In the early 1970s Australia (and many other nations) made
commitments to protect its important and representative ecosystems. The
two key documents in this regard are the United Nations Stockholm
Declaration, and the Ramsar Wetlands Convention. These commitments were
later reinforced through the 1982 World Charter for Nature (an agreement
by the UN General Assembly) and the 1992 Convention on Biological
Diversity – one of the most widely supported of all international
agreements. The CBD is particularly important as national programs
continue to be guided by resolutions of the Conference of the Parties.
Under
the guidance of these agreements, Australia and other nations commenced
programs aimed at the protection of biodiversity in terrestrial,
freshwater and marine ecosystems. These programs had two main thrusts.
First, the single most important strategy world wide is the creation of
networks of protected areas – permanent reserves where at least some
threats to biodiversity are effectively managed or eliminated. However,
it was immediately recognised that such reserves could never contain
more than a small percentage (10 or 20 percent at most) of the world’s
ecosystems and habitats, so the second major program is to protect as
far as practical biodiversity across broad landscapes. This is achieved
through a variety of legislative and incentive programs (pollution
controls and land use planning, for example).
My work
since the year 2000 has focused on evaluating just how effective
Australia’s programs have been in the areas of protecting aquatic
biodiversity.
Considerable progress was made in the area of
terrestrial biodiversity in the 1980s, as the Commonwealth Government,
in cooperation with the States, developed the National Reserve System.
In the 1990s attention moved to marine ecosystems, as Australia
commenced a program to develop ‘comprehensive, adequate and
representative’ protection for marine ecosystems through a network of
marine protected areas in Commonwealth and State waters. Australian
scientists, like Jamie Kirkpatrick and Bob Pressey, became world figures
through their work on the theory and practice of systematic
conservation planning (see the landmark paper by Margules and Pressey).
However
little systematic attention was given to freshwater ecosystems. Each
Australian State did declare reserves under the Ramsar Convention,
however these were not developed under a systematic national plan, and
to this day no national evaluation has been undertaken to identify areas
which meet the Ramsar criteria. The Ramsar reserves which were
developed in response to local initiatives do protect important lentic
ecosystems, however water of course moves through reserve boundaries,
and all too often no management steps were taken to protect the water
which sustains these ecosystems. In many cases rivers and streams
flowing towards the reserves where dammed and harvested, and
groundwaters drained.
The terrestrial NRS reserves
were often established with little regard for the conservation needs of
riverine ecosystems. Today, four decades after Australia’s initial
commitments, there has been no conservation status assessment to
determine whether riverine ecosystems are adequately protected within
terrestrial reserves. Dr Janet Stein of the Australian National
University has recently published an analysis which found that of
Australia’s 2,900,000 kilometers of mapped streams, only 12,334 km, or
less than half of one percent, fell into what might be described as a
“fully protected” category within terrestrial reserves. Her paper
concludes: “Owing to a variety of pervasive threats, a more
comprehensive conservation status assessment of these ecosystems would
undoubtedly yield an even more pessimistic result. Such an assessment is
recommended”.
It should be noted that New Zealand has undertaken a comprehensive
national assessment of its freshwater ecosystems. It should also be
noted however, that in New Zealand, as in Australia, action to protect
freshwater on the ground has lagged far behind both policy and science.
One
of Australia’s best known freshwater conservation biologists is
Professor Richard Kingsford of the University of New South Wales. In
2006 he and fifty other prominent scientists published a paper calling
for urgent action. Unfortunately, this call remains as urgent today as it was then:
The
need to establish comprehensive and representative freshwater protected
areas is urgent, given increasing concerns about limited water
availability for Australia’s cities, industries and agriculture – and
the ongoing degradation of aquatic ecosystems. This should be
accompanied by effective land and water management that pays more than
lip service to the environmental requirements of aquatic ecosystems.
State governments should act with the support and collaboration of the
Commonwealth.
The most urgent initiative appears to be a
national reserve system ‘gap analysis’ which would identify those
ecosystems most at risk. A comprehensive national assessment of the
conservation status of freshwater ecosystems should be undertaken
immediately. Such a study would provide a platform for the systematic
expansion of the nation’s freshwater protected areas, as well as a
catalyst for innovative ‘bottom-up’ conservation approaches driven by
local stakeholders.
In other countries there have been important
practical initiatives with regard to protecting river and stream
ecosystems. Canada’s ‘Heritage Rivers’ and the USA’s ‘Wild and Scenic
Rivers’ provide important models for other countries. However in
Australia, Victoria’s ‘Heritage River’ management plans, prepared over a
decade ago, were never finalized or implemented. The current Queensland
State government, newly elected, came to power on a platform which
included the roll-back of designated ‘Wild Rivers’. In the marine area,
newly declared Commonwealth protected areas are a travesty of the
original vision on which the program was founded in the 1990s.
We
live in disturbing times. The sixth major global biodiversity extinction
event, this time under the hand of mankind, has commenced, with the
science increasingly clear. The threats to biodiversity from escalating
inroads into natural habitats, as well as the effects of a warming
climate and increasingly acidic oceans, are again clear from a
scientific perspective. Yet, in Australia as globally, politicians,
elected on short-term policy platforms, seem unable to understand, let
alone act on, the damage which confronts us, damage which is already
undermining the life support systems of Planet Earth.
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