This week marks a major moment in Australia’s long and frustrating struggle to fix its broken national nature laws. The federal government has finally tabled long-awaited reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, a piece of legislation that has, ever since it was enacted, failed to protect Australia’s unique wildlife and ecosystems.
But the bill the government has put forward, while offering some positive new legal architecture, unfortunately falls far too short. Critical gaps in addressing deforestation and climate impacts from big coal and gas projects remain, and there is far too much leeway in how the federal environment minister is allowed to apply the law under the proposed new provisions. We’re calling on the Australian Parliament to fix these significant problems and pass laws that properly protect nature.
The Background: A Broken System Finally Gets Attention
It’s been widely acknowledged for over a decade that the EPBC Act is deeply flawed. Despite being Australia’s key environmental law, it has done little to stop habitat loss, species decline, and the relentless clearing of native forests. Native habitat equal to an area the size of Tasmania has been bulldozed in Australia since the EPBC Act came into force in 2000—a stark reminder of the ineffectiveness of the laws.
A major independent review five years ago laid out a roadmap for reform, recommending stronger protections for nature and streamlined approvals for business, including renewable energy projects. The idea was simple: if we establish strong, science-based rules up front and create an independent environmental regulator, we can both protect nature and provide greater certainty for ecologically sustainable development.
Last term the government attempted a partial reform, mainly to establish a national EPA (Environment Protection Authority), but unfortunately this did not eventuate. Now, under new Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt, Labor is trying again and attempting to move at great speed to deliver a full package of legislative reforms before the end of the year.
What’s in the Reform Package?
While there is new legal architecture that could be made strong (new rules and standards and a national Environment Protection Authority), ultimately the current package falls well short of what is actually needed to protect nature. Major improvements are essential to the Bill that is now before the parliament.
At Greenpeace we have four major tests of success:
1. Closing the Deforestation Loopholes
In the current laws, agriculture (particularly beef) and native forest logging remain virtually exempt from the Act, even though deforestation is one of Australia’s major drivers of species extinction and carbon emissions. The current provisions in the Bill do not close these glaring loopholes. Without reform here, Australia’s forests, and the wildlife that depend on them remain hideously vulnerable to the mass destruction of bulldozers and chainsaws that currently has our country recognised as a global deforestation hotspot.
This is a big issue we need to keep pushing on to fix—these reforms are not credible without action to close the loopholes around deforestation
2. Stronger Upfront Protections
- The government is introducing stronger upfront environmental tests (the “unacceptable impacts” test), giving the Minister the power to reject development projects outright before assessment if they are going to do serious damage to nature.
This could be made into a strong element of reformed laws
- They are proposing to introduce ‘national environmental standards’ for those projects and regional plans which do get assessed and developed.
This could give clearer delineation of what needs to be done to protect nature but details are yet to be released and there’s too much wriggle room proposed for how these standards are applied
- There will be higher penalties and the power to halt projects that breach conditions are excellent additions.
This is good and has been a long time coming, but does not work as a standalone if the rest of the laws don’t do what’s needed.
- They are proposing to overhaul the biodiversity offset scheme, introducing a ‘net gain’ test where developers are meant to ensure improved overall nature protection and the ‘mitigation hierarchy’ where they have to prove they have tried to avoid and mitigate nature impacts before buying offsets.
But they are planning an offset fund which risks becoming a way for businesses to circumvent obligations, enabling developers to just buy their way out of responsibility- not a good thing.
- A proposal for a system of ‘accreditation’ which would allow states that meet new rules and standards to undertake assessment and approval of development projects.
This is deeply concerning. The Commonwealth should retain its approval powers-especially over damaging fossil fuel projects
- A proposal to expand on a ‘national interest’ exemption, giving the Environment Minister greater scope to circumvent the new proposed rules.
This is also deeply concerning. This exemption should be tightened to emergencies and security purposes only.
3. A Strong and Independent National Regulator
We will finally see the creation of a National Environment Protection Authority (EPA) — a long-overdue step. However, the Minister will still retain the power to override some decisions.
The proposed level of ministerial discretion risks undermining the regulator’s independence and the overall protective functioning of the Act, and would extend one of the core failures of the current system.
4. Embedding Climate Considerations
Astonishingly, the new national nature law still does not require decision-makers to consider climate impacts. The government has ruled out a ‘climate trigger’ that would require assessment of projects with significant emissions. This omission leaves Australia’s environment exposed to worsening heat, drought, bushfires, and floods driven by fossil fuel expansion. In order to be credible, the EPBC must be meaningfully cognizant of the physical reality of the impact of global warming on the environment and biodiversity that it is intended to protect.
This is another big issue on which we need to keep pushing
As our CEO David Ritter put it:
“The Albanese government was returned to power promising to fix Australia’s broken nature laws and the Bills as they stand do not deliver on that promise. We strongly support overhauling Australia’s broken nature laws. But the Bills as tabled fail to address the two key drivers of extinction and the destruction of nature-deforestation and climate change”
The Road Ahead
The Bills have been tabled in Parliament, and debate is about to heat up. Now the reforms head to a Senate Inquiry — where key negotiations with the Greens, the Coalition and crossbenchers will determine the final shape of the law.
If the Senate moves quickly, the reforms could pass by late November. Alternatively the process could carry into the new year when Parliament next sits.
What Needs to Happen Next
Parliament must now work together to fix the gaps in these Bills. Australia needs a nature law that actually protects nature. One that:
- Closes the loopholes that allow deforestation and logging to continue unchecked
- Embeds climate considerations into the functioning of the Act
- Limits ministerial discretion and strengthens the independence of the EPA
- Ensures there are strong upfront nature protections in place
Meaningful action to address the climate and nature crises will not only safeguard ecosystems, it will secure a safer, more liveable future for all Australians and reinforce our global reputation as a clean, green country.
After years of advocacy, research, and tireless campaigning, we’re closer than ever to real change. But the coming weeks will be crucial. The decisions made now will shape the fate of Australia’s forests, wildlife, and climate for generations to come.
So strap in–the fight for Australia to have effective national nature laws is entering its most important phase yet.
Piers Forster is Professor of Physical Climate Change and founding Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement, which has become a key compass in policymaking over the past years, preventing us from reaching a world with 4°C of warming. Climate ambition and implementation must continue at the pace the Paris Agreement requires.
Ten years ago, governments adopted an agreement that was supposed to keep the global average temperature “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial times and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
A decade later, 1.5°C is no longer a distant possibility but a lived reality.
UN accepts overshooting 1.5C warming limit – at least temporarily – is “inevitable”
The Paris Agreement is failing to meet its lowest temperature goal. Yet it has done something profound: it has steered the world away from 4°C of warming, towards a level closer to 2-something.
That is nowhere near safe, but it is not nothing.
As a climate scientist, I’ve seen the climate changing over the years. The influence humans exert on it is unequivocal. And it became clear that in a world that is shifting so rapidly, it’s key to provide decision-makers with frequent, robust updates on the state of the climate system. This is why, together with other colleagues, we created the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) initiative.
Hot seas and even hotter land bring dangerous impacts
Since 2023, we’ve been using IPCC methodologies to update key climate indicators that help us track how the climate is changing and how much of that is due to human influence. We found that global greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, with around 53 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) having been released into the atmosphere, much higher than the approximate 41 GtCO2 in 2014.
The planet is now around 1.4°C warmer than in the late 19th century, compared with roughly 0.4°C in 1990, the year I embarked on my PhD, and about 1°C in 2015.
Land temperatures increased by 1.79°C from 1850–1900 to 2015–2024 and ocean temperatures by 1.02°C over the same period. Among the negative consequences of a warmer ocean, there’s sea level rise, which impacts coastal areas and becomes very dangerous for human settlements in those areas.
Unnervingly, this is likely the most stable and safest climate we will know for the next hundred years or more, given the carbon dioxide levels already in the atmosphere.
Capital shifting to clean energy sources
Although not as fast as humanity requires, climate policies have moved forward. The most visible change is in the power system. In 2015, renewables and nuclear made up about 24% of global electricity generation; today, they account for just over 40%.
In most of the world, new wind and solar are now cheaper than new fossil power. The economic case is better than ever to transition. The investment, innovation and policy shifts triggered or accelerated by Paris have rerouted capital in the right directions.
Taking the UK as an example, the government passed a net-zero emissions law in 2019, becoming the first major economy in the world to take such a step. The UK has also made significant progress in reducing emissions: in 2024, emissions levels were around 50% below those in 1990.
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Here’s what we need in the next 10 years for the Paris Agreement to survive its adolescence:
First, science cannot be treated as a battleground.
The latest IPCC cycle (AR6) had a more balanced authorship than ever before, with an approximately equal split between experts from the Global North and Global South and near parity between men and women. That diversity has strengthened, not weakened, the scientific consensus.
Yet at this year’s COP30 climate conference, some governments tried to sideline IPCC findings and to block routine updates on the state of the climate from the final decision text – not because the numbers were wrong, but because they were angry at the glacial progress on climate finance or did not want their own climate ambitions scrutinized too closely.
However, turning the scientific messenger into a target will not move a single dollar or tonne of CO2.
Second, the world needs to stop obsessing over the “net” in net zero.
The cheapest, fastest and most reliable way to slow the pace of climate change is to replace fossil fuels with renewables and, where appropriate, nuclear power, backed by storage, grids and efficiency.
Yes, we need to plan for carbon dioxide removal and yes, we need to help nature restore its damaged ecosystems. These “net” parts of net zero remain important, but without a planned phase-out of fossil fuel production and use, the Paris temperature goals are dead.
There are, however, glimmers of a post-fossil politics.
Charting a path away from fossil fuels
At COP30 in Belém, 24 countries, including major fossil fuel producers such as Australia and Colombia, backed language that points towards a managed transition away from fossil fuels.
And 18 nations have now endorsed the proposal for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would, in effect, do for coal, oil and gas what earlier treaties did for nuclear weapons: cap, then wind down, the most dangerous stocks.
Colombia seeks to speed up a “just” fossil fuel phase-out with first global conference
The Brazilian COP presidency is also working on a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, signaling that the politics of “how” to leave fossil fuels behind is finally catching up with the science of “why”.
In some ways, it feels like 2014, when momentum built and delivered the Paris Agreement. The difference now is that we have the means to deliver on this vision.
The post Why the Paris Agreement worked – and what it needs to do to survive appeared first on Climate Home News.
Why the Paris Agreement worked – and what it needs to do to survive
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Wisconsin Tribes Have Helped the Lake Sturgeon Recover. Climate Change Is Stressing Its Ability to Adapt.
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On a cool October morning, members of the St. Croix Chippewa Tribe gathered at the Clam Lake boat landing in northern Wisconsin, carrying five-gallon buckets of small, wriggling lake sturgeon. After a short prayer calling on their ancestors, they tipped the six-month-old fish—raised in the Tribe’s newly built hatchery—into the lake. It was the Tribe’s first sturgeon release and the latest chapter in one of North America’s great freshwater conservation success stories.
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