Where to now with biodiversity after Dasgupta?

Will Australia follow the UK’s lead on significant biodiversity policy reform?

By Peter Burnett

Author’s note: this is the second part of a two part blog: See Leaders and laggards for part one.

At the end of my earlier blog on Professor Partha Dasgupta’s recent review of The Economics Of Biodiversity for the UK Government, I posed the question of why the UK Government seems to be taking the challenge of biodiversity decline reasonably seriously while the Australian Government had made the biodiversity crisis such a low priority?

After all, it’s hard not to agree with Dasgupta’s basic argument that Nature is our most precious asset, that it is biodiversity that enables Nature to be productive, resilient and adaptable, and that our demands on Nature far exceed its capacity to continue supplying us with the goods and services on which we will rely.

And, helpfully, Dasgupta has given us a clear recipe for fixing the problem:

First, ensure that our demands on Nature do not exceed its supply.

Second, change our measures of economic success to base them on wealth, not income alone (ie GDP).

Third, transform our institutions and systems to enable these changes for the long term.

The UK response

The UK’s response to Dasgupta formed part of a multi-pronged environmental push, taking advantage of the coincidence of three major global meetings being held in 2021. The first two were or are being hosted in the UK: the G7 in Cornwall, (June) and the COP 26 Climate Convention meeting in Glasgow (November). Then there was the COP 15 Biodiversity Convention in Kunming, earlier this month.

The Dasgupta Review helped the UK negotiate the G7 2030 Nature Compact, in which the G7 leaders committed to halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030, as part of a double commitment that ‘our world must not only become net zero, but also nature positive’.

A ‘nature positive’ outcome would be actioned across four ‘core pillars’:

Transition for example by reviewing environmentally-harmful subsidies;

Investment in nature, including identifying ways to account for nature in economic and financial decision making;

Conservation, including through new global targets to conserve or protect at least 30% of land globally and 30% of the global oceans by 2030; and

Accountability, including by producing ambitious and strengthened National biodiversity plans and more transparent metrics and success indicators.

The UK is also seeking to leveraging its COP 26 Presidency in Glasgow to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable international supply chains (supply chains that factor in impacts to biodiversity).

In its domestic response to the Dasgupta Review, the UK’s headline commitments were first, to adopt the ‘nature positive’ goal, defining it as ‘leaving the environment in a better state than we found it, and reversing biodiversity loss globally by 2030’; and second, to reform economic and financial decision-making, including the systems and institutions that underpin it, to support the delivery of a nature positive future.

Specifically, the government amended its Environment Bill, which already contained a mechanism for setting environmental targets, to include a legally binding target on species abundance in England for 2030. It is also legislating a ‘biodiversity net gain’ standard for nationally-significant infrastructure projects.

Finally, the UK co-sponsored a ‘30 by 30’ Leaders’ Pledge for Nature at the CBD COP 15 in Kunming, China. This pledge, currently supported by some 70 countries, is to protect at least 30% of global land and at least 30% of the global ocean by 2030.

What about Australia?

While Australia has now moved, with great reluctance, to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, it has displayed no interest in the Dasgupta Review or in making serious biodiversity commitments more generally.

In fact, our current biodiversity strategy, Australia’s Strategy for Nature 2019-2030 is a lightweight document that has was heavily criticised during public consultation.

We did join the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and commit to the 30×30 target although, as I explain below, our commitment is not what it seems.

Nevertheless, because Prime Minister Morrison announced this at the G7 meeting in Cornwall (as an invited guest) I think we can give part of the credit for this to Dasgupta and the UK: the PM would not have wanted to attend without a good ‘announceable’ in his pocket.

Anyhow, our 30×30 commitment comes on top of having exceeded (or, as the PM would say, beaten) our Aichi 2020 targets of 17% of land in reserve and 10% of marine areas in reserve, by reaching nearly 20% of land in reserve and 37% of marine areas.

In announcing our 30×30 commitment, the PM announced an intention to increase the area in marine reserves to 45%.

In her subsequent statement to COP 15 in Kunming, Environment Minister Sussan Ley announced plans to increase Australia’s Indigenous Protected Area network by another 3.7 million hectares of land and sea, and to establish  two new Australian Marine Parks around the waters of Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. These would increase the percentage of protected Australian waters from 37% to 45%.

Despite the size of this increase, I think it represents talking up easy goals. As you can see, the marine reserves are in the Indian Ocean, well away from areas of significant economic activity on the Australian mainland.

Similarly, I think the government has found it easy to add further Indigenous Protected Areas to the reserve system because, again, most of them are away from areas of significant economic activity. The government has acknowledged this in Australia’s most recent report to the CBD in our most recent national report:

“despite this growth [in the size of the reserve system], only minor progress has been made since 2011 in meeting representation targets for ecosystems and threatened species. In part, this is because most growth has been in desert bioregions, so that representation improvements have been highly localised.”

UK v Australia: what’s the difference?

While no doubt there’s plenty of politics and padding in the UK’s response to Dasgupta, I think there is also plenty of substance to the actions they are taking. And legislating targets for species abundance and biodiversity net gain for major developments (along with an independent monitoring agency) should reduce the wriggle room substantially.

Australia, on the other hand, is all for the talk but not much for the walk.

At the end of the day, Australia’s position on biodiversity is similar to our position on climate change. We are all for signing up to the goals, as long as, to use the words of Scott Morrison in announcing Australia’s net zero by 2050 commitment:

~~Its~~ not a plan at any cost. There’s no blank cheques here. It will not shut down our coal or gas production or exports. It will not impact households, businesses or the broader economy with new costs or taxes imposed by the initiatives that we are undertaking. It will not cost jobs, not in farming, mining or gas, because what we’re doing in this plan is positive things, enabling things. It will not increase energy bills. It won’t. It is not a revolution, but a careful evolution to take advantage of changes in our markets.

That’s right. We’re all in favour of action, provided this comes at no significant cost to the budget, no taxes or other costs to households and no loss of production, exports or jobs (ie no costs to the economy. And no legislation.

Can you imagine what kind of policies meet these stringent no-cost, no-obligation criteria? That’s right. Marine reserves thousands of kilometres from both population centres and economically-significant activity.

UK v Australia: why the difference?

And why is this ‘Australian way’, as Morrison calls his approach, so different to the British way? I think it’s just the way the politics have played out. In Australia, the Coalition has demonised environmental policy for so long as being a creature of the ‘green left’, that the political cost of substantive action on the environment is just too high.

In the UK, it played out differently. Margaret Thatcher was in favour of climate action in the 1980s, while in the 2000s, David Cameron, then still in Opposition, was able to galvanise support for the Conservative Party with his line ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’.

Will the Coalition in Australia ever run such a slogan? Not in this political generation.

Banner image: Image by Angelo Giordano from Pixabay

Climate polarity – when it comes to carbon emissions it’s the super-rich versus the world

By David Salt

On the one hand we have Australia’s richest woman telling the privileged students of one of Australia’s most exclusive schools that global warming is not caused by humans.

On the other, we have the NGO Save the Children releasing an extensively researched (and independently reviewed) report pointing out global warming is caused by humans and the consequences of this are that children worldwide will suffer.

There is somewhat of a cosmic gulf between these two positions.

Unfortunately, when it comes to government action on climate change, it seems the beliefs of Australia’s richest woman are more important than the suffering of coming generations.

“Be very careful about information spread on an emotional basis or tied to money”

Australia’s richest woman, if you’re in any doubt, is the iron ore billionaire Gina Rhinehart; and she made her comments denying the link between human activity and climate change in an address to students at St Hilda’s in Perth, her old school.

In her speech she said humans do not cause global warming and warned against climate change ‘propaganda’. She said the girls should consider influences such as the sun’s orbit, volcanoes and “other scientific facts that I had the benefit of learning when I was at school.” (Note, these are standard red herrings put forward by the ‘Church of Climate Denial’.)

She believes people are being “overwhelmed by media and propaganda” regarding climate change and urged St Hilda’s students to “research for the facts.”

Gina Rhinehart is on old world climate denier with deep investments in the coal industry and a major supporter of the National Party, the political party that has effectively blocked national action on climate change in Australia for most of the last decade.

Her most breathtaking statement in her speech to her old, privileged school was: “Please be very careful about information spread on an emotional basis, or tied to money, or egos or power-seekers.” Breathtaking for its irony, lack of reflection and hypocrisy. And so sad for the truth it enfolds – that the money, egos and power-seeking of the super-rich trump the sustainable future of civil society itself; the ‘truth’ is that the power that the super-rich wield to protect their investments (against the interests of everyone else) is more potent than the democratic processes we established to steward the common good.

Over time, this blog, Sustainability Bites, has discussed the many reports that document the parlous state and degrading trends of our environment (think bleaching coral systems, burning forest biomes, extreme weather and collapsing biodiversity). We’ve also noted the growing chorus of appeals for action from government from all corners of society (think emergency workers, doctors, economists, academics and lawyers); all largely ignored by our national government.

All of this came to mind as I read Rhinehart’s message to her old school, and all of it I’m sure she would have simply discounted as emotional, biased and fear mongering being driven by people with vested interests.

What about the children?

About the same time as Rhinehart was delivering her world view on the state of the world, I saw a report from Save the Children painting a stark future for the children of the world. The report, titled Born into the climate crisis, reveals the devastating impact the climate crisis will have on children and their rights if nations do not work together to limit warming to 1.5C as a matter of the greatest urgency. Launched ahead of global climate talks in Glasgow, the report is based on new modelling led by researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

The report reveals that even if nations meet their Paris Agreement pledges, a child born in 2020 will experience on average: twice as many bushfires; almost three times as many crop failures; two and half times as many droughts; three times as many river floods; and seven times more heatwaves in their lifetime compared to what Baby Boomers have lived with (Rhinehart, I note, was born in 1954; right in the middle of the Baby Boomers).

In Australia, children born in 2020 can expect to experience four times as many heatwaves, three times as many droughts, as well as 1.5 times as many bushfires and river floods, under the current trajectory of global emissions.

This is not an isolated or ‘out there’ conclusion. It’s in keeping with predictions from a range of different sources attempting to understand and manage the consequences of climate change. The World Health Organization, as one other recent example, has just released a report confirming that climate change is the most pressing concern and threat to people’s health saying rising temperatures threaten to undo the past 50 years of improving global health!

It’s just not fair

According to the Oxfam, the world’s wealthiest 1% of people produce double the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%. Thing about that.

The wealthiest 5% alone – the so-called “polluter elite” – contributed 37% of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015.

The world’s richest enjoy the fruits of economic growth. The world’s poorest, pay for it.

Oxfam makes a very strong connection between inequity and climate change. It says: “The fight against inequality and the fight for climate justice are the same fight.”

Further, it says governments everywhere need to end subsidies for fossil fuels (according to the IMF, the fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute!) and stop mining and burning coal. It’s fairly explicit about this: “Nowhere in the world should governments allow the construction of a single new coal-fired power station, the public health and climate costs of which are borne by the poorest and most marginalized communities worldwide.” Against this background it is to be noted that the Australian Government has just last week signed off on four new coal mines to proceed.

And, as Oxfam points out, climate impacts hit the poorest hardest. What’s more, climate change is pushing more people into poverty. The World Bank estimates that an additional 68 to 135 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2030 because of climate change.

Is it any wonder the super wealthy would rather not reflect on the many inconvenient truths associated with climate change?

Let them eat cake

It’s reputed that in the 1789 during an awful famine in France, the plight of the peasants was brought to attention of the queen, Marie Antoinette. They are starving and have no bread, she was told; to which she replied: “Let them eat cake.”

The queen was not popular with the people, seen as profligate and out of touch. The massive inequities present in France at the time precipitated the French Revolution, which led to the annihilation of the royal family. Marie Antoinette lost her head on the guillotine in 1793. Maybe she should have shown a little more concern and empathy for the poor of her nation.

Gina Rhinehart is a member of our planet’s super elite. Her outrageous fortune is based on minerals extraction and fossil fuel. She rejects the science underpinning our understanding of anthropogenic climate change, encourages others to do the same, and shows little regard for the plight of a growing number of people on this planet (including coming generations).

She has the right to her own beliefs but when those beliefs shore up the recalcitrant National Party causing our nation to turn our back on an effective climate change response, people have the right to call her out.

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she were to respond with “Let them eat cake.”

Banner image: Anthropogenic climate change is an inconvenient (and oft discounted) truth in the eyes of the super-rich. (Image by Tumisu from Pixabay)

Leaders and laggards: The Dasgupta Review of Economics of Biodiversity

United Kingdom acts on biodiversity, while Australia says ‘Das who?’

By Peter Burnett

Author’s note: this is the first part of a two part blog.

In our colonial past (and, more recently, as a pre-World War II British ‘Dominion’), Australia used to look routinely to the United Kingdom for policy leadership.

For example, when we were hit by the Great Depression, the Australian Government invited Sir Otto Niemeyer, of the Bank of England, to visit and advise on how to respond to the crisis. Mind you, we owed the Brits a lot of money, which we were now struggling to pay, so in many respects the visit was a negotiation between debtor and creditor.

More relevant to the environment, Australia’s post-war planning laws were heavily influenced by British reforms such as their Town and Country Planning Act 1932.

These days, while Australia retains a strong affinity with Britain, the UK is just one among many countries whose policies we might consider as possible models.

In the case of biodiversity, it’s a pity we aren’t still a little tied to the old apron strings, as the British are leaders in this area while we are laggards. (As one recent example, Australia has been singled out for mammal extinction in a recent UN biodiversity report.)

Review and response

The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity was written by Sir Partha Dasgupta, a professor of economics at Cambridge. It was commissioned by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (ie, the Treasurer) and published in early 2021.

Within a few months, in July 2021, the UK Government published a formal response.

I know they were in a hurry, so as to leverage their hosting and thus chairing, two out of three major international meetings this year — the G7 Summit in Cornwall (June), the Biodiversity COP 15 in Kunming (this month, October) and the Glasgow Climate COP 26 (November) — but the speed and substance of this response are impressive nonetheless. This is especially true given the limited impact of an earlier report from 2010, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), an initiative of the G8 environment ministers.

What Dasgupta found

Some of Professor Dasgupta’s findings will not surprise readers of this blog:

Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature. Nature is more than an economic good: many value its very existence and recognise its intrinsic worth too …
Biodiversity enables Nature to be productive, resilient and adaptable. Our demands far exceed its capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on …
Our unsustainable engagement with Nature is endangering the prosperity of current and future generations …

Some of Dasgupta’s conclusions about existing policy will also have a familiar ring to many readers, though they bear a welcome clarity (remember, this is an economist advising a Treasury):

At the heart of the problem lies deep-rooted, widespread institutional failure …
Nature’s worth to society – the true value of the various goods and services it provides – is not reflected in market prices because much of it is open to all at no monetary charge …
These pricing distortions have led us to invest relatively more in other assets, such as produced capital, and underinvest in our natural assets …
Many of our institutions have proved unfit to manage the externalities …
Governments almost everywhere exacerbate the problem by paying people more to exploit Nature than to protect it … A conservative estimate of the total cost globally of subsidies that damage Nature is around US$4 to 6 trillion per year …

From this point, the narrative becomes less familiar and more enticing. Choosing a sustainable path, says Professor Dasgupta, will require transformative change, underpinned by levels of ambition, coordination, and political will akin to, or even greater than, those of the Marshall Plan*.

(*The Marshall Plan was a huge five year US program that invested in rebuilding Western Europe after World War II and which spawned the OECD and, in part, the EU itself.)

Although Dasgupta does not make specific policy recommendations, he does provide clear advice for change, geared towards three broad transitions:

(i) Ensure that our demands on Nature do not exceed its supply,
and that we increase Nature’s supply relative to its current level.

In this regard, he says we cannot rely on technology alone. Instead, we need to restructure our patterns of reduction and consumption, fundamentally.

Consistent with this strong advice, Dasgupta favours some types of policy that one might expect to find in a report on biodiversity policy, such as major investment in environmental restoration.

But nor does he hesitate to go into more controversial areas.

For example, many of Dasgupta’s economist colleagues, including those in government, will balk at his rejection of the economic truism that correct pricing will solve all problems:

In the face of significant risk and uncertainty about the consequences of degrading ecosystems, in many cases there is a strong economic rationale for quantity restrictions over pricing mechanisms.

(ii) Change our measures of economic success to guide us on a more sustainable path.

It is not new to argue that GDP does not account for the depreciation of assets, including Nature, and that an inclusive measure of wealth is needed.

Nor is Dasgupta breaking new ground in finding it critical that natural capital be incorporated into national accounting systems. In fact, the UK has been a leader in natural capital accounting.

Nevertheless, until governments really take policy integration to heart, especially by measuring and managing the natural capital impacts of every significant decision, it is good to see strong advice on this point going from an internationally-eminent economist direct to Treasury and government.

(iii) Transform our institutions and systems – in particular our finance and education systems – to enable these changes and sustain them for future generations.

Here, Dasgupta has again been brave enough to enter controversial territory. He says that ecosystems that are global public goods require supra-national institutional arrangements. This is indeed sensitive territory for a government that has just ‘Brexited’ from such a supra-national institution.

For those ecosystems or biomes located within national boundaries such as tropical rainforests, Dasgupta says we need a system of payments to nations for protecting the ecosystems on which we all rely.

Where ecosystems are beyond national boundaries, eg, the oceans beyond exclusive economic zones, he says there should either be globally-accepted charges for their use, eg, for fisheries or, in ecologically sensitive areas, prohibitions.

And this collective international action would not be confined to direct protection of the physical environment. Sustained collective action is needed to transform the systems that underpin our engagements with Nature, above all our financial and education systems.

The global financial system should channel public and private investment towards economic activities that enhance stocks of natural assets and encourage sustainable consumption and production.

Businesses and financial institutions could be required to measure and disclose, not only climate-related risks but Nature- related risks as well. And central banks and financial regulators could support increased understanding by assessing the systemic extent of Nature-related financial risks.

Ultimately, says the report, a set of global standards is needed, underpinned by credible, decision-grade data.

Finally, individual citizens could be empowered to make informed choices and demand the change that is needed. For example, citizens could be educated to insist that financiers invest their money sustainably and that firms disclose environmental conditions along their supply chains, and even to boycott products that do not meet standards.

This recommendation, too, will tread on many toes.

Where to next?

At the end of the day, Dasgupta acknowledges the enormous challenge of the biodiversity crisis but concludes that the same ingenuity that has led us to make such large and damaging demands on Nature can also be deployed to bring about the transformative change we need.

‘We and our descendants deserve nothing less,’ he says.

In other words, we know how we came to fall into this hole, and we have both the capacity and the duty to climb out.

Why then does the UK Government seem to be taking this challenge reasonably seriously while Australian Government makes our biodiversity crisis such a low priority? It’s a question I’ll attempt to answer in my next blog …

Banner image: Detail from the cover of the Dasgupta Report.

Australia’s climate change policy is a marketing slogan!

Our response to our greatest challenge is becoming increasingly absurd, surreal and totally untrustworthy

By David Salt

On opening this morning’s newspaper (Canberra Times, 4 October 2021, p7) I was punched in the guts by an enormous advertisement proclaiming:
“GOOD NEWS. AUSTRALIA’S ALREADY REDUCED EMISSIONS BY 20% (since 2005)
FIND OUT MORE AT POSITIVEENERGY.GOV.AU
AUSTRALIA’S MAKING POSITIVE ENERGY”

That’s really all it said, and the website it directs you to contains little more info either.

(Not so) Pretty in pink

This vivid pink ad was brought to me by the Australian Government. In other words, my taxes were paying for this craven attempt to reframe the Government’s woeful efforts to address the existential challenge of our age – climate change. It’s enough to make you choke on your weetbix (which is what I literally did).

This, when the Government won’t even release a statement on what it intends to do about Australia’s carbon emissions weeks out from what’s regarded as the world’s most important climate conference ever in Glasgow – the crucial COP26 climate summit starting at the end of October (which the Prime Minister is now hinting he will not attend!).

This, following climate carnage around the world in the form of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and hurricanes (not to mention Australia’s own climate catastrophes in the shape of bleaching coral reefs and record fire seasons).

This, following statements from our Deputy Prime Minister (leader of the Nationals, Barnaby Joyce) that his party won’t sign up to any climate plan (a plan he’s responsible for producing) without knowing the cost (at the same time his party happily signed up to an un-costed nuclear submarine program expected to run to hundreds of billions of dollars).

Absurd, surreal and missing the point

It’s so absurd that it’d be funny if it wasn’t about the future of everything I care about.

It’s almost surreal in that Australia is now the climate laggard of the developed world, and yet we boldly (and wrongly) shout we’re doing our fair share, while the rest of the world gets on with serious discussions and greater commitments. And there’s plenty of evidence exposing our duplicity. Australia has been ranked last for climate action out of nearly 200 countries; we’ve become the climate joke of the 21^st Century, a pariah on the world stage.

For let’s be clear about this, the Australian Government’s target of 26-28% emissions reductions (from 2005 levels) by 2030 is patently inadequate. Even when the targets were declared in 2015 by Tony Abbott, a renowned climate denier, they were perceived to be inadequate by the Government’s own climate science agency (which nominated a target of 45% as being what was required if we are guided by the science, a level rejected by Abbott). Since then the science has firmed (and delay has raised the urgency for action) and the call from climate scientists is now for reductions in emissions by 75% below 2005 levels by 2030.

The Australian Government, by contrast, has perverted the discussion to focus exclusively on ‘over-the-horizon’ net-zero targets for 2050, and won’t even commit to this aspiration for that distant year (over 8 election cycles away). It’s academic anyway as climate scientists point out that the world achieving net zero by 2050 is at least a decade too late. In this sense, the climate denialists steering Government policy have won in their efforts to stop meaningful action.

And untrustworthy to boot

Unfortunately, even if we could accept the Government’s claims that our existing targets are acceptable and will play a role in the world addressing climate change, we can’t trust what they’re actually doing to meet those targets.

Recent investigations on Government emission abatement schemes are revealing them to be ‘cheap tricks and hot air’. The report by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and The Australia Institute found “avoided deforestation” projects do not represent genuine abatement as in most cases the areas were never going to be cleared. About 20% of carbon credits created under the federal Coalition’s main climate change policy do not represent real cuts in carbon dioxide and are essentially “junk”, the research suggests. The projects involve landholders being issued with carbon credits and paid from the government’s $4.5bn emissions reduction fund for not removing vegetation from their land.

Of course, the Government’s mantra is “technology not taxes” when it comes to emission reductions. However, once again, there’s little reason to believe their technology push is real or effective. Front and centre is their investment of $250m in carbon capture and storage. So far there’s been little success with this venture and now Australia’s leading miner, Fortescue metals chief Andrew Forrest, has come out and said : “it’s a good soundbite but it doesn’t work.” Indeed, he claims (and he should know) such projects fail “19 out of 20 times” (and even when they do work, they aren’t cost effective).

And we’re not pulling our weight even if these sham policies were to work. Another constantly repeated note in our siren song of denial is that we’re but a small part of the problem emitting a paltry 1.3% of global emissions. We never then acknowledges that 1.3% coming from only 0.3% of the world’s population is actually a shocking record making us the highest emitter per capita in the developed world and one of the world’s top 20 polluting countries. We are among the top 20 biggest polluters in the world, and if you count our exports we’re the fifth largest.

Why is this occurring? According to Angela Dewan, an American journalist discussing Australia’s appalling performance on climate policy (see Australia is shaping up to be the villain of COP26 climate talks), the answer is simple: “It appears that lobbying fossil fuel companies have hijacked climate policy from the Australian people.”

What do you do?

So, what do you do if you have no effective climate policy but you’re worried that you’re lack of action might be hurting your chances of re-election? (The most recent Lowy Climate Poll, for example, found most Australians want Australia to increase its ambitions on climate change policy.)

Easy, simply tell everyone loudly and repeatedly you’re doing a great job, put up yet another catchy slogan (Australia is making Positive Energy!) and take out large striking ads across every form of media (in bright pink).

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. Our current government seems to believe it can fool all of the people all of the time. I’m betting they’re wrong.

Banner image: ‘We’re on a road to nowhere…’ (Image by G John from Pixabay)