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Australia’s new environmental standards are supposed to protect wildlife. Right now, they don’t.

We have one of the worst mammal extinction rates in the world. We’ve already lost 39 species, including the Christmas Island Shrew and the desert rat-kangaroo, while iconic species like the Hairy-Nosed Wombat, Pygmy blue whale and Swift Parrot continue to slide towards extinction. Forests are still being bulldozed at an alarming rate. Rivers and reefs are under serious pressure.

Fixing this sorry state of affairs was why the Federal Government promised to fix Australia’s broken national nature laws—a promise that culminated in the nature law reforms passed late last year.

A big part of these reforms is the creation of new “National Environmental Standards” — rules intended to guide decisions on projects that could damage nature.

But the Government’s latest draft standards—open for consultation until May 29th—fall dangerously short.

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Instead of setting clear environmental guardrails, the draft rules risk making it easier for damaging projects to get approved, while nature continues to decline. Legal experts are warning that unless the standards are changed, they could weaken protections rather than strengthen them.

So what are these standards, exactly?

The new standards are a centrepiece of major reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act), which were passed late last year and are designed to fix a broken environmental regulatory system. They are meant to set clear rules for what environmental protection should actually look like.

In simple terms, they’re supposed to answer questions like:

• What measures should developers be made to put in place to protect threatened species?
• How do we ensure the most important habitats and natural places are not hacked away, “death-by-a-thousand-cuts”-style, from ongoing development proposals?
• When should a project simply not go ahead?
• What rules should states follow if they’re in charge of assessing development projects?
• How do we make sure nature is actually improving, not just declining more slowly?

If designed and implemented properly, these standards could become the backbone of strong, effective reformed nature laws.

But right now, they leave huge loopholes open.

The biggest problem: process over outcomes

The biggest problem with the draft standards is that they focus too heavily on whether companies follow a process—not whether nature is genuinely protected in the end. That might sound technical, but it has real-world consequences.

Imagine a company wants to clear critical habitat for a threatened species. Under a strong system, the key question should be: Will this project cause unacceptable or significant environmental harm?

But under the current draft standards, if the company follows the required steps and paperwork, the project could still be considered acceptable — even if the damage to nature is clear.

 This is deeply ineffective. Destruction that checks bureaucratic check-boxes is still destruction. The standards should enforce the protection of nature—not just the ticking of procedural boxes.

A smaller definition of habitat could leave wildlife exposed

Another alarming change in the draft standards is the narrowing of how “habitat” is defined, which could have serious consequences for wildlife protection.

Habitat is more than just the exact spot where an animal is seen sleeping, nesting or feeding today; we need to think more holistically about habitat as a connected network of ecosystems that species may rely on to survive, including breeding grounds, migration corridors, areas used during drought or fire, and places they may need to move to as the climate changes.

But the draft standards effectively shrink the areas considered important enough to protect by defining habitat as only very small areas that if destroyed would certainly send the species extinct, rather than habitat which maintains and restores healthy populations able to thrive well into the future.

For animals already under pressure from habitat destruction and climate change, protecting only the bare minimum is a dangerous approach. In practice, that could mean that places which are essential for threatened species to recover and survive long term are destroyed just because they are not classified under the standards as ‘habitat’—a lose-lose outcome for biodiversity and the Australian government’s nature protection goals.

Offsets are still doing too much heavy lifting

Australians have heard the promise before: “Yes, this area will be damaged — but it’ll be offset somewhere else.” In practice, environmental offsets have severely failed to replace what was lost.

You can’t instantly recreate a centuries-old forest. You can’t quickly rebuild complex wildlife habitat. And some ecosystems simply cannot be replaced once destroyed. Yet the draft standards still rely heavily on offsets rather than prioritising avoiding harm in the first place.

The standards must reduce their reliance on offsets, and instead prioritise actual habitat protection. Because once extinction happens, there’s no offset for it.

Australia cannot afford another backwards step on nature

The Albanese Government came to office promising to end Australia’s extinction crisis and repair national nature laws. But this will be a broken promise if the huge loopholes in the National Environmental Standards aren’t addressed.

Right now, Australia is losing wildlife and ecosystems faster than they can recover. Scientists have warned for years that incremental change is no longer enough.

Strong standards could help turn things around by:

• stopping destruction in critical habitat,
• setting firm limits on environmental harm,
• requiring genuine recovery for nature,
• and making decision-makers accountable for real outcomes rather than process.

If the Government locks in rules that prioritise process over protection, Australia risks entrenching the very system that caused the crisis in the first place.

Speak up for nature

Have your say on nature laws

Make a submission

What needs to change?

The Government still has time to fix the draft standards before they are finalised over the next month.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on the government to:

• ensure decisions are based on outcomes, not just process
• ensure that all important habitat is protected, not just narrow areas
• ensuring that death-by-a-thousand-cuts is avoided by considering the “cumulative impacts” of multiple projects in a region
• ensuring offsets are only used as an absolute last resort

Australians were promised stronger nature laws—not more loopholes. Australia’s wildlife cannot afford another missed opportunity.You can help ensure the Federal Government’s final standards put to parliament are as strong as possible by putting in a quick submission here.

Australia’s nature is in trouble.

The small project is underway at Central Campus, with room for expansion. Its energy usage could complicate the university’s climate goals.

By Lisa Sorg

DURHAM, N.C.—Duke University plans to build a small data center at Central Campus, potentially the first of several similar-size projects, which has raised questions among some faculty about whether the energy- and water-intensive endeavors could derail the institution’s climate commitments.

Duke University Plans a Data Center It Says Will Boost ‘Environmental Responsibility and Sustainability’