.

Balanced reporting is the mantra of the journalist. Provide both sides of the argument. Keep the balance and let the reader decide.

As Ross Garnaut recently pointed out in an article for the new online start-up, The Conversation, the balance can become a little puzzling to find when it comes to climate change.

“Mainstream media has often sought to provide balance between people who base their views on the mainstream science and people who don’t – if you like, between scientific authority, and unscientific opinion. That is a very strange sort of balance.

“It is a balance of numbers of words and not a balance of scientific authority,” he wrote.

ABC’s head of policy for news, Alan Sunderland was reported in an article written by Margaret Simons for Crikey as saying if the majority of credible evidence supports human-induced climate change then the resulting media coverage should reflect this.

“It is one of the most common and inaccurate myths about balance on this or any other topic that it requires all sides to be given equal time and equal weight. It does not. It never has and it never will. Our editorial policies make it quite clear that ‘it is not essential to give all sides equal time’. Another better way to express and understand this is to understand that the kind of balance we aim to achieve in our news coverage is balance that follows the weight of evidence.”

Unfortunately the mainstream media, including journalists whose opinions are often expressed as fact, such as Andrew Bolt, help promote to the public that there is a 50/50 split within the scientific community about climate change.

My neighbour, along with 40 per cent of Australians, according to a recent CSIRO report, now believe the growing count of words which help create doubt about the science.

The Baseline survey of Australian attitudes to climate change report conducted an online survey of 5000 people during the last federal election campaign. Half of those surveyed believe we are the cause of climate change, while slightly less believe it is a natural fluctuation in temperature. An even smaller amount simply don’t believe it at all.

Interestingly, university scientists were considered the most trusted sources of information. While environmental organisations came in a close second for those who believe in human-induced climate change, with the second most believable source for those who consider climate change a natural temperature fluctuation, being family and friends. Governments ranked alongside, car companies and oil companies as the least trustworthy.

One of the most interesting findings was the level of confusion amongst those who don’t believe humans are responsible.

“As a group these people still viewed countries, governments and global organisations as at least partly responsible for causing climate change,” according to the report.

This confusion, or inconstancy, may in part be related to media coverage. It may also be displayed in a recent Queensland Household Energy Survey.

The survey of 3500 homes found 75 per cent of Queenslanders believe it is important to reduce their energy consumption, yet three out of four now own one of the most energy intensive appliances — the air-conditioner. When climate scientists tell us coal-powered electricity generation is an important contributor to climate change, this is a worrying set of figures.

The current Queensland Minister for Energy Stephen Robertson, said we are “increasingly energy hungry”.

Now, before you shout out ‘it’s population’, energy use has increased by more than double the population growth in Queensland in recent years.

So, we’re more confused, we’re split about the cause of climate change, we like using energy, yet we want to use less.

When small sound bites and headlines are all we have the time to listen to and read, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and ironically, switch off. Perhaps we have too much information, too many opinions and not enough simple and concise facts explaining exactly what each of us can reasonably do.

Maybe most of us are too busy earning a living to have the time to understand what’s going on — to understand that the reasonably priced air-conditioner we just bought to cool the family next summer is going to continue to cost us every quarter, every year. Perhaps even cost us in ways that we find hard to imagine.

I leaned forward in my seat again, placing the coffee mug down on the table.  I know we all have different opinions and at the same time I realise neighbourly friendships are important to maintain. If friendships are a one of the trusted sources of information about climate change then perhaps next Sunday we should continue our discussion. Perhaps in a small way, coffee will help bridge the gap too. At the very least, our conversations will make us both think more about this important issue.

Fact Box

CSIRO report – General attitudes towards climate change. January 2011.

How we think about climate change

50.4 per cent think that climate change is happening and that humans are largely responsible

40.2 per cent think that climate change is happening but it’s just a natural fluctuation in the earth’s temperatures

5.6 per cent don’t think that climate change is happening

3.8 per cent have no idea whether climate change is happening or not

Trust

For those who believe humans are responsible for climate change. The most trusted sources of information are: university scientists, environmental organisations, environmental group scientists and government scientists

For those who believe climate change is natural. The most trusted sources of information are: university scientists, friends and family, doctors, people from your community and government scientists

Who is responsible?

Big polluting countries, multinational corporations, wealthy countries and the federal government

Major environmental actions taken by survey respondents to engage in climate change relevant behaviours

Recycling household waste, reducing water use, using environmentally friendly products and switching lights off around the house

Many bush creatures need help as the built environment closes in on their habitats, sending some on the path to extinction unless we do something about it. Dr Sean FitzGibbon is man with a passion and a plan to save them. Aldwyn Altuney reports.

This is not a time to be resting on our laurels when it comes to conserving wildlife around urban areas, according to University of Queensland (UQ) wildlife researcher Sean FitzGibbon.

“South-east Queensland is a major growth spot in Australia and development is eating into a lot of bushland,” Sean said.

“More and more, people are starting to realise it’s important to conserve wildlife in urban areas.”

And that’s exactly what Sean does. For a 34-year-old, his list of credits is very impressive.

Dr Sean Fitzgibbon and koala

He is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, splitting his time between the School of Biological Sciences and the Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation.

Sean’s interest in animals started from a very young age. As the eldest of four boys in the family, he used to catch turtles and tadpoles and ‘chase critters around Bulimba Creek’.

“Mum would want us out of her hair and we would go to the creek and play, looking for eels etc,” he said.

“From primary school, I decided this is what I wanted to do.”

Now, after several years working with bush creatures, Sean thinks of the bush as a sacred place.

Sean is particularly interested in the survival of native animals in Australia’s growing urban centres. His research has focused on various species including the northern brown bandicoot, swamp wallaby and koala, all of which are declining in numbers in expanding urban areas of south-east Queensland, such as Coomera and Mt Cotton.

Sean began working with koalas more than five years ago, using GPS collars to examine the the behaviour of these secretive animals. He’s now on the research team of the Koala Ecology Group at UQ, where he researches koalas to better understand their ecology and enhance their conservation in south-east Queensland.

Unfortunately, with the growing urban sprawl, koalas are increasingly falling victim to habitat loss, dog attacks, and vehicle collisions in urban areas. They have even been spotted scratching at wooden doors, up wooden electricity poles, in half built wooden house frames, and on fences with dogs barking at them from below.

“Koalas are relatively resilient animals and we have an opportunity to coexist with them, if we can address the causes of their decline,” Sean said.

“In some areas of south-east Queensland, koala populations have crashed by more than 60 per cent in the past 10 years.”

“Most native animals can’t adapt to ‘life in the suburbs’ – they can’t handle the extensive habitat loss and fragmentation, and the negative effects of cars, cats and dogs. It can be extremely hard for them to move through the urban environment between bushland areas.

“Possums are one of the winners – they can adapt. Koalas are not as resilient; they are slow reproducers and are susceptible to extinction in our urban landscapes.”

Sean’s research has found koalas surviving in some very small patches of bushland ‘seemed well’ but he warns there could be a lag effect; koalas can live for 10-15 years, so we may be looking at unviable populations comprised of ageing individuals that are not reproducing.

This is what is called extinction debt – where we haven’t yet paid the price for what we’ve done.

“In Coomera, a rapidly growing urban area, we’ve found koalas are slowly getting picked off by dogs and cars when moving between bushland,” Sean said.

“And disease can become a huge problem in populations that are stressed by these urban influences. But they are a species we can conserve among urban estates; it’s about retaining sufficient habitat and maintaining permeability – facilitating safe koala movement through urban areas.”

Sean say that it is important to have connectivity between bushland areas.

“This means areas can be re-colonised or bolstered by immigrating animals. In Brisbane, even the weedy vegetation lining creeks can provide great linkages between large bush areas – bandicoots love these degraded environments,” Sean said.

The dietary flexibility of wildlife can be very important. Some species have very specific food requirements – such as koalas that only eat from certain gum trees. There are some patches in Coomera which are very swampy and can’t be built on; but these don’t support many eucalypts. They are dominated by paperbark trees.

Around Brisbane, there are numerous bush patches that have abundant food supplies but these areas are often too small to support koalas.

“Koalas have been isolated too long, so disease is also an issue,” Sean said.

In one of his research articles he outlines what habitat fragmentation is. He says it occurs when areas of continuous habitat are reduced to a set of isolated smaller remnants.

This process often results in the creation of numerous small and isolated populations that are highly vulnerable to extinction because of differing and un-predetermined demographic and environmental development in those areas, diseases, catastrophic events and inbreeding.

In this study, Sean looked at the distribution of the northern brown bandicoot (isoodon macrourus), a medium-sized ground-dwelling marsupial. It was examined in habitat fragments within the urban landscape of Brisbane.

From surveys conducted in 68 fragments, bandicoots were found to be present in 33 (49 per cent), despite widespread habitat loss and fragmentation.

Sean said he would like to see land developers improve their planning methods and for people to re-examine their lifestyles.

“I’m a realistic conservationist. I know we’re going to have development but I’d like to see us do it in a smarter way,” he said.

“Some areas we could work on are lay-out of development areas (how we live within them) and pet ownership – owning a small breed of dog if a property backs on to bushland with koalas.

“But some developers are reluctant to implement such measures, thinking it will reduce consumer appeal and saleability,” he said.

“We have research partnerships with the Redlands, Brisbane and Gold Coast City councils, where we are assessing the biodiversity friendliness of various new developments.

“The idea of  examining wildlife in urban areas is not very well researched. Part of it involves changing people’s mindsets, how they view their role in the conservation of wildlife in urban areas.”

“I like the idea of working with people and trying to change their ideas for the better.

“You really start to realise how connected we are. Even one person can have quite an impact.

“I like the idea of questioning standards regarding the pets we keep, what we keep in our yards, how we speak to each other. I want people to feel they can individually make a difference.”

There have been many magic moments for Sean during his trips out in the bush.

“I used to have to trap bandicoots for research and check the traps at odd hours,” he said.

“I remember once in Wishart Park getting to a trap at torch light in the fog at 3am. I found a bandicoot in there which had just given birth and there were all these blind newborn bandicoots wiggling around sucking on her teats,” he said.

“I love that. It brings you up close to those animals and you realise how special and amazing they are. It’s quite spiritual – you have to be very gentle with them.”

He said koalas had their own individual fingerprints on their palms, just like humans, and they had ‘beautiful soft leathery pads’.

“It’s amazing to have a koala sitting in your lap in a bag. We put them in a cloth bag and keep them warm, with their heads popped out the top.”

He then measures and weighs them, checks for diseases, tags them and releases them up a tree. There have also been sad times.

“We’ve found dead animals too – one we were tracking in Redlands was grabbed by a dog and found dead under a powerline. It can be hard when you see them dead after you’ve seen them produce and rear their young. We really form a bond with some animals, especially those in our study program for a while,” he said.

But he has also had some uplifting moments. A koala they named Shirley was found orphaned in her mum’s pouch and reared by a carer before being let go into bushland. She was monitored after release and after a year Shirley was found with a baby on her back.

“She came down the tree so quickly to see us again.,” he said.

“I’m really grateful. I have the best job in the world.”

Earlier editions of the print version of Eco have highlighted the very significant social, economic and environmental values of Pumicestone Passage and identified various threats to those values.

The Passage has values of international and national environmental significance under the Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. These include major Ramsar wetlands; numerous international migratory bird species covered by bilateral agreements with Japan, Korea and China; and several land and marine threatened species such as the false water rat, dugong, turtle and possibly even the sawfish.

The Glasshouse Mountains National Landscape, a listed National Heritage Area, can be glimpsed from the Passage and adds greatly to its overall scenic values. However, the Passage is also a mecca for recreational fishermen, boaties and for swimmers looking for sheltered waters. It underpins Caloundra’s tourist accommodation and hospitality industries, fishing and boat supply businesses, and several ecotourism businesses like boat cruises and kayaking. Lindsay Holt reports.

This “jewel in the crown” of the Coast’s natural assets is now threatened by the wrong-headed decision of State Infrastructure and Planning Minister, Stirling Hinchliffe, to use his ministerial powers to fast-track urban development of Stockland’s Caloundra South site through a Structure Plan process he has forced upon the Sunshine Coast Council. On 2 September he went even further by calling-in the Stockland’s Bellvista Stage 2 development application and threatened to call-in the Caloundra South Structure Plan if Council didn’t take a decision on the Structure Plan in an impossibly short timeframe.

Stockland’s Caloundra South development and other potential future urban developments

Important infrastructure agreements and sustainability requirements remain to be resolved and are at stake. The Minister used simplistic and highly questionable arguments to justify his interventions, which deprive residents of the Sunshine Coast and our Council representatives of a fair chance to decide our own future and achieve sustainable outcomes.

Minister Hinchliffe is fast-tracking Caloundra South as a development of a city about the size of Gladstone, comprising a minimum of 22,000 dwellings for a minimum of 46,000 people in the Bells Creek catchment of the Passage, and featuring a major retail and commercial hub.  This is in addition to an estimated 9,450 dwellings and 19,755 population in current and future planned development in the adjoining Lamerough Creek catchment of the Passage.

The total urban population in the Lamerough and Bells Creek catchments will therefore be about 66,000 – that’s equivalent to creating a city one and a half times the size of Gladstone on the southern boundary of Caloundra. It’s also equivalent to the total population of the Caloundra City Council area just 13 years ago in 1997! Just imagine all those people plus the holiday-makers, tourists and day-trippers wanting to fish and go boating in the Passage and swimming at Bulcock and Kings Beaches and beaches like Moffat, Shelly, Dicky and Currimundi that are within easy range.

On top of this, urban expansion is proposed for Beerwah, Landsborough and the Glasshouse Mountains township, while Minister Hinchliffe’s current SEQ Regional Plan includes future urban areas for the Stockland’s landholding in the sensitive Halls Creek catchment below Caloundra South, and for land astride the CAMCOS rail corridor between Beerwah and Caloundra South.

But it’s also necessary to consider the urban development and population growth occurring down in the Moreton Bay Regional Council area because these communities utilise Deception Bay and the Passage for recreational fishing, boating and swimming, and these urban developments are in Deception Bay catchments. An industrial estate is planned north of Elimbah, while Hinchliffe’s SEQ Regional Plan includes the West Caboulture future urban area, which is much larger than the combined size of the Stockland’s Caloundra South and Caloundra South Halls Creek landholdings and can therefore produce far greater population pressures on the Passage.

The existing Caboulture urban areas, the numerous bayside urban areas, and the future West Caboulture and Elimbah urban and industrial developments are all in catchments flowing into northern Deception Bay, which in recent years has had a D- to Fail rating under the Healthy Waterways monitoring program.

In the last decade or so these Deception Bay catchments have also seen significant intensive rural industry developments such as strawberry growing and poorly regulated egg and poultry production industries, which are significant users of  groundwater, and agricultural and veterinary chemicals with potential to impact water quality and activate acid sulphate soils.

The poor water quality in Deception Bay affects water quality in the Passage significantly because there is a net northerly tidal movement from the Bay into the Passage. It then takes up to 23 days for water originating in Deception Bay to exit at the Caloundra bar. If the shallow, warm, sunlit, slow moving water in the Passage contains sediment, other nutrients and iron compounds there’s an ideal recipe for algal blooms and outbreaks of the toxic fireweed Lyngbya that has closed down swimming, fishing and boating in Deception Bay and the southern Passage in recent years.

Other indications that the Passage and Deception Bay are under ecological and recreational stress are declines in fish stocks, sea grasses, dugong, turtles and macroinvertebrates.

Through Minister Hinchliffe’s fast-tracking of the Caloundra South Structure Plan and Bellvista 2 processes and the enormous scale of the potential future urban development he built into his SEQ Regional Plan, the Minister has created the greatest urban planning, environment and sustainability issue on the Coast in a decade. Pumicestone Passage has never before faced such an extreme assault on its social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Instead of taking a precautionary approach, the Minister has so far pushed hard for planning approval for Caloundra South without having first required comprehensive sustainability studies to be undertaken and completed that can determine whether the Passage can accommodate the various off-site and cumulative impacts that this and other urban development in its catchment will have.  E.g.  the Minister is not waiting for the outcome of the studies the Queensland Water Commission recently commenced into regional water resources, water quality and hydrology. These studies will produce information pertinent to sustainably managing Pumicestone Passage and the acceptability of the proposed Caloundra South development. The obvious question is: what’s the rush?

SCEC’s campaigner Annie Nolan said that: “The State Government did comprehensive studies of Pumicestone Passage back in 1982 and 1993. By the time of the 1993 study the State and local Councils had already approved urban development producing a population greater than the 75,000 limit for the catchment recommended in the 1982 study. There has been an appalling lack of political will at all levels to limit the off-site and cumulative impacts of urban development and population growth on the Passage. Such negligent disregard for the ecological sustainability of a natural wonder of international and national significance cannot continue. Without contemporary comprehensive studies of the Passage it’s not possible for any level of government to decide the merits of the proposed Caloundra South development, nor any other future development in the Pumicestone Passage and the related northern Deception Bay catchments.

Left to right : Rob King, Jim Pulsford, Deane Haspel, and SCEC campaigner Annie Nolan examining plans for Stockland’s Caloundra South development.

That’s why SCEC organised a familiarisation boat trip for candidates in the recent Federal Election and placed ads in regional newspapers asking for their response to three questions relating to the impacts of Caloundra South on the Passage, whether the Queensland Government should approve that development without Federal environmental studies being completed, and whether they would work to ensure the Queensland Government has all the necessary studies in place prior to giving any approvals. The responses of the candidates are on www.50000people.com.au, but in summary the Greens, the LNP candidates for Longman, Fisher and Fairfax and many independent candidates supported doing studies before approvals are given, but the Labor candidates either did not reply or avoided commitment.

Premier Bligh claims she is listening to what the public is saying. The Sunshine Coast public and its elected regional Council have made it abundantly clear that they oppose rampant population growth and want sustainable development, not development at any cost. The Bligh Government and Minister Hinchliffe in particular must listen to what the public is saying on this issue and reverse the Government’s  present extreme views on developing Caloundra South and ignoring the ecological sustainability of the Passage.

Comprehensive sustainability studies must be done before any decisions are taken by the State Government on Caloundra South, Bellvista 2 and the last stage of Pelican Waters.  Commonwealth E.P.B.C. Act environmental impact assessment requirements should also be met before any State decisions are made – or the Bligh Government faces another Traveston Dam fiasco.”

Dr Ben McNeil

The passion is palpable, so is the sense of frustration and underlying anger. Yet like a seam of silver there’s healthy gleam of humour occasionally exposed.

To assay Dr Ben McNeil is an interesting task. He’s in the stop strata of the academic rocks of intelligence that deal with climate change research and he has an urgent job at hand.

But Ben is different from most of his research colleagues. He doesn’t shun the limelight and shut himself away in the halls and laboratories of academia. He has a message to spread and he gets it out there whether through writing a book or speaking at community forums.

His message, while targeted at anyone who wants to listen, is essentially a come-on to politicians and business people to understand that in his view building environmental sustainability promotes economic prosperity at the same time. He writes in depth about it in his acclaimed book Clean Industrial Revolution.

“I can’t just be an academic. I have to be on the ground with it to do things.” Ben confesses as we meet at his mum’s place on the Gold Coast.

For him, it’s one of his visits back from his work as a Senior Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. It’s back briefly to his old stamping ground, having grown up in Southport and been a student at the highly-regarded The Southport School.

While it was seen as a very conservative school, Ben says he was one of the rebels, and it was there that he became inspired and motivated by his geography teacher who was ‘of the environmental world’. Ben became known as ‘The Greenie’.

He even formed a group to push for cleaning agents that the school cleaners used to be replaced with more biodegradable and less harmful ones. “We got things done at that school,” said Ben.

It was while he was in Year 9 that the Exxon Valdez oil spill catastrophe took place off Alaska’s coastline. It was a moment in history that affected Ben and spurred him to take a greater interest in environmental matters.

“I saw how human action – inappropriate action could severely damage ecosystems through pollution or wasteful use of resources,” he said.

“It encouraged my belief in why it’s important for us to conserve the environment generally and resources for future generations.”

And so Ben put his head down studying, even though he loved sport and had heaps of friends to distract him, and won a place at Griffith University to do an environmental engineering degree. His qualification eventually led him to Hobart to work with the CSIRO at the University of Tasmania. He was there for four years doing oceanography research, particularly looking at ‘greenhouse cycling’ in the ocean.

His broad base of friends meant that many of them did not share his core environmental beliefs. Indeed, his best man, a solid Liberal voter, became a derivatives trader in the City of London.

“I am always trying to persuade people, but I think having such friends gives you a better perspective on how others think,” he said. “You can talk about an issue like the environment in ways in which they can respond to.”

Ben said that there’s a host of opportunities for businesses to make a buck in investing in or providing innovative technologies and environmental solutions. “I call these people accidental environmentalists,” he said.

“They may not have the environmental ethos or upbringing or thinking that I had. It’s not necessarily their core thinking, but they make some money and it’s not in conflict with ensuring a good environment.

“I don’t like the old thinking of left, right and environment versus economy. It’s nonsense and gets nowhere.” Ben’s life alternates between hope and despair, but hope is gaining ground.

“Even though we can be pessimistic about our federal leaders and politicians, there’s a lot of stuff happening that hives me optimism,” he said.

Ben and his wife Nathalie have a young family of littlies – two sons and a daughter. It means he has had to reduce his profile on the ‘climate change’ speaking circuit for a while, but he is now gearing up for another educational onslaught and perhaps to convert a few more sceptics.

However, he finds it too tough a battle with hardcore denialists.
“You can’t reason with them. It’s like Bin Laden. You can’t argue with Bin Laden that there are some good things about Australia. He thinks we’re all infidels all should die. It’s a similar thing with these sceptics – you can’t argue with a closed mind,” he said.

Once Ben is in full flow, you know he’s one of the people who can make a difference. He knows his subject intimately and is able to identify some real solutions to get the planet back on track. He also has a wealth of energy and commitment His book also brilliantly puts the argument on how to make a huge positive out of perceived negatives.

But he can get wound up when some people try to take a poke at the climate science community.

“There’s this nonsense being promoted out there that there’s some grand conspiracy among thousands of scientists to dupe the world. It’s all been politicised. It’s frustrating – their type of thinking is like that of the Flat Earth society, or else they just don’t want to believe things,” said Ben.

He is not happy with much of the mainstream media either, including some TV channels, which give air time and space to sceptics under the pretence of an evenly-balanced debate.

“When you have some non-scientists coming on talking about climate change, for example, and how it’s somehow wrong. That is an affront to every element of reason. It’s like your plumber coming to diagnose your brain tumour,” he said.

“The mainstream media are just like politicians. They thrive on sensationalism. The media also don’t want to be viewed as one-sided.

“Even the ABC doesn’t want to be seen as one-eyed, even though the science is compelling and all evidence-based and reasoned. But the other side – the denialists, non science, non climate science voices — want to have a voice. So the upper two echelons of the ABC think ‘isn’t there a debate about this?’

“Well, actually there’s not in the climate change community. There’s just a debate on the magnitude – whether the temperatures will rise 2 degrees, 4 degrees or 7 degrees and how soon. On the fundamentals there is no debate.

“Also, on the policy side there is debate – is it better to go for a carbon tax or the ETS? How do we best achieve the best outcomes of reducing emissions? That’s a valid debate.”

But back to the media. Ben says the way much of television and radio reduces everything, including the complexity of the climate change issue, down to sound bites, short timeframes and within media cycles, makes getting the truth out really difficult.

He also refers to the time earlier this year when, at the last minute, Channel 7’s Sunrise breakfast program brought him face to face with one of Britain’s leading sceptics, Lord Monckton, in what they labeled a ‘debate’. It was a mistake, Ben having been persuaded to fill in for Penny Wong.

“It was a lose situation, because people expected a debate. And there wasn’t a debate. There was no perspective of the intricacies — it was simplicity versus complexity and it was in the wrong format,” said Ben.

“To discuss such a subject you would need six hours – even Ian Plimer could do a spiel of nonsense for six hours. Apart from that, all of my senior colleagues would never have tried to debate some non-climate scientist.

“I had already taken the view that I was not going to talk about my research or any of the science.”

Ben had reasoned that if he went into detail, it would go over most viewers’ heads, especially at that time of morning when people were getting ready for work. Also a ‘snapshot of palatable nonsense’ was hardly going to be meaningful. It wasn’t the forum to talk about something so serious.

“All you could say was ‘No, the science has not changed, but the evidence has got worse’,” said Ben.

Ben says that it’s the older generation people who are sceptics and are more fearful of social change in bringing solutions to the climate problem. Most are white males. However, Ben does draw comfort from the younger generation especially school students, a group where environmentalism is not on the fringe as it was when he was growing up.

“It’s actually part of their core belief, so it’s not something that is seen to be weird. It means that with social awareness issues and social changes issues, the baseline change will be generational,” he said.
In other words, better things to come.

But Ben’s message is primarily aimed at the ‘swingers’. He says preaching to the converted is fine to create enthusiasm, it’s virtually a waste of effort talking to the unreasoning ultra sceptics, but climate change campaigners can have a reasoned dialogue with the swingers, the people who are still thinking ‘what’s the truth?’.

The most difficult argument concerns perceived loss in the standard of living.

“That’s the biggest change inhibitor,” said Ben. “It’s a perception that is nonsense.”

His argument is that when tariffs on manufacturing and textiles were reduced in the 1980s, there was a growth in other sectors of the economy. He said that people thought the industry was going to die and there would be fewer jobs in the Australian economy. However, other sectors grew and provided even more jobs.?“It’s the same argument now in the carbon-intensive part of the economy which will decline if we put a value on carbon. Other sectors will grow at a greater rate – whether it will be energy efficiency, water conservation or renewable energies,” is Ben’s assertion. So what’s on Ben’s agenda now?

“I wrote Clean Industrial Revolution to really try to promote what’s been happening around the world in terms of clean energy, environmental products and services and the boom in the low carbon economy that’s happening now. There are a lot of figures in it,” said Ben.

“We highlight the fact that while Barack Obama has set aside $60 billion to promote low carbon energy solutions and the Chinese invested $90 billion to shake off their coal dependency, Australia is still firmly sticking to coal, a carbon intense commodity.

“It’s like us producing a lot of VHS cassettes and trying to export them to a world that is moving to iPods. It’s a stupid strategy.” Ben’s aspirations are to keep promoting the argument ‘what’s good for the environment is good for the economy’.

“If we keep making that argument over the coming 10 years we’re going to be in a place that’s very different to where we are today,” he said.

Sustainability most simply means ensuring continued access to adequate nourishment. This is a common and vital need. It is not an ‘extreme greenie’ notion, nor should it be a shallow marketing tag. In essence it is the difference between basic comfort and desperation. Ultimately it is the difference between life and death.

Its pursuit requires us to separate the green seeds of genuinely beneficial local development from the green-wash that masks proposals for resource depletion and asset stripping, especially by investors or corporations that have no long-term local community interest.

Events now underway on the Cooloola Coast offer a compelling case study of how we can be sincere about sustainability, or fail at it. Greg Wood reports

The Cooloola Coast is largely composed of World Heritage Values and Wetlands of International Significance

The Cooloola Coast is a special place. It is impressively unique in its own right, being largely composed of World Heritage Values and Wetlands of International Significance. It is also made special by the extent of development that has changed the surrounding coastal landscape. This has left it an island of ecological and open space integrity within a sea of mainland development and disturbance.

Many coastal species depend upon this large natural remnant for their genetic survival. Many South East Queensland residents depend upon occasional escape to it for their peace of mind. This residual value is a powerful argument for secure preservation of the area’s natural and recreational qualities. However, as this remnant value is elevated by the rising tide of SEQ development, it potential value as real estate also escalates. The remnant beauty is a seductive sales image but an eventual victim of the sale.

Rhetoric about ‘balanced outcomes’ and community benefit is being laid on thick in support of some large local development proposals. Constructed by well-resourced professionals this narrative can sound plausible if taken at face value. The grim reality of landscape balance shown in figure 1 should dispel this rhetoric, as should our experience of an array of negative socio-economic impacts throughout SEQ due to over-development.

Concerned locals say that preserving the integrity of the place is not a cost but an investment, both in nature itself and in the broad community benefits that accrue from maintaining access to genuinely natural places.  They say this investment will generate solid gold returns for the most people for the longest time, whilst only fool’s gold glitters within massive development proposals now active in the area.

Rainbow Shores Stage 2
Inskip Peninsula stretches northward from the small village of Rainbow Beach to the southern tip of Fraser Island. Immediately to its west are the Internationally Significant Wetlands of The Great Sandy Straits. Along Inskip’s eastern side is the only surf beach in mainland southern Qld., outside of a National Park, that is not flanked by urban development.

Inskip is rich in significant natural values. World Heritage Values, old-growth coastal forest, rare species and an absolute myriad of bird life are just the start of a long list.

Large amongst these features is the tranquil and spacious amenity of Inskip and surrounds. The quiet, compact village of Rainbow Beach complements this idyllic atmosphere and is itself enhanced by it. Visitors and residents thoroughly enjoy simply being immersed within the locality’s abundance of space, tranquility and nature. The experience provides a highly pleasurable contrast to the disturbance, hustle and din that, increasingly, is everyday life across SEQ.

Looming over this landscape is Rainbow Shores Stage 2, an application for intense urban development across 200 hectares of State land on Inskip. The proposal extends along six kilometres of ocean frontage and would accommodate 6,500 people.

The application is possible due to a lease enacted in 1984 under the Bjelke-Petersen government. A large lease segment has already been approved and partly developed as Rainbow Shores Stage 1. Unapproved portions will expire in 2014. Intense public objection, including over 800 formal objections, and a damning EPA assessment report lead to the State Government refusing the Stage 2 application in July of 2009.

The developer promptly appealed this refusal. Whilst not surprising, this action directly contradicted the developer’s earlier request to the community to trust the formal process and accept its decision on the application. Hindsight suggests this confidence stemmed from the large contingent of ALP lobbyists that Rainbow Shores Pty. Ltd. had retained to help ‘communicate’ its proposal to decision-makers. With the lobbyists flushed out of the way by community research and media publicity, the applicant’s confidence in the decision seems to have evaporated.

The matter is now before the court for final resolution. A number of community members have elected to co-respond to the appeal to help support the refusal against assault by the applicant’s legal battalion. They are committed to securing a result that is sustainable, both locally and regionally

To do this they have engaged experts in Town Planning (Paul Summers) and Economics (Tor Hundloe) to assist the court’s understanding of the issues. The essence of their case is that the proposal is not consistent with the town plan and that it would consume valuable public assets without returning real community or economic benefits.

“Much better results can be had by committing the area to uses other than intense urban development,” says Reg Lawler of Citizens Helping Inskip Peninsula (CHIP).

“Bird watching is a multi-billion dollar global industry perfectly suited to local development. Yet this selfish and short-sighted proposal would directly ravage core habitat for the Black Breasted Button Quail and the Beach Stone Curlew, two rare species highly attractive to birdwatchers. The edge effects would seriously disturb many more species”.

Mike West, Birds Queensland member and frequent Inskip visitor, says Inskip is a bird-watcher’s paradise. “Inskip presents an area that is the best square kilometre of bird-watching in Australia,” said Mr. West.

“Birds Queensland members would love to see the habitat quality and bird populations of Inskip protected. The public benefit and economic opportunity in doing this is huge”.

Walking tourism is another multi-billion dollar growth industry that is not only complementary to local ecology and amenity, but which is substantially benefited by it.

It seems confounding then, that prominent local business advocates are ignoring these and other profitable niche tourism opportunities whilst stridently pushing the Shores 2 barrow. Reg Lawler explains that the local Business and Tourism Association operates under a clearly apparent conflict of interest.

“The long term President of the Association has publicly declared his employment by Rainbow Shores Pty. Ltd.,” said Mr. Lawler.

“The recently past, previously long-term Secretary of the Association is the Managing Director of that company. The Association is quite obviously pushing local businesses to support the proposal rather than acting to properly inform them on the full range of options available to best address their business interests. Everyone but a few will lose if this skewed approach wins the day – business, employees, residents, visitors and the local environment will all suffer”.

This pursuit of this long-term public interest takes a lot of volunteer effort and money. If you’d like to help in any way, particularly with a tax-deductible donation via the SCEC gift fund, please contact info@saveinskip.org.au or download a donation form from www.saveinskip.org.au

Fraser Straits Marina
Eight kilometres inland from Inskip, deep inside the confined pristine waters of Tin Can Inlet, lies the site of a 300+ berth marina proposal. Most of these berths are for large boats not presently common in the narrow local waterways.  If approved that will change.

The project’s viability requires the developer to successfully entice hundreds of large boats from elsewhere into the new berths and thus into the local waterways. Save Our Shores–Tin Can Bay (SOS-TCB) president, Ian Donald, says the consequent impacts would be hugely negative to local sustainability at every level – environmental, social and economic.

“Estuary dependent populations of Indo-pacific Dolphin and Dugong will be devastated, as they already have been in Moreton Bay,” said Mr. Donald. “Migrating and local turtles face similar fate. Migrating birds, seagrass and tidal banks would all be badly affected. General water quality within the low-flush tidal environment will suffer”.

“Current community activities in the public waterways in and around the development site will be evicted and have nowhere else to go. This includes junior and disabled sailing, dragon boating and dolphin interaction. General boating safety will be severely reduced.”

“All of these factors completely undermine the local economy blossoming around small boats and eco-tourism,” said Mr. Donald. “As things are we can develop carefully to service a real need for relaxation and equitable access, and be locally profitable in the process. It will all be blown out of the water by this rich man’s indulgence”.

Mr. Donald said that the marina offers no local benefits whatsoever, only losses.

Locals are now depending upon a Federal Government refusal to save this precious resource from being asset stripped. For a full outline of the proposal, its impacts, and how you can give urgently needed help, visit SOS Tin Can Bay or Southern Sandy Straits Marine Environment Group.

Professor Roger Kitching reminds us of the real and present threats and that the diversity of Australian wildlife will be the first to suffer.

A biodiverse Australia is under threat. Image:greghardwick.com.au

Biodiversity! – kangaroos, kookaburras, possums, willie wagtails, bluetongues – perhaps even birdwing butterflies and funnel-web spiders – all things we might associate with this (relatively) new word.

But what about a couple of other lists -  ‘Aberdeen Angus, Ayrshire, Santa Gertrudis,  Friesian, Jersey and Charolais’ – or  ‘rainforests, grasslands, deserts, tundra, coral reefs and eucalypt woodlands’ – these, too capture something essential about this thing we call ‘biodiversity’.

Biodiversity is nothing more nor less than the entire diversity of life – within a species, species themselves, and sets of species.  Let’s put this another way, the essential diversity of life on Earth includes genetic diversity within species – all those and many other races of cattle, for instance; species themselves – the familiar original list and many million more; and, ecosystem diversity – the list of ecosystems  mentioned and many more made up of repeatable sets of species on the landscape.

The modern conservation movement was triggered in the late 1960s by Rachel Carson’s epic book ‘Silent Spring’.

Carson focused popular attention on a trend which biologists had been aware of over century – first, in fact, given voice by Darwin’s prescient, polymath co-worker, Alfred Russell Wallace – that the number of species on Earth was gradually diminishing – not by the slow inexorable processes of extinction on a geological time-scale, but through the landscape changes imposed by human ‘development’ – by clearing, agricultural chemicals and housing developments as well as the more direct impacts of hunting and gathering to satisfy an exponentially growing human population.

Rachel Carson’s agenda focussed on the species and the consequences of the outcry that followed publication of her book took the form of ‘red lists’ of threatened and endangered species around the world and tentative legislation to prevent their slide into oblivion.

At the time of publication of Carson’s book the global estimate of species diversity on Earth was about 3 to 3.5 million.  This tally was confidently made up of about 10,000 species of birds and 5000 species of mammals (mostly rats, mice and very small bats).
The remaining 3 million or so were principally insects and their relatives.  So I was taught as a university student in the early sixties.  In 1982 Terry Erwin from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington introduced rainforests, canopies and the tropics into the equation.

Based on some rather preliminary estimates of the number of different beetle species in the canopies of one species of tree in Panama he made the outrageous extrapolation that there were probably 30 million species of insects and their relatives in the tropical rainforests of the world.

We now know that this was indeed an overestimate – the ‘true’ figure may be nearer 7 to 10 million – although the jury is still out on the actual number.  Nevertheless Erwin’s huge estimate, its association with rainforests and the observation that rainforest were being cleared faster than ever before, led to the biodiversity crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.

Indeed it was in that welter of concern that the organiser of a 1988 symposium on diversity and conservation coined the term ‘biodiversity’ – contrary to popular belief this was not the famous American biologist E. O. Wilson, although he edited the book in which the term first saw the light of day.

Indeed, Wilson assured me he opposed the coining of such a gauche neologism – but subsequently regretted not having coined the term, which subsequently took off in the public and political imagination.

Bringing the many, many species of invertebrates (which includes the insects) into the picture gave the whole biodiversity ‘movement’ a huge boost – its promoters were able to talk loosely but portentously of how many species were being lost in a day, a week, a year and so on – usually estimated in terms of the number of ‘football fields’ of rainforest being cleared.  But this boost contained the seeds of its own demise.  Very soon sceptics began to ask, for example, why some tiny, recently discovered soil mite was to be given the same weight as the mighty tiger, rhinoceros or giant panda – legally if not in the wider public mind.  Lists of threatened and endangered insects have been drawn up and given legal protection.  Do you know for example, that in Western Australia a whole raft of tiny Crustacea found nowhere else but in water-filled crevices deep in the Earth are not only protected under legislation but have caused vast mining projects to be relocated or delayed at costs which make the proposed resource tax seem like peanuts?

The real value of the invertebrates and indeed the even smaller and less well-understood micro-organisms, is not as ikons of the magnificent or the soon to be lost – these are not thylacines or paradise parrots – but as tiny cogs in the maintenance of the life-support systems on which they, and us, depend totally.  In the late 1990’s the biodiversity emphasis rightly changed to a focus not on each individual species but onto the idea of ecosystems and ‘ecosystem services’.  In a nutshell these are the many benefits we get from functioning ecosystems which, were they not there, we might have to pay for (or try to pay for, assuming there was an appropriate service provider).  These services include nutrient storage and movement, soil building, water purifying, the maintenance of local climate, the natural control of potential pests, pollination, waste recycling, pharmaceutical products, even the fine forests, reefs and rivers that feed our tourism industry.  It is hard to estimate the dollar value of these ‘services’ simply because we are not accustomed to having to pay for them but such estimates as have been attempted fall consistently into the many billions or even trillions of dollars.  The problem with these estimates, as I said before, is that they carry the implicit assumption that were these ecosystem services to be destroyed then we, somehow, could buy replacements – this is not the case!  Humanity at large depends intimately on being surrounded by functional ecosystems.

Professor Roger Kitching from the Griffith School of the Environment, Griffith University.

You could be forgiven for thinking that these are simply the burblings of academics or other stirrers who have been out of the ‘real world’ for too long.  Yet contemplate the slow death of the River Murray that we are currently watching.  Think about the dieback affecting our Tablelands and its consequences on local soil conservation, fertility and micro-climate.  Observe the gradual encroachment of agricultural lands by desert.  Peer in horror at the leprous landscape of ex-irrigation lands scarred probably for ever by salting.  Watch the bleaching of coral reefs to unattractive ghosts of their past glories.  These are not intellectual maunderings but real disasters – human made and not readily ‘fixable’.  

So much of human history has taken place in a world where there was always more – more lands to conquer, more forest to clear, more seas to fish.  Our increasingly sophisticated technology allowed us to do this.  Once the forests of Western Europe were cleared we could send our fleets to find forests elsewhere – and there always was an elsewhere – from the point of view of tropical hardwoods this is currently Papua New Guinea.  But there are almost no frontiers left: we have not learnt the lesson of sustainability – all political rhetoric notwithstanding.  Why are we in Australia having a debate about whether or not to control our population size, on the one hand, while advocating ‘sustainabilty’ on the other.  Population growth and sustainability are oxymoronic concepts.

So in this Year of Biodiversity 2010 what are the greatest threats to the biodiversity on which our future depends.   In Australia three pervasive inter-related threats promise to wipe out great chunks of the very special biodiversity with which this once-isolated continent is endowed: land clearing, invasive species and climate change.  Mixed up with these three are drivers such as inappropriate fire regimes, pervasive agricultural chemicals and lack of connectivity across the landscape.  Anyone of these ideas deserves a whole book not just a short article.  Let me dwell finally then on the most all-pervasive of them, climate change.  

All the predictions of climate models show Australia as a whole becoming warmer and drier with a shift in patterns of rainfall away from the south-east, and an increase in the number of extreme events such as cyclones and droughts.  Predictions of how serious these changes will be vary from model to model.  One thing is certain though, without prompt urgent mitigation we are heading for the worst of any range of modelled scenarios.  Recent global data collected since the famous set of IPCC Predictions were made, show us tracking at or above the most extreme of the predictions whether we are talking about temperature or sea-level.  Some of the first impacts we will see – indeed are seeing already – will be upon biodiversity.  Mountaintop ecosystems will be the first to go – in Australia the unique faunas of our subtropical Antarctic Beech forests and the endemic marsupials and birds of our tropical mountains will likely not withstand the most mild of heating trends.  And all this will impact on us through an undermining of the ecosystem services provided by this biodiversity.  

The recently published book on Australia’s biodiversity and climate change of which I was one of eight authors (Steffen et al. ‘Australia’s Biodiversity and Climate Change’, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 2009) makes many suggestions as how we might cope with these predicted changes.  I close with just two of these.  First we need to start thinking about and managing biodiversity as whole inter-connected sets of species driving complex ecosystem-level processes – retaining our species-centricity for the ikonic symbols of conservation – the striped bandicoots, hairy-nosed wombats and bilbies. Second, we know that ecosystems and the organisms that comprise them have some capability of adapting – not without change and loss of species – but possibly sufficiently to keep the essential services going.  For this ‘resilience’ to be maximised we need to minimise other stressors imposed on biodiversity.  We need to keep our National Reserve System in good order, indeed keep expanding it – it will be more vital than ever under climate change.  We must restore our landscape to put connectivity back into the environment so that natural species have some hope of re-sorting themselves into new ecosystems as the climate vice tightens.  The control of environmental pests and the strict quarantine that minimises their occurrence must be maintained – even in the face of probably unwinnable wars against, for example, invasive ants.  Precious water must be partitioned to allow due amounts to the natural environment itself – this is not water ‘wasted’ but water expended on our own well-being through the services provided by healthy ecosystems.  The list goes on.  Most important of all we need to keep educating people to realise this threat is real and action is essential.

The science is incontrovertible and the few highly vocal nay-sayers deserve no more than pity.  Every month delayed through the playground fights in Canberra or the bully-boy tactics of special interest groups, makes the task of recovery that much harder.

Southeast Queensland is one of Australia’s biological hotspots. It is an area where the sub-tropical and temperate regions known as the McPherson/MacLeay Overlap Zone are a region of diverse landscapes from mountain rainforest to open woodland and wallum wetlands to huge sand islands, mangroves forest, seagrass meadows and coral reefs.

Government reports show many koala populations will be extinct within a few years

It’s not surprising then that the region supports 151 terrestrial ecosystems and a great diversity of species. This richness is recognised worldwide, with southeast Queensland supporting the greatest number of birds in Australia and being botanically one of the richest regions.

However, you would think given this uniqueness and the economic, social and environmental benefits this brings, it would be proudly protected.  On the contrary, only 13.1 per cent of the region’s bushland is protected in National Parks or such like and only 17.5 per cent is in some form of public estate.

The State Government would argue about these figures stating that 80 per cent of southeast Queensland is protected from residential development. But, when you cut through the rhetoric, you soon realise it’s not protected from the impacts of urban growth. Dams, roads, powerlines, pipelines, agricultural and industry are rapidly destroying and fragmenting the little remaining bushland in southeast Queensland.

The fact is biodiversity in southeast Queensland is under pressure from habitat loss primarily due to increased urbanisation, driven by population growth, a fact stated in the State Government’s  State of the Region (SEQ) report.

Another fact is that by 2026 a further 70,000ha of bushland and open space will be lost to urbanisation and, by this time, there will be as much urban land as there is protected bushland estate.

Protecting biodiversity isn’t about protecting the cute and the furry. Protecting our precious biodiversity in southeast Queensland is central to providing people with many economic, social and physical benefits.

The importance of biodiversity to mankind is now more clearly understood and the science around ecosystem services highlights these benefits. Simply put, biodiversity is important for the provision of the air we breathe and drinkable freshwater.

More specifically, biodiversity is responsible for the health of our forests and crops through pollination. There are  hundreds of free services biodiversity delivers and yet State Government planning allows it to be readily destroyed. In essence it appears we are living as though there were no tomorrow.

State planning is currently based upon the fool’s dream of endless growth. The consequence of this is a tragic decline in the diversity of species. No species highlights this better than Queensland’s fauna emblem the iconic koala. The southeast Queensland koala has declined from common to vulnerable.

While being one of Australia’s largest urban koala populations the southeast Queensland ‘Koala Coast’ population has declined by 51 per cent in less than three years with a 64 per cent decline in the 10 years since the original 1996-1999 survey.

The cause of this decline is urban development driven by our unsustainable population growth. Sadly, the State Government is not prepared to stop this growth and government reports show many koala populations will be extinct within a few years.

The story is the same with southeast Queensland birds. Something like 20 or 30 species are in serious decline particularly those reliant upon lowland forests which are subject to the impacts of rampant urbanisation.

This population growth is also impacting upon our waterways. The science shows that urban areas produced more pollution and silt than the same area of farmland.

No surprises then that since 2004 the Healthy Waterways Report card has shown Moreton Bay has gone from a B+ to a D. The situation is grim with the science estimating by 2026 point source and diffuse pollution will increase by 50 per cent and 20 per cent respectively due to population growth.

Sadly if we pursue continued population growth, what made southeast Queensland unique and a healthy place to live will have been replaced by tar and cement. One has to ask is this what southeast Queensland residents really want.

If there is a take home message it is if we continue to grow we will destroy our biodiversity and can only expect southeast Queensland will become an increasingly greyer and grottier place to live.

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