In
recent years the NSW Government has made significant changes to native
vegetation and biodiversity legislation.
Despite Government assertions that there will still be adequate
protection for the natural environment, many scientists and conservationists
fear these new laws will result in broadscale rural land clearing and large-scale
biodiversity loss.
Indeed, land
clearing rates in NSW started accelerating even before the changes were passed
in August. This has led to concerns that
NSW will see the same type of devastation as has occurred in Queensland where
hundreds of thousands of hectares of native vegetation have been destroyed annually
(e.g. 395,000 ha in 2015-16).
In an
attempt to stem this destruction the Nature Conservation Council of NSW (NCC)
has launched a legal challenge to the Government’s land clearing codes in the Land
and Environment Court. (The NCC is the peak NSW environment body with more than
160 community organisation members from across the state.)
The NCC
is being represented by public interest environmental lawyers Environmental
Defenders Office NSW (EDO).
The
challenge is based on two grounds.
The
first is the failure by the Minister for Primary Industries to get agreement
from the Minister for the Environment before
the Code was made, with the implied failure of the Minister for the Environment
to act as custodian and guardian of the environment.
The
second relates to the failure of both Ministers to have regard for the
internationally recognised principles of Environmentally Sustainable
Development (ESD), particularly the precautionary principle, the principle of
intergenerational equity and the conservation of biological diversity and ecological
integrity.
Clearing
of native vegetation has been recognised by scientists as a serious problem. It
was listed by the NSW Scientific Committee as a Key Threatening Process under
the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.
However, as EDO Chief Executive Officer David Morris points out, “The
Code allows broadscale clearing across NSW in the absence of any assessment of
its likely cumulative impact on biodiversity or land or water resources.”
The
outcome of this legal action will be of interest to a wide range of community
members as well as the NSW Government.
- Leonie Blain
This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on December 4, 2017.
