Cultural protection order has been framed as a push to curry favour with inner-city seats, ignoring grassroots campaigns from Indigenous and non-Indigenous locals
Among the concerns listed by the 2,000 farmers who converged on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra last week was the protection of prime agricultural land from renewable energy developments.
It has become a common refrain. The National party leader, David Littleproud, warned at the party’s annual federal council on Friday of the risk to prime agricultural land from energy transition projects. The mining magnate Gina Rinehart took to the stage at a business event last year to warn that one-third of Australia’s prime agricultural land could be “taken over” by renewable energy projects. In almost every campaign against a proposed development in the bush, the potential impact on prime agricultural land is raised as a key concern.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Back in the heady new government days of July 2022, Tanya Plibersek told the National Press Club that change was coming for environmental protection in Australia after a decade of disaster and neglect.
Releasing the five-yearly state of the environment report, which the previous Coalition government had received months earlier but put in a drawer until it was turfed from office, the new environment minister said it told a “story of crisis and decline in Australia’s environment”.
The destruction of nature is a global crisis. Establishing protected areas of forest is a common policy governments use to tackle the problem.
Indeed most countries, including Australia, have signed a global agreement to protect 30% of land by 2030. But to what extent do protected areas, such as national parks and nature reserves, actually preserve forests?
My new research examined this question. The findings are the first global-scale estimate of where protected areas are succeeding and failing.
Alarmingly, I found protected areas fail to prevent forest loss in many parts of the world. Clearly, we must make these areas more effective to conserve the remaining diversity of Earth’s plants and animals.
Establishing protected areas such as national parks is a key tool to preventing biodiversity loss.Shutterstock
Probing protected areas
Forests are often destroyed through human activity such as logging with chainsaws or the deliberate use of fire. The aim is usually to extract timber, or to clear land for agriculture, roads, housing or other human purposes.
Natural bushfires can also damage forests. In some cases, ecosystems are so badly burnt they cannot recover. There’s a link to human activity here too, because human-caused climate change is leading to more severe, frequent, and wider-ranging bushfires in places such as Australia.
I wanted to know how well protected areas prevent forests from being lost.
To work this out, I first took a map that covers the precise boundaries of about 300,000 of the world’s protected areas. I overlaid it with high-resolution satellite data from between 2001 and 2022 showing forest loss just inside and just outside these boundaries.
This method assumed if forest loss was much higher just outside the boundary of a protected area than inside, the protection was working.
Conversely, if forest loss was relatively similar inside and outside the boundary, that shows the protection did not have a strong effect.
This idea can apply even if forest loss on both sides of the boundary is low – because it suggests the area is remote or otherwise not sought-after for human activity. In these cases, we have no evidence that protection is effective, because the forest probably would have been retained even if the protection wasn’t in place.
What I found
I found protected areas prevent an average 30% of forest loss that would have occurred if the policy was not in place. Forest loss occurred in protected areas in all countries – including Australia – but less frequently than in unprotected forest.
The 30% figure is discouragingly low. But it does indicate protected areas are effective to some degree. And effectiveness varies significantly across countries, as the below graphic shows.
World map showing effectiveness of protected areas around the world. Red is least effective, dark blue is most effective. White indicates data was insufficient.Author provided
The policy is almost completely ineffective in many countries, including Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, Venezuela, Madagascar, Russia and Gabon. Several of these countries house vast amounts of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. Most, but not all, are developing economies.
In the case of forest loss due to fire, protected areas in advanced economies were also ineffective in some cases.
Australia is a good example. Protected areas here were fairly effective from 2001 to 2018. But the horrific 2019–20 Black Summer fires burned indiscriminately through large swathes of protected forest.
In better news, protected areas were highly effective in some areas, such as New Zealand, Canada, Scandinavia and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).
Protected areas in Canada are reasonably effective.Shutterstock
What this all means
My research illustrates the large improvements needed in many protected areas across the globe to genuinely conserve forests. More research is also needed to understand the best policies to achieve this, before it’s too late.
Developing countries clearly need help to protect their forests. Corruption, political instability, and a lack of resources can make it difficult for governments in these nations to enforce forest conservation laws. Government indifference can also play a role.
How do we turn this around? Schemes such as REDD+, which pays local communities to conserve forest that may otherwise be cleared, could be scaled up.
Foreign aid for forest conservation, from countries such as Australia, can also help. And non-government organisations such as African Parks can put rangers on the ground to help patrol and enforce the integrity of protected areas.
Technology such as real-time deforestation alerts from satellite data can also help.
My findings also highlight the threat climate change poses to forest ecosystems in Australia and elsewhere. Obviously, fire does not respect the boundaries of a national park or other protected area.
So yes, it’s great to see governments around the world signing up to protect 30% of their land. But my work shows attention is needed to make sure those protected areas are working.
Timothy Neal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
You’ve probably heard of the widespread benefits of therapy dogs — or even cats or horses — but in a groundbreaking approach to mental health care, a unique form of therapy is making waves.
Australia has debated and studied high-speed rail for four decades. The High Speed Rail Authority has begun work on a project that could finally deliver some high-speed rail in the 2030s.
The Albanese government set up the authority in 2022. It also committed A$500 million to plan and protect a high-speed rail corridor between Sydney and Newcastle. This corridor was prioritised due to significant capacity constraints on the existing line, among other reasons.
The ultimate plan is for a high-speed rail network to connect Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and regional communities across the east coast. The network would help Australia in its urgent task to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport. These continue to increase even as emissions from other sectors fall.
The authority has now publicly outlined plans for the first stage of this east coast network. After a history of failed proposals dating back to 1984, the new plans provide some cause for optimism that Australia could have some high-speed rail by 2037.
What is high-speed rail and why do we need it?
The International Rail Union of Railways defines high-speed rail as new lines designed for speeds of 250km/h or more and upgraded lines for speeds of at least 200km/h.
High-speed city-to-city rail services will be needed to become an attractive alternative to air travel.
What is the authority working on?
Early this year the High Speed Rail Authority gained a new CEO, Tim Parker, with extensive experience in delivering mega-projects. In late August, the authority outlined its plans at an industry briefing in Newcastle.
The authority has commissioned eight studies, including a business case for a Sydney–Newcastle line. Significantly, it will include the cost of future highway upgrades if high-speed rail does not proceed. This study, along with a report on how high-speed rail will proceed along Australia’s east coast, is due by the end of this year.
Also under way is a geotechnical study that includes drilling 27 boreholes. It will help determine the proposed depths of two long rail tunnels and guide decisions on crossing the Hawkesbury River and the route to the Central Coast and on to Newcastle.
All going well, including land acquisition and agreements with the New South Wales government (which could include funding), work could start in 2027 and be completed by 2037.
The Newcastle Herald reports on the industry briefing to deliver a high-speed rail line by 2037.Philip Laird
Many questions remain
Given the time and money required to deliver a Sydney–Newcastle line, bipartisan support will be needed. However, the federal opposition is yet to make a clear commitment to high-speed rail.
There are other uncertainties too. Will the trains be operated by the public or private sector? The latter was the intention for projects that were scrapped decades ago, such as the CSIRO-proposed Very Fast Train (VFT) linking Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, and the Sydney–Canberra Speedrail.
And how will the engineering projects be delivered? The new authority must learn from the project management problems in delivering the Inland Rail freight line. The project is running late and costs have blown out.
Some major federally funded government projects have worked well. These include upgrades of the national highway system (by state road authorities and contractors) and the new Western Sydney International Airport, which is nearing completion.
And what about a full Sydney–Melbourne line?
The big question is when work will start on a Sydney–Melbourne high-speed rail service. In 2019, International High-Speed Rail Association chairman Masafumi Shukuri estimated building this line could take 20 years.
The present line is 60km longer than it should be as the route dates back to the steam age. It also has far too many tight curves. This means train travel on this line is slower than cars and trucks.
As former NSW State Rail chief Len Harper said in 1995, this railway was already “inadequate for current and future needs” even back then.
When the VFT was proposed in 1984, questions were raised as to whether our population was big enough for such a project. Now, more than 15.5 million people live in NSW, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. Melbourne–Sydney is the world’s fifth-busiest flight route.
Advocacy group Fastrack Australia has called for a Sydney–Melbourne track built to high-speed standards and able to carry freight. The estimated travel time is four hours.
This group and the Rail Futures Institute propose the line be built in stages, with priority given to the section from near Macarthur to Mittagong in NSW. This would reduce the current line’s length by about 18km and allow for better Sydney–Canberra train services.
Urgent action is needed to protect the rail corridor from encroaching urban development.
Australia needs to catch up
In June 2023, when the new authority started work, I observed that Australia must surely hold the world record for studies into high-speed rail with no construction.
In stark contrast, this October marks the 60th anniversary of the world’s first dedicated high-speed rail line, the Tokaido Shinkansen in Japan linking Tokyo to Shin-Osaka. The network has since grown in stages to about 3,000km of lines.
Today, high-speed rail operates in 21 countries over about 60,000km of lines – China has about 40,000km. Indonesia’s high-speed rail service between Jakarta and Bandung started running last year. India and Thailand are in the advanced stages of delivering high-speed rail. It’s also under construction in another 11 countries.
Australia could finally join them in the next few years if it starts building the Sydney–Newcastle line.
Philip Laird owns shares in some transport companies and has received funding from the two rail-related CRCs as well as the ARC. He is affiliated, inter alia, with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia and the Rail Futures Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Leaked government figures show proportion of assets in adequate condition has fallen ‘significantly below’ target
Thousands of flood defences in England that are supposed to protect properties from serious damage are in a state of disrepair, according to official figures leaked to the Observer before what is expected to be a wetter than usual autumn.
Data from inside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency about the so-called “asset condition” of key flood defences shows the proportion of those regarded as being in adequate condition now stands at just 92.6%, compared with 97.9% in 2018-19. This is the proportion of defences judged to be fit for purpose after rigorous inspection by experts.
