Saving the Environment in a Day

You have 24 hours to save the planet! Your time starts now.

By David Salt

Can the environment be saved by proclaiming a ‘day for the environment’?

I once attempted to start a ‘day’ to save the environment. I called it ‘Anthropocene Day’ and its aim was to get people thinking about the impact of our species on Planet Earth (nothing too ambitious there).

What, you’ve never heard of ‘Anthropocene Day’? (Please tell me you know about the ‘Anthropocene’.) Well, that’s not surprising. The idea went nowhere. I managed to stage a public forum involving some leading scientists debating the pros and cons of when the Anthropocene began*.

The forum went well, we got a full house (at the National Museum of Australia) and generated some lively debate.

After the event, everyone said “what a great idea for a ‘think fest’; let’s do this again next year, but maybe even bigger! Heck, let’s make Anthropocene Day a Week!”

Then, when I attempted to get follow up action, everyone was too busy to do anything more and the idea, with my enthusiasm, fizzled. Clearly the world was too preoccupied for my great concept. (Or maybe the idea simply wasn’t as compelling as I thought it was.)

In any case, I began to think, does the Environment really need another ‘celebratory’ day to save it?

In a days

Now, most people are aware one environment day or another. Earth Day is celebrated on 22 April in more than 193 nations. World Environment Day, hailed as the “United Nations’ principal vehicle for encouraging awareness and action for the protection of the environment”. It’s staged each 5 June in over 143 countries.

But do you know how many big days there are for the environment around the world? A quick net search turns up a Wikipedia list of around 130 days! That means approximately every third day the world is celebrating some worthy environmental cause – from International Zebra Day on 1 January through to Monkey Day on 14 December. (Sensibly the world is given time off in the week before Christmas to shop).

So, maybe the world simply can’t accommodate one more environmentally themed day; though Anthropocene Day was down for the 16 July* which meant it would only have had to share the time with World Snake Day.

However, even if we could squeeze in one more environment day (or even 10 more), would it actually make any difference?

World Reef Day (June 1) is not reversing the increased frequency of mass coral bleachings being witnessed around the world.

International Orangutan Day (19 August) isn’t doing much to reverse the clearing of the tropical forest the critically endangered orangutan depends on.

And Freshwater Dolphin Day (24 October) is unlikely to secure a certain future for the five remaining species of freshwater dolphin, all of which are endangered or critically endangered and live in degrading river systems.

In fact given the dire outlooks provided by multiple international groups like the UNEP, IPCC and IPBES on climate change and biodiversity you really have to ask what difference any of these environment days make.

Seeds of hope or fig leaves of distraction?

I think there are several strong arguments for and against the big day for the environment.

They encourage increased focus and energy around single issues, something that wouldn’t happen otherwise. They generate activity that builds awareness and sometimes even makes a difference to specific locations and species. Sometimes these activities produce environmental champions that dedicate their lives to saving some part of the environment.

On the other hand, environmental days often give the impression that major issues of environmental degradation are being addressed when in fact they’re being ignored. Sometimes this is by putting out pretty brochures while not doing anything substantive for the issue in question; some would describe this as greenwashing. Sometimes it’s by doing great work on the issue in question while ignoring its connection to other environmental issues like climate change. In this way we focus on the small picture while ignoring the larger context.

Consider World Wetlands Day (2 February). It’s one of the big environmental days of the year and it occurs next week. The day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971. This occurred in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea (and the agreement is more often referred to as the Ramsar Convention).

Wetlands going under

This year the Ramsar Convention is 50 years old making it one of the oldest and most significant international environmental agreements ever formulated. One hundred and seventy countries have signed up to it. In signing up, a country agrees to conserve and wisely use all wetlands, prioritise the conservation of ‘Wetlands of International Importance’ (Ramsar Sites), and cooperate across national boundaries on transboundary wetlands, shared wetland systems and shared species (for example, migratory water birds). There are currently over 2,300 Ramsar Sites, covering almost 2,500,000 km².

The Ramsar Convention Secretariat supports World Wetlands Day (which has been running since 1997) and also produces the Global Wetland Outlook which summarises wetland extent, trends, drivers of change and the steps needed to maintain or restore their ecological character.

All this is good but in their very own Outlook statement they record that 87% of the global wetland resource has been lost since 1700. More worrying, approximately 35% of the world’s wetlands were lost between 1970-2015 with annual rates of loss accelerating from the year 2000. In other words, since World Wetlands Day has been running we’ve been losing wetlands at an accelerating rate. You could argue that the result may have been worse had World Wetlands Day never existed but you couldn’t claim this Day has saved our wetlands.

By the way, the city of Ramsar is rapidly becoming land locked as the Caspian Sea retreats as temperatures rise with climate change. Its wetlands will soon be no more.

On our side of the planet, the wetlands of Kakadu, a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, is facing the opposite problem. The floodplains are being inundated by saltwater as sea levels rise, again associated with climate change. Our national government proudly supports World Wetlands Day and the Ramsar Convention while doing as little as possible against climate change.

More than greenwash

This isn’t an argument against World Wetlands Day or environmental days in general. But it is a call that such celebrations need to be more honest and reflective rather than just celebratory. They cannot merely be an exercise to making us feel good.

All indicators are telling us the environment is in serious trouble and in most cases that degradation is accelerating. If you are a fervent supporter of one of these events, ask yourself if it’s making a real difference to the situation it was established to address. If it’s not, look around for something that is making a difference and invest your blood, sweat and tears there.

But also ask yourself what you might do to make more of these events because they are opportunities to raise issues that maybe are forgotten most of the time. One colleague of mine checks each day to see what environmental theme is being celebrated. He uses this as a conversation starter with his work mates to find out what they think about the plight of sea turtles, frogs, zebras, pangolins…

I reckon that’s the right spirit to engage with these Days. Don’t ask “what this Day can do for me?”, rather consider “what can I do for this Day?”

*The Anthropocene refers to the age of humans, a time in which human activity has distorted the Earth System. Many researchers are campaigning to have it be declared as official geological time period. It began at 5.29am on Monday 16th of July 1945 (the dawn of the Great Acceleration) though some scientists contend that it actually began with the invention of the steam engine (in 1778, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) or the development of agriculture (some 10,000 years ago, the Agricultural Revolution). Either way, it’s a great concept to get people engaged with what we humans are doing to the planet. And, while climate change is a central part of this story, it’s not the first thing argued so discussions on the Anthropocene don’t instantly polarise the debate as occurs when the topic of climate change is raised on its own.

Image: World Wetlands Day is held on 2 February every year. It encourages the community to learn about and celebrate the many values of wetlands, and governments to protect them for current and future generations. World Wetlands Day has been running since 1997. Since then, wetlands around the world have been lost at an accelerating rate. (Image by David Salt)

From Silent Spring to the Franklin and back to Lake Pedder?

Some things never seem to change. Some things change in unexpected ways.

By Peter Burnett

What might be described as the ‘modern environmental era’ is often dated from the publication in America of Rachel Carson’s hugely influential book, Silent Spring, in 1962. This book, which dealt with the impacts of the indiscriminate use of pesticides such as DDT is widely credited with spawning modern environmental action.

Don’t cry over spilt oil?

It was not until the late 1960s that environmental awareness really took off however, accelerated by a spate of major pollution incidents including the shipwreck of oil tanker Torrey Canyon off Cornwall in 1967 and two incidents in America in 1969, a huge oil spill from a drilling platform off Santa Barbara, California, and the spontaneous ignition of the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River near one of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie.

These events helped propel the world’s first comprehensive environment law, the US National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, known as NEPA, through the US Congress with an overwhelming 372-15 vote in the House of Representatives and unanimous support in the Senate. Shortly afterwards, Americans celebrated 22 April as ‘Earth Day’, an event marked in America by an estimated 20 million friendly marchers in various cities.

All this consensus and community spirit in America seems strange to the contemporary observer.

Meanwhile, in Australia, things were getting electric

Environmental concern was also rising dramatically in Australia. These international events were influential, but the dominant issue at the time was the proposal to dam the pristine Lake Pedder in Tasmania, known especially for its stunning pink quartzite beaches.

The protests began in 1967 when the Tasmanian government, led by Premier ‘Electric Eric’ Reece, revoked Pedder’s National Park status as a precursor to damming the lake.

The campaign to save Lake Pedder failed, but it did spawn a number of political and policy firsts with enduring impacts, including the formation of the United Tasmania Group, now seen as the world’s first green party, and a campaign to secure federal intervention to stop the dam.

Some things change, some things don’t

Sixty years later, one thing about Silent Spring that still speaks strongly to us is the response it elicited. The chemical industry launched a fierce campaign to discredit Carson and to frame the real threat to society as pest insects, not insecticides.

Unfortunately but not unsurprisingly, this kind of ‘hard ball’ response is still found today, a recent Australian example being then-Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s campaign to portray a fixed price for carbon introduced in 2011 as a ‘tax’. Only some years after Abbott had won government on the back of this campaign would his then Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin, acknowledge that ‘it wasn’t a tax as you know… we made it a tax … [T]hat was brutal retail politics …’

Our inability to find a collaborative way of dealing with what are, after all, shared problems, remains our heaviest policy shackle.

On the other hand, while federal intervention didn’t save Pedder in the 1970s, it did save the nearby Gordon-below-Franklin (‘Franklin’) dam in the 1980s.

In fact, the Hawke Labor government came to power in 1983 on the back of a promise to do just that. Even my conservative mother wrote ‘No Dams’ on her ballot paper, something I still find hard to believe nearly 40 years later.

The Pedder campaign and the subsequent campaign to block the nearby Gordon-below-Franklin dam a decade later present a graphic illustration of just how rapidly environmental politics and power could evolve.

The Pedder campaign failed where the Franklin campaign succeeded. Pedder was protected but its (State) protected status did not save it; the Franklin was saved by gaining that status (federally).

Federal intervention failed in the case of Pedder but succeeded for Franklin. More accurately, federal intervention in the form of federal offers, in effect, to buy Tasmania out of its development plans, failed in both cases; federal intervention ultimately succeeded for the Franklin because of federal legislation.

The Commonwealth was able to use a Constitutional springboard, World Heritage listing, that did not exist at the time of Pedder. By the time of the Franklin controversy this springboard had come into existence by dint of Australia’s ratification of the World Heritage Convention in 1974. (The full legal mechanics of this, including the High Court battle over the Commonwealth’s World Heritage Properties Act 1983, are a story for another blog).

And when things do change, sometimes it’s forever and sometimes maybe not …

But the Lake Pedder story may not be finished. Now there’s a campaign, fifty years after it was flooded, to restore the lake to its original glory. They say restoration is possible.

Unfortunately, for many things environmental, restoration is not possible. But dialogue about our shared environmental problems, including the need to invest in restoration, remains possible, no matter how unlikely it may appear at present.

About as likely as the restoration of Lake Pedder.

Post Script: This is the first instalment of a new series of occasional blogs I am working on that reflects on environmental policy failures and successes, and the lessons they provide. The series has the working title of ‘policy lessons’.

Image: The shores of Lake Pedder prior to it being drowned in 1972 for a hydro-electric scheme. (Photo by Stefan Karpiniec, CC BY 2.0)

We need a BIG win for the environment

Something to make us proud again

By David Salt

When was the last time our government did something really big, something landmark in scale, for the Australian environment?

Putting a price on carbon in 2011 was pretty big. Unfortunately, thanks to the ideological malfeasance of the Abbott Coalition Government, this was aborted in 2014 just as it was starting to make a difference to our country’s carbon emissions, so this was more of a big loss than a win. (Also, that was more about our nation’s contribution to global sustainability than to Australia’s environment per se.)

BIG wins in our Nation’s history

No, for something ‘big’ I think you need to look further back. Maybe it was 2004 when the Howard Coalition Government established one of the world’s best marine national parks on the Great Barrier Reef by increasing no-take areas from 5% to 33% (using some of the world’s cutting edge conservation science – which happened to be Australian led!).

And, on the topic of the Great Barrier Reef, maybe you’d cite the disallowance of oil drilling on the Reef in 1975, or the Reef’s successful selection as a World Heritage site for its outstanding natural values in 1981.

These were all world-leading big wins for the Australian environment; actions that made us feel proud of our environmental stewardship. Unfortunately, though each action was internationally noteworthy, none of them are saving the Great Barrier Reef (or coral reefs anywhere) from climate change.

But big wins weren’t merely reserved for our beautiful and much loved coral reef (with the earning potential of billions of dollars each year). The nation also felt proud when conservationists (represented by the Australian Conservation Foundation) shook hands with farmers (represented by the National Farmers Federation) to launch the movement known as Landcare in 1989. The Hawke Labor Government threw in $360 million and proclaimed a Decade of Landcare.

So popular was Landcare that it paved the way for even bigger packages of funding in the form of the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) in 1997. The Howard Coalition Government forked up over $1 billion dollars (generated by the sale of Telstra) to drive the NHT. Some claim it was a bribe to get the public to accept the sale of our public telecommunications company (a claim I’ve made myself on occasion) but the significance here is that the success of Landcare and our desire to heal the land was strong enough for us to take the money.

The fact that Landcare hasn’t reversed the pattern of environmental degradation being witnessed across Australia or that the Australian National Audit Office found the NHT was ineffectual because the money was spread too thinly and without any real strategy reflected the enormity of the challenges we were facing. However, their establishment signalled the government was serious about the environment and the effort gave the electorate at least some reason to hope.

Standing together on ‘No Dams’

For my money, one of the biggest environmental wins in Australia was back in 1983 when the Hawke Labor Government blocked the Tasmanian Government from building the Franklin Dam in south west Tasmania. The ‘No Dams’ campaign saw the will of the Australian people triumph over the vested interests of the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission. As a nation we stood up, through the national government, and defended the values of a World Heritage river that was destined to be drowned. Saving it made the nation proud.

I think it’s true that we have had big environmental wins in the past; symbolic and real. But the examples I cite (from 1983, 1989 and 2004) are now many years old. And, if ever there was a time we needed something to make us feel good and try harder, now is that time.

Now more than ever

Now, as we see climate-fuelled disasters rise and rise we need a signal that we still have a capacity for wise environmental stewardship.

Now, as we see our children throw up their hands in despair, we need to provide them something to believe in.

Now, as we see tribalalised politics and polarising partisanship tear asunder community trust, we need to provide examples of partnerships and alliances between traditional adversaries (farmers and conservationists for example) to demonstrate good faith and common purpose.

Now, as we see fake news, conspiracy and hate speak fill our media feeds, we need to see good governance, accountability and transparency in taking on the environmental challenges that beset us.

So, as we launch into a new decade, I call on environmentalists and nature lovers everywhere (individuals, NGOs, public servants, business people, farmers, researchers and decision makers): keep up your good fight for sustainability, call out injustice where you see it, but put some of your mental reserves into coming up with ideas for something BIG for the environment that has the potential to build hope, common purpose and pride.

Image by alicia3690 from Pixabay