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.
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Climate Change
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Pygmy Blue Whale Management Plan
To secure their approvals, Woodside had to develop a plan for how they would manage the significant risks to threatened green turtles if the project proceeds. We’ve had two independent scientists provide a technical assessment of Woodside’s management plan for whales and turtles and their findings are gobsmacking.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could make Scott Reef’s unique green turtles extinct.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Turtle Management Plan
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Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
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