ARE RIVERS A LIVING ENTITY ?

 “Is a River Alive?”  That’s the title of a new book by British author and professor, Robert Macfarlane, which goes beyond thinking of a river as a living entity, as do many indigenous peoples around the world, including Australia’s First Nations people, who worship rivers as life-giving deities.

The notion of accepting rivers as living beings and granting them rights under the law is not new. Many have argued in support of legal protection for rivers, sometimes successfully. In fact, some two decades ago, Ecuador embedded four Rights of Nature articles in its constitution, granting ‘Mother Earth’ “the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”

 

Then, as recently as 2017, New Zealand legislated that the Whanganui River, “from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements” is a “‘legal person’ with the capacity to represent itself in court and to bear rights - the right to flow unpolluted and undammed to the sea, for example, and the right to flourish.”

 

This concept is also close to the hearts of local Clarence Valley activists who have been campaigning for the past seven years to stop mining and mineral exploration in the valley, for fear of potential pollution.

 

When reading an article on Macfarlane’s exploits and endless campaign to have rivers given the constitutional protection they so clearly deserve, I was struck by the description of that campaign as, “enabling the engagement of constitutional and legal tools in defence of natural systems from their most voracious predators: us.” Certainly, mankind is the most invasive and destructive species this planet has ever seen.

 

The Clarence River’s water quality is dreadful, mainly through mud from up-stream erosion for which humans are entirely responsible. Thoughtless and often outdated agricultural practices, and a failure to fence livestock out of rivers, along with logging of forests, which are nature’s water filters, are also contributors.

 

Rivers are our lifeblood, so it’s imperative that we clean up our act.

 

    - John Edwards 

HERITAGE DESTRUCTION AND CLIMATE FOLLY IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

A few weeks ago new Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt announced the approval of fossil fuel giant Woodside’s North West Gas extension giving it permission to operate until 2070.  This decision, which the Minister claims contains strong conditions, has been condemned by environmentalists and First Nations people but unsurprisingly welcomed by Woodside and the Western Australian (WA) Government. 

Opposed by First Nations peoples for years, the North West Shelf gas project has been operating since the 1980s.  Gas extracted off the Pilbarra Coast is processed at Woodside’s plant at Karratha on the Burrup Peninsula.  Burrup (Murujaga) is also the location of around 500,000 ancient First Nations carvings or petroglyths.  This ancient art is of such significance that in 2023 former Environment Minister Plibersek applied to have it listed as a World Heritage site.  The United Nations' Heritage Committee recently flagged concerns over the ongoing effects of degrading acidic emissions from the Karratha processing plant on the fragile carvings and the need to prevent any further industrial development.

Minister Watt did not have to consider climate impacts of  Woodside's extension but what damage it might do to the rock art as well as economic and social matters.  His conditions largely focus on air emissions from the project.  For decades processing plant gases such as nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ammonia have been gradually eroding the petroglyths without any effective state or federal government action to protect them.  Whether Minister Watt’s “strong conditions” will actually work, even if they are effectively monitored and enforced, is open to question.

Environmentalists oppose the extension because of the huge emissions the project will create over its increased lifetime.  As well as undermining Australia's drive to lower emissions, it threatens the nation’s climate credibility at a time when it is seeking endorsement to co-host the UN COP31 climate talks in 2026.  Any claims by uninformed politicians and others that this extension could lead to nationally cheaper domestic gas supplies or to improved gas supply on the East Coast are nonsensical as only WA will see increased supply.

The only certainty is legal action and increased campaigning against the folly of continuing to allow expansion of fossil fuel projects.

-        Leonie Blain

 Adapted from an article originally published under the title "Heritage Destruction and Climate Folly" in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent ,4 June, 2025.

 

WILL CLARENCE VALLEY COUNCIL EVER LEARN

 Clarence Valley Council’s delayed April Council meeting (held on April 24)  approved two significant development applications on land subject to flooding.  One was on the floodplain close to Maclean and the other in a low-lying area adjacent to Rushforth Road in South Grafton.  Concerns about flooding and other matters raised in submissions by many community members about these developments were disregarded by the majority of Councillors who voted to approve them. These representatives appear to have learnt nothing about the folly of continuing to develop on the floodplain.

The Maclean development - a 24 hour, seven days a week Service Centre – is close to the motorway’s Maclean exit.  As the site is on the floodplain in a flood storage area, the Service Centre will be built on a raised mound using an estimated 66,000 cubic metres of fill.  Shades of the West Yamba disaster! 

The three councillors who opposed the development referred to a range of detrimental effects it would have including noise problems for nearby residents as well as clearing of important vegetation in an area of endangered ecological community (Swamp Open Forest of Broad-leaved Paperbark) and the potential for fuel spills and leakage to enter the adjacent wetlands and the Clarence River.

One of the submissions opposing the development commented on the location of Service Centres and their proximity to urban areas, stating that the criteria for Service Centres is that they be constructed well away from residential areas to mitigate noise and light pollution.  This is necessary because of the volume of traffic – and particularly the numbers of large trucks.  Motorway service centres at Chinderah, Ballina, Halfway Creek and Nambucca Heads are away from urban areas. So how did Maclean come to draw the booby prize?  Why was it not sited further north, and adjacent to the motorway on flood-free land?

In relation to this continued folly of floodplain development, it’s interesting to remember how assorted Federal and State politicians in 2022 proclaimed building on floodplains would have to stop.   While they are ignoring the problem, our council is rushing ahead making the existing problem worse.

-        Leonie Blain

Adapted from an article originally published under the title "When will they ever learn" in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent ,7 May, 2025.