Natural election time

Nature Conservation Council CEO Pepe Clarke. Photo by Anna-Louise Howards.

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW (NCC) and five other environmental groups are calling for coal seam gas mining to be ceased immediately as an election priority, but do your local candidates and their parties agree?

The NCC will launch its manifesto for the NSW environment, Natural Advantage, at a special environmental meet the candidates forum in Lismore next Tuesday, March 22, where the public can quiz would-be members of parliament, including Shadow Minister for the Environment Catherine Cusack, about where their parties stand on this and many other environmental issues.

Natural Advantage deals with the key concerns facing the NSW environment and outlines 99 solutions that policy makers can implement immediately to mitigate these.

NCC CEO Pepe Clarke, who will launch the document and address the meeting, said it’s about distilling the fundamental environmental issues and translating them into state-level policy with clear direction on how to take action.

“The reason for the document’s title is that healthy natural ecosystems and a healthy environment underpins the entire social and economic fabric of our state,” Pepe said. “Healthy ecosystems provide billions of dollars of goods and services for the well-being of local communities and businesses from erosion control and flood mitigation to clean water and fresh fish.”

There are 10 key points the document looks at, two of which have been in the headlines locally during recent weeks – coal seam gas mining and native forest logging.

The document states all mining should be halted until an environmental strategy is developed.

“The environmental impacts and human health impacts (of CSG) are poorly understood – poorly understood by the public and by NSW regulators. Until regulators are totally prepared to manage the impacts to human health and groundwater we really do need to take a breath here and get a regulatory framework in place,” Pepe said. “What we really need in NSW for mining and gas development is a strategic planning approach that tells us that some areas will in fact be off limits to mining and gas extraction due to their agricultural or environmental values or due to human health risks. We also need an approval process for mining and gas operation that strikes a genuine balance between mining profits and local social and environmental values. At present the general philosophy seems to be if the resource is there the government gets out the way to let mining companies get in there. This doesn’t meet the expectations of people in NSW.”

The document also states that there should be an immediate move from native forest logging to sustainable plantations, and compliance enforcement by government authorities.

“Essentially the native forest industry as it exists in NSW is unsustainable – we’re cutting more timber than we can sustainably regrow,” Pepe said. “There was an expectation in the Regional Forest Agreements that a large plantation estate across the state would come online. It was assumed it would happen soon enough to afford logging our forests unsustainably, but it didn’t.

“Native forests provide many benefits from catchment protection and flood control to wildlife habitat and they are massive carbon stores. “When we log them we lose a lot of the carbon in the forests and in the soil itself, so in terms of climate change it’s very important to keep them intact. We’re not ruling out timber production from native forests entirely, but we should be reserving them for only the most high value specialty timbers.”

These and many other issues will be discussed at the forum, which is being presented by the North Coast Environment Council at the Red Dove rooms at the Uniting Church, 80 Keen Street, from 6-8.30pm. Everyone is welcome.