Australia has become a global deforestation hotspot but, together, we can turn things around.
Australia is a global winner loser
A hidden deforestation crisis is underway in Australia and our iconic wildlife is under threat. Australia is number one in the world for mammal extinction and number two in the world for biodiversity loss.
Queensland takes the trophy for the state with the highest rates of deforestation – bulldozing more than all the other states and territories combined1. But how did it get so bad?
A bulldozer brutally rips down trees in an Australian forest.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Queensland’s longest serving Premier, famously developed a technique for bulldozing massive areas of forest and bushland, using a giant anchor chain connected between two dozers to rip the forest apart. Joh oversaw the destruction of millions of hectares of forest and woodland in the Brigalow Belt of Queensland, which is one of the country’s 15 national biodiversity hotspots2.
Throughout the nineties, the Australian environment movement fought for stronger laws to end the destruction of forests and woodlands. Deforestation rates started to decline before state Governments were urged by industry to loosen laws, and once again rates of deforestation began to climb.
Today, much of the environmental destruction is going on unchecked by government or environmental bodies, so the scale of the problem is hidden from view and only exposed by expert research and investigation.
Satellite images expose deforestation that is hidden from the public view.
What’s the beef with deforestation?
Over 73% of deforestation is for the primary purpose of beef production3. Trees are bulldozed and then piled up and burnt or left to rot, invasive grasses are planted and cattle are brought in.
It’s really no wonder considering Australia is the 4th largest exporter of beef in the world. The majority of beef (60-70%) produced in Australia is for export. The remainder, however, ends up in steaks on the shelves of supermarkets like Woolworths and Coles and patties for burgers sold at fast food restaurants like McDonalds and Hungry Jacks.
Most beef is produced in the state of Queensland, so let’s take a closer look at beef driven deforestation in that state. In the five years from 2016-2021, over 2.2 million hectares of forest and bushland was bulldozed in Queensland alone4. Over 90% of the destruction each year was listed as being for pasture conversion.
While the vast majority of deforestation is for beef pasture, there are many other drivers – logging, mining, urban development and more recently the production of renewable energy.
Australia’s forests and bushland have been chopped, logged, pushed and dozed at scale since colonisation – mainly to create pasture for cattle and livestock. Today, just 50% of Australia’s original forests and bushland remain intact.5
1 second = 1 dead animal
The destruction of forests and bushland is having a huge impact on native animals. Every second a native animal is killed as a result of deforestation6 – in Queensland and New South Wales alone. That is tens of millions of animals and birds killed every year.
Much of the forests being destroyed are home to threatened species. In the 5 years from 2016-2021, 90% of deforestation was in habitat where threatened species are likely to make their homes.
Koalas are now endangered in NSW and QLD due to deforestation
Threatened species like the koala, northern quoll, northern hairy-nosed wombat and many more. Animals are now listed as endangered because they have lost their homes and their lives in a brutal and often bloody way.
Trees are the lungs of the planet – they clean our air and store massive amounts of carbon. When they are bulldozed, that carbon is released. So deforestation not only harms native animals, but it drives the climate crisis as well.
How to win the war on our forests
With all of these dire facts it might be hard to see the how we can save our vulnerable forests, birds and animals. But we have a plan to turn the destruction around – a two-pronged campaign strategy.
Step 1 – Ensure our government makes strong laws
The first step in winning is to make the government step up and bring in strong nature protection laws that don’t let this destruction continue unchecked. This year the Australian government will face a huge test — a once-in-a-generation reform of our national nature laws.
Without strong laws that genuinely protect and restore nature, the destruction of wildlife and forests will continue and countless more native animals will face extinction.
Step 2 – Hold our biggest beef buyers to account
Next we need to get big corporates to clean up their act and, because the leading cause of deforestation is beef production, get it out of their beef supply chains.
We will be exposing the problem and calling on the biggest buyers of Australian beef – supermarkets and fast food chains – to clean up the deforestation in their supply chains.
- Ward, M. and Watson, J. 2023. Why Queensland is still ground zero for Australian deforestation. The Conversation.
︎ - DES. 2018. A Biodiversity Planning Assessment for the Brigalow Belt Bioregion: Expert Panel. Version 2.1. Brisbane: Department of Environment and Science, Queensland Government. ︎
- The Wilderness Society. 2019. Drivers of Deforestation and land clearing in Queensland. ︎
- Greenpeace, 2024. New Greenpeace research reveals shocking scale of deforestation crisis in Australia. ︎
- Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Little left to lose: deforestation and forest degradation in Australia since European colonization, Journal of Plant Ecology, Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 109–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/jpe/rtr038 ︎
- Finn Hugh C., Stephens Nahiid S. (2017) The invisible harm: land clearing is an issue of animal welfare. Wildlife Research 44, 377-391. ︎
https://www.greenpeace.org.au/article/australia-deforestation/
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Just transition
At COP30 in Brazil in 2025, nations agreed to establish a practical mechanism to help drive a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.
Key aspects of this “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate finance
Climate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigation
At negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCs
Back in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issues
Turkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
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Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit