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Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo took to a stage in Apia, Samoa, on Thursday morning to say something pointed. Planned fossil fuel expansions in nations such as Australia represented, for his nation, a “death sentence”. The phrase “death sentence”, Teo said, had not been chosen lightly. He followed up with this: “We will not sit quietly and allow others to determine our fate.”

Teo chose the moment for this broadside well – on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), attended by both King Charles and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The speech came at the launch of a new report on moves by the “big three” Commonwealth states – the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – to expand fossil fuel exports.

These three states make up just 6% of the population of the Commonwealth’s 56 nations, but account for over 60% of the carbon emissions generated through extraction since 1990, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report shows.

Canada and the UK are no climate angels, given their respective exports of highly polluting oil from oil sands and North Sea oil and gas. But Teo and others in the movement to stop proliferation of fossil fuels have reserved special criticism for Australia. That’s because Australia is now second only to Russia based on emissions from its fossil fuel exports and has the largest pipeline of coal export projects in the world – 61% of the world’s total.

The elephant in the room

Tuvalu, like many other small Pacific nations, is laser-focused on the threat of climate change. Across the Pacific, rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion are already pushing people to consider migration or retreat.

Australia has long been influential in the Pacific, even more so as Western states try to outcompete Chinese funds and influence in the region. But fossil fuel exports are a very large elephant in the room.

As Tuvalu’s leader points out, Australia is:

morally obliged to ensure that whatever action it does [take] will not compromise the commitment it has provided in terms of climate impact.

Teo pointed out the “obvious” inconsistency between Australia’s commitment to net zero by 2050 and ramping up fossil fuel exports.

This year, Australia and Tuvalu’s groundbreaking Falepili Union treaty came into force. The treaty includes some migration rights for Tuvaluans as well as a controversial security agreement. But Teo has now flagged using this as leverage to “put pressure on Australia to align its activities in terms of fossil fuels”.

Tuvalu’s diplomatic pressure is a small part of broader efforts by island states facing escalating climate damage to be seen not as passive victims but to emphasise, as Teo said, they are also “at the forefront of climate action”.

Echoing these sentiments was Vanuatu’s climate envoy, Ralph Regenvanu. He called on Commonwealth nations to “not sacrifice the future of vulnerable nations for short-term gains”, and “to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific”.

Vanuatu and Tuvalu have led the campaign for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, committing signatories to ending expansion of fossil fuels. So far, 12 other nations have joined, including Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Republic of Marshall Islands, Colombia and the CHOGM host, Samoa.

Australia all alone?

It’s not surprising to see Australia facing these calls for action. The meeting is being held in Samoa, the first time a Pacific Island state has hosted Commonwealth leaders.

Leaders of other large Commonwealth states have skipped the meeting. Notable by their absence were Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Climate action is one of several background issues in Apia. One of the more significant is the call for reparations for slavery from former British colonies – calls UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is keen to put to the side. But reports on the ground suggest the issues of reparations, monarchy and the future relevance of the Commonwealth are all in the shadow of the main concern – climate change.

The meeting also serves as a precursor to November’s United Nations climate talks, the COP29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Pacific nations are focused on building consensus on climate finance.

Australia has its own concerns. The host of the 2026 COP31 conference will be announced in Baku, with a joint Australia-Pacific bid in competition with Türkiye. Observers suggest Australia is in the box seat, but it has faced consistent pressure from Pacific states to reconcile its actions with its climate rhetoric.

There are domestic implications too. As the next federal election looms, the lure of a potential A$200 million windfall for the COP host city would be more than welcome.

Securing an Australia-Pacific COP could also boost the government’s environmental credentials as it comes under sustained attack from the Greens over fossil fuels and the Coalition over energy security and nuclear power.

In Apia, Pacific efforts to convince leaders of the need for greater climate action are reported to include a walk through a mangrove reserve for King Charles, guided by Samoan chief and parliamentarian Lenatai Vicor Tamapua. Tamapua told the ABC he showed leaders how king tides today were “about twice what it was 20, 30 years ago”, which he says is forcing people to “move inwards, inland now”.

For Australia, difficult questions remain. How will it balance regional demands to phase out coal and gas exports with domestic pressures to maintain jobs, public funds and economic growth? Can it walk the tightrope and be the partner of choice in the Pacific while continuing to explore for, extract and export coal and gas?

These questions will not be resolved in Apia. They might not even be resolved by the next federal government, or by the time COP31 arrives. But they will not go away.

The way Australia and other exporters resolve these tensions will, as Teo says, decide whether Tuvalu stays liveable – or goes under.

Liam Moore, Lecturer in International Politics and Policy, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Nature positive” is seemingly everywhere. Two weeks ago, Australia hosted the first Global Nature Positive Summit. This week, nations are meeting in Colombia for a global biodiversity summit to discuss progress on nature positive commitments.

Nature positive has a simple meaning: ensuring more nature in future than there is now. Making it a reality is the hard part.

It’s necessary because nature is in trouble. Once common species are becoming threatened and threatened species are going extinct. Humans, too, will be severely impacted. When ecosystems are healthy, they provide vital benefits. Insects pollinate crops, trees slow floodwaters, earthworms, fungi and soil critters make healthy soil and natural vistas improve our mental wellbeing.

While Australia’s government is working to embed nature positive ideas in environmental reform efforts, we may see lip service rather than real change. The government’s Nature Positive Plan faces opposition from businesses and politicians ahead of a looming election. And the plan itself doesn’t fully align with true nature positive outcomes.

In our article published today in Science, we lay out four vital steps to ensure nature positive policies are actually positive for nature.

Step 1: Ensure biodiversity increases are absolute

At present, Australia’s planned nature positive reforms would only require developers removing habitat to achieve a relative net gain for nature compared to business as usual.

We have argued this approach won’t work – it should be an absolute net gain.

It might sound abstract – but it makes all the difference. For instance, consider a population of endangered koalas living on the site of a new mine. Any negative impact to koalas would have to be offset with a benefit to the species elsewhere, usually on a separate site.

If Australia had absolute net gain in effect, the company would have to ensure there are more koalas overall. If the mine site and an offset site had a combined population of 100 koalas before the development, this combined population would need to be more than 100 koalas after the development – even though some will be lost.

But let’s say these 100 koalas over two sites were expected to fall to 80, even if the mine didn’t happen. In this case, a relative net gain could be achieved if the mine and offset site had 90 koalas. The population fell, but less than it would have otherwise.

Most state and national conservation laws use relative net gain in their biodiversity offsets. It slows the biodiversity decline – but it’s still a decline.

By contrast, England brought in a net gain approach in February of this year, with developers now required to provide a 10% net gain in biodiversity.

Importantly, the vast majority of developments affecting threatened species habitat never require any offset at all. Plugging this major gap is also key.

Step 2: Avoid conservation payments in risky situations

The Australian government plans to introduce conservation payments, where developers can pay into a government-managed fund rather than providing direct offsets.

If developers were to cut down trees used by the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum, for example, they could choose either to improve habitat elsewhere to offset the damage – or they could pay into the fund instead.

This is a risky plan. For one, it’s often almost impossible or extremely expensive to find suitable habitat for critically endangered species because they have very little habitat remaining.

It’s far better to avoid all further habitat removal. For developers, this would mean avoiding damage to rare habitat in the first place.

Even where offsetting is possible, payments are often inadequate to cover the cost of purchasing and managing an offset site.

Then there’s the time lag. The fund might take years to buy or restore habitat sites, adding to already-long delays between damage and any benefit. And worse, under the government’s proposal, the money could be used for different, potentially less threatened species.

Under Queensland’s scheme, most developers choose to pay into a fund rather than create their own offset sites. Very little of these offset funds have been spent.

Meanwhile, the latest independent assessment of the New South Wales biodiversity offset payment scheme recommended the fund be completely phased out.

Step 3: Go beyond compensation

Compensating for new damage is important. But it’s not nearly enough. Over the last century, we have done huge damage to the natural world. Australia’s southern seas were once ringed with oyster reefs, for instance, but these were nearly all fished out.

We need to begin to recover what was lost by restoring ecosystems, managing weeds and reducing risk of diseases.

Nature-positive laws should include funding and actions designed to produce absolute gains in biodiversity over and above any required compensation.

The world has long seriously underfunded conservation, including threatened species recovery, ecosystem restoration and protected area management. Australia alone needs a roughly 20-fold increase in funding to actually bring back threatened species.

While this sounds large, it’s off an extraordinarily low base – just A$122 million in 2019. By contrast, we spend over $100 billion on human health each year.

Two years ago, the government passed the first of its nature-positive reforms to create a nature repair market aimed at drawing more funds into nature restoration. But as the market will rely on voluntary private sector investment, we don’t know how much funding will flow or whether it will focus on threatened species recovery.

Step 4: Effectively implement nature positive laws

Ensuring compliance with new nature-positive laws requires transparent and effective enforcement, such as through the independent national environment protection authority with extra powers proposed in Australia.

Its independence and powers may be less than required, due to proposed call-in powers allowing the minister to overrule decisions. True independence and adequate resources are crucial.

If governments do pass environmental reforms, we need to collect adequate and robust data on species to know if they are actually working to boost nature recovery. At present, many Australian threatened species remain unmonitored.

Is nature positive within reach?

It’s not easy to create a future with more nature than we have now. Australia’s current government took office vowing to embrace nature positive. To date, their reforms are not yet likely to make that a reality.

But the task will only get more urgent. Meaningful nature-positive policy means ensuring targets of absolute net gain for threatened species, ensuring strict compensation for any nature loss, independently resourcing and financing other recovery efforts and implementing these laws effectively.

With a course correction, Australia can still act as a leading example for other nations as they reform their own policies to meet nature-positive ambitions. Now is the time for real and decisive action.

We acknowledge our research coauthors, Brooke Williams (Queensland University of Technology), Martine Maron (University of Queensland), Jonathan Rhodes (Queensland University of Technology), Jeremy Simmonds (2rog), and Michelle Ward (Griffith University).

Yi Fei Chung, PhD candidate in Environmental Policy, The University of Queensland and Hannah Thomas, PhD candidate in Environmental Policy, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Australia and overseas, it’s clear that homes without gas – running on clean energy – are healthier, have cheaper power bills, and produce lower greenhouse emissions.

The emissions part is crucial. Collectively, homes are responsible for 10% of Australia’s greenhouse emissions. But how do we get Australia’s 11 million homes to ditch gas and switch to electricity for cooking, hot water and home heating?

The current approach is slow and piecemeal. State and local governments offer incentives to individual households, but few adopt them. For those that do, little coordinated support and guidance is available. The households must deal with suppliers and tradies on their own, which can be a frustrating and lonely process.

A pilot project to electrify 500 homes in a single postcode south of Sydney could show a better way. After a two-year campaign by residents, “Electrify 2515” has won A$5.4 million in federal funding, along with industry support. Challenges remain, but this pilot promises to demonstrate how household electrification can be accelerated and coordinated at scale.

As independent climate transitions specialists within Monash University, Climateworks Centre has no direct involvement in this project. But our ongoing Renovation Pathways Program focuses on ways to decarbonise Australia’s existing houses and bring about a national renovation wave. So we are watching with keen interest.

Testing extra incentives

The 2515 postcode sits between Wollongong and Sydney in New South Wales. It covers the suburbs of Austinmer, Clifton, Coledale, Scarborough, Thirroul and Wombarra.

The pilot encourages households to retire three types of gas appliance: water heaters, space heaters and cookers. Financial subsidies of up to $1,000 off electric hot water systems, reverse-cycle air conditioners and induction cooktops, and up to $1,500 off home batteries, are available. Higher subsidies are available to low-income households.

Successful applicants receive the subsidies as a discount on the purchase price of these new electrical appliances, rather than a rebate. Money for this is coming from the federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

Such incentives prompt households within a single community to make the switch together, retiring their electric appliances before their gas appliances fail or break, speeding up the transition.

A fully subsidised smart energy device, valued at around $1,500, is also installed in every home to track and optimise energy use. Subsidies are also available for upgrades to switchboards where required to meet modern safety standards.

Rooftop solar and electric vehicle chargers can also be purchased through the pilot, but will not be subsidised.

The 2515 difference

2515 is not the first community to rally behind clean energy. Grassroots initiatives are scattered around the country, such as in Yackandandah in northeast Victoria, Parkes in central west NSW, and Broken Hill in far west NSW.

Home energy pilot projects are also already underway through the Cooperative Research Centre Race2030, which partners with industry and research institutions. But these initiatives, along with those at a state and local government level, tend to recruit individual households across a wider geographic area.

In contrast, Electrify 2515 offers holistic support for households within a community. It is not driven by a single government program, or by a gas supply problem – which was the case for the people of Esperance in Western Australia.

By electrifying 500 homes in a single community, Electrify 2515 will provide a tangible measure of what’s required to drive rapid household electrification. The main challenge isn’t technological – it’s social. The technology is here. Getting the social drivers and settings right, at scale, is the key.

The holistic approach will demonstrate what consumers need to make the shift from gas to electricity. This includes what conversations are needed and which incentives enable all households to act in a coordinated way.

The bright side of a community approach

The whole-of-community focus brings technical and financial advantages.

After completing an application form and receiving an offer, households receive guidance and support from the installation partner Brighte, a commercial company that provides consumer loans for clean energy appliances such as solar panels and batteries. The service streamlines the decision-making process, which is often the biggest barrier stopping households from progressing with electrification.

Being able to work with a larger number of homes at once is likely to streamline and scale up installation with dedicated teams of installers and tradespeople.

It also helps build households’ trust in literature about payback times and financial benefits through friendly neighbourhood conversations and, importantly, through access to local real-world evidence, not just theory.

Thermal efficiency is also key

The electrification pilot is a solid starting point, especially for a community in a relatively mild coastal climate such as postcode 2515.

For homes in more extreme climates, or for inefficient older homes – which a lot of Australia’s homes sadly are – the fundamental thermal efficiency of the building must be improved alongside electrification of appliances.

The thermal efficiency of homes can be improved by insulating ceilings, walls and floors, double-glazing windows and sealing gaps. These measures make a home more comfortable for occupants. They can also reduce peak demand on the energy network and save on household energy bills.

Electrify 2515 currently focuses on appliance upgrades but adding thermal efficiency upgrades could take it to the next level. Without these upgrades, there is a risk of households in harsher climates using more electricity in a heatwave if homes are draughty and inefficient.

When paired with electrification, thermal upgrades could save Australian households around $2,200 annually on their energy bills (based on 2023 gas and electricity prices), according to Climateworks Centre analysis.

Projects like Electrify 2515 should include both home thermal efficiency improvements and electrification efforts, particularly for communities in harsher climates in order to maximise benefits to households.

Electrification challenges

Electrify 2515 caters for low-income households, by offering higher subsidies to households in the lowest 25% income percentile to ensure these groups comprise 25% of community buy-in.

Renters are encouraged to put their hand up too. But it may still be challenging to encourage their landlords to invest in upgrades.

Further challenges include decarbonising homes that cannot generate electricity from rooftop solar panels due to being shaded by taller buildings or trees. This can sometimes be an issue for homes in colder winter climates with higher annual energy demands, such as Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT.

Building momentum for widescale rollout

The technology for all-electric homes exists. Now we must identify the key social drivers and settings required to spur Australia’s electrification wave.

Electrify 2515 is a promising approach. It’s a way to build momentum, showcase technology at scale, and prompt meaningful discussions around the benefits and challenges of getting off gas.

This program, and others like it, can provide a tangible real-world foundation to bring about bills savings, emissions reductions and healthier homes across Australia. And it will help ensure no one is left behind.

Gill Armstrong, Researcher in architecture and urban planning, Climateworks Centre and Portia Odell, System Lead - Cities, Climateworks Centre

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Last month, Australia’s newly appointed minister for emergency management, Senator Jenny McAllister, and Senator Tony Sheldon, special envoy for disaster recovery, took part in a cultural burn outside Lismore in New South Wales, as part of the National Gathering on Indigenous Disaster Resilience.

It was significant to see members of the federal government listening to and taking direction from a cultural burn expert, Oliver Costello of Jagun Alliance, before undertaking a burn.

It represented a hopeful sign that cultural burning might be increasingly used as a tool for disaster mitigation. After all, McAllister isn’t the minister for Indigenous affairs or the environment – her role is emergency management. At last month’s meeting, Indigenous peoples spoke of their desire and inherent right to be involved in disaster management.

Cultural burning is, of course, vitally important to culture. But these gentle, regular burns were one of the main ways Indigenous groups managed land. They created mosaics of burned and unburned land, reducing the chance of megafires by burning fuel loads and creating safe havens in dangerous times.

Networks of Indigenous groups have begun using fire to once again care for Country all around Australia. These are positive signs. But there is more to do to dismantle remaining barriers to mainstreaming cultural burning – and making it possible to use these ancient techniques to reduce, or avoid, disasters.

An ancient practice rekindled

The evidence of Indigenous land management using fire is significant and growing.

This evidence has emerged through formal truth-telling processes such as Yoorrook, whose commissioners heard about the deliberate suppression of Indigenous land management in Victoria. It has come from ongoing academic research stitching settler accounts of the land and observations of how Indigenous groups used fire. In 1802, for instance, the settler John Murray recorded his amazement at how Boon Wurrung people set and controlled fire in Victoria’s Western Port Bay. The fire, which “must have covered an acre of ground”, was “dous’d […] at once”.

In Mary Gilmore’s account of 19th-century colonial life in the New South Wales Riverina, she writes:

As to fire, it was [Indigenous people] who taught our first settlers to get bushes and beat out a conflagration […] Indeed, it was a constant wonder, when I was little, how easily [Indigenous people] would check a fire before it grew too big for close handling or start a return fire when and where it was safest.

These historical observations are complementary to the work of passing on knowledge of fire to the next generation. Taken together, they reveal a fundamental truth about Australia – it is a land of fire, and Indigenous people are the masters.

The return of parcels of land to Indigenous groups in recent decades means we can restart these ancient fire regimes, through Indigenous rangers and other organisations.

The return of ancient practices

The management of land over deep time by Indigenous groups has meant people and the land effectively co-evolved.

Since 1788, colonisation and Indigenous dispossession have radically altered many parts of Australia. Land was cleared for farms, cities, roads and infrastructure. Rivers were dammed for irrigation.

Grasslands and yam fields were converted to livestock farms or cropping. Forested areas in some areas were cleared and in other areas thickly regrew, replacing the park-like mix of grassland and stands of trees produced by Indigenous land management. Thirsty crops such as cotton were planted, siphoning off huge volumes of water from lakes and rivers.

Even the creation of national parks transformed landscapes, as Western practices of more passive management replaced active Indigenous management.

The suppression of cultural burning brought yet more difficult change to Australia’s plants and animals. Australia now has one of the highest extinction rates of animals in the world. But cultural burning is being applied as a method to help protect vulnerable species, such as the Corroboree Frog.

Over years, Indigenous groups have worked diligently and strategically to rekindle this ancient practice. But they have also reimagined it. It’s time to ask the question: what would it mean to bring back cultural burning at scale?

No longer do Indigenous groups apply fire as a normal and everyday rhythm of life, stopping to light small fires as they walk. It’s now much more deliberate, requiring careful planning, creation of fire breaks and management of fire using trucks and heavy machinery.

Even ignition is done differently. For a ceremony, firesticks will be used, with further lighting done using drip torches. In remote areas, fires are lit from helicopters, making it possible to cover vast areas.

Combining these ancient and contemporary practices creates something fundamentally new. We require innovative discourses to better describe these developments.

New fire season, new hazards

This fire season is likely to be a dangerous one. The seasonal bushfire outlook released by the Australasian Fire and Emergency Council projects the risk of early fires and a higher-than-usual bushfire risk over vast areas of Australia.

Recent rainy La Nina years triggered rapid vegetation growth in many areas, increasing the fuel load. Fire authorities are worried about what a forecast hot, dry, windy summer will mean.

In recent years, Indigenous ranger groups have been undertaking cool burns as much as possible. In arid areas, there are fears of fast-moving grass fires due to the spread of introduced and highly flammable buffel grass.

As danger from climate change intensifies, making volatile and combustible landscapes safer poses challenges both complex – and urgent.

Indigenous groups around Australia have begun the work of rekindling cultural burns, but barriers still remain. Responsibility for fire management in state forests, national parks and on private land has long been split between government authorities and landholders. It’s time this disaster management work by Indigenous groups was recognised and magnified by governments.

To mainstream cultural burning will mean finding ways of sharing the knowledge of when and how to burn, and resourcing Indigenous groups to undertake training and burns. Doing this will not only benefit the land and Indigenous groups, but all Australians. 

Bhiamie Williamson, Research Fellow, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia now has a government and parliament wanting timely transition to net zero. We have a government and parliament wanting to build Australia as the renewable energy superpower of the zero-carbon world economy. For the time being, we have favourable international settings for using our opportunity.

The government of Australia has embraced this superpower narrative, taken some big steps towards supporting its emergence, and articulated sound principles for guiding further policy development.

But Australians in business and the community wanting to make large efforts to turn opportunity into reality find themselves in a tangle of policy uncertainty and contradiction.

The source of the problem is the abolition of carbon pricing in 2014. Since then, the Commonwealth government has worked within constraints that rule out success.

We can make a start towards net zero and becoming a renewable energy superpower without moving the constraints, but we can’t get far. This is a problem for any government of Australia, and not only for the current Labor government. We will not rise sustainably out of the post-pandemic dog days until we get energy policy right.

Striking the right balance

Striking the right balance between state intervention and market exchange is always essential for successful economic development, in all places.

The market generally delivers goods and services more cost-effectively than the state where there is genuine competition among suppliers and purchasers of goods and services.

The difference is especially large and important at a time of structural change and uncertainty. State decisions inevitably tend towards continuation on established paths and slow response to new opportunities.

Australia will not make use of more than a small fraction of the superpower opportunities available to it without immense contributions from an innovative, competitive private business sector.

So we have to design energy and related markets that provide the widest possible scope for competition among enterprises within clear rules understood in advance of investment decisions by all market participants.

The state has to do well the things that only the state can do. Because government capacity is a finite resource, it is much more likely that it will do the essential things well if it doesn’t try to do the things that markets do well.

The state must define the boundaries between the services that it delivers and those to be delivered by the market.

In the electricity sector, government must take responsibility for design of the market rules and compliance with them. It must provide the natural monopoly services of electricity transmission and hydrogen transportation and storage. It must take ultimate responsibility for system security and reliability.

For any market to work, individual market participants must be blocked by regulation from damaging others through their business decisions, or subject to a tax equal to the costs they impose on others. And they must be rewarded for large benefits that they confer on others.

This is essential economics. Its understatement in Productivity Commission and financial media commentary on energy and climate policy discussion over the past decade reveals the debasement of Australian political culture that gave us the dog days.

It has been politically incorrect to tell the truth out loud.

It’s time for carbon pricing

A crucial element of post-2030 market design is introduction of a green premium for zero-carbon energy.

It is obviously necessary for low-cost decarbonisation and expansion of the electricity sector and building Australia as a renewable energy superpower. The green premium is crucial for securing international market access for the zero-carbon export industries.

One of the dog days constraints on policy is that there should be no mandatory demands on private investors. Those constraints must be broken for the green premium to reflect the social cost of carbon, as it must if we are to achieve net zero by 2050 and build Australia as the renewable energy superpower.

The economically efficient way of achieving the premium is carbon pricing. It would be most efficient within an economy-wide system, although it could be introduced initially for the electricity sector and extended to other industries later.

Investors now need to know soon that there will be a premium reasonably related to the social cost of carbon after the Renewable Energy Target ends in 2030.

What matters for the superpower industries is the green premiums for which they are eligible in other countries. Pending the emergence of appropriate premiums, the Commonwealth is proposing payments from the budget.

That is appropriate. It can get the early movers started. It would be expensive if it continued for long. The superpower industries will grow rapidly if they have access to premiums corresponding to the social cost of carbon. Over time, payments from the Australian budget will be replaced by market premiums in destination countries.

There are several possible forms of carbon pricing. The system operating in Australia from 2012 to 2014 was economically and environmentally efficient.

It would have been linked to the EU Emissions Trading System from July 1 2014 if it had not been abolished the day before. The Australian carbon price would be equal to the European price. We would be introducing a European-type Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism to ensure that Australian producers were not disadvantaged by competition in the domestic market from suppliers who were not subject to similar carbon constraints. The ETS (emissions trading scheme) would be contributing around 2% of GDP to public revenues – going a substantial part of the way to answering the daunting budget challenge to restoration of Australian prosperity.

Part of that increased revenue could support payments to power users to ensure there was no increase in power prices to users until expansion of renewable generation and storage had brought costs down – along the lines of the A$300 per household introduced in the 2024 budget, but larger.

The arrangements would provide automatic access for zero-carbon Australian goods to the high-priced European market. There would be no need to provide for a green premium for sales to Europe from the Australian market. The green premiums in other markets would at first need to be covered, as they are now, from the Australian public revenue.

A carbon solutions levy

Rod Sims (former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and I have suggested a carbon solutions levy. It is administratively simpler than the ETS. It would initially raise much more revenue.

We propose exemption for coal and gas exports to countries in which Australian zero-carbon exports attract a premium comparable to the EU carbon price, even if it is not generated through an ETS.

We would hope that if the carbon solutions levy were to be introduced from 2030, our major trading partners would by that time have introduced green premiums that justify exemption from the levy for coal and gas exports to those countries.

The European Union would be exempt from the beginning. The Northeast Asian economies are moving towards eventual justification of exemption. China now has a country-wide emissions trading system.

The carbon price in July 2024 is about A$21 per tonne, having increased by 50% since early in the year. The price is expected to continue rising until it is playing a major role in transformation of Chinese industry.

Incidentally, China undertook to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that its emissions would peak by 2030, but its rapid expansion of renewable energy generation, electric vehicles and zero-carbon industrial technologies suggest that the peak may have come in 2023.

Japan is working on direct budgetary support for importers of zero-carbon products which could pass through into a premium for zero-carbon exports from Australia.

During a visit in April 2024, I was advised that the Japanese government is working towards issue of “green bonds” to pay for the premium. A carbon tax from 2035 would meet the cost of servicing and retiring the bonds.

Korea and Taiwan are introducing their own mechanisms for supporting premiums for zero-carbon imports.

One initial criticism of the carbon solutions levy is that it would cause leakage of Australian exports to competing suppliers of gas and coal. There would be some leakage, alongside substantial transfers from rents to the public revenues, and for metallurgical coal in particular, some increase in export prices.

The price increase would introduce an element of green premium for Australian green iron exports. The Superpower Institute (a non-profit research organisation founded by Sims and I) has commissioned the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University to quantify the extent of leakage, transfers from rent and higher export prices. The results will be available for public discussion early in 2025. The study will also calculate the effect of the levy on Australian public finances, real incomes and real consumption.

Regional considerations

Australia’s main competitor in regional coal markets is Indonesia. Its main competitors in gas markets are Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Indonesia, Brunei and the Middle East petroleum producers.

No informed person would suggest that there could be an economic problem with leakage to the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf states extract revenue from petroleum exports at much higher rates per dollar than Australia would after imposition of the levy.

There is a case in the Australian national interest for not seeing expansion of export sales from Papua New Guinea and East Timor as being entirely a waste.

But in their national interest and ours, I suggest that we seek to negotiate a four-way agreement on climate and energy with Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea.

We would all impose carbon solutions levy-type levies at similar rates. This would be a major source of revenue for all of us.

Participation of Indonesia removes leakage of coal exports. Indonesia already has an emissions trading scheme, although it generates a carbon price of only a few dollars per tonne.

It may choose to remove other imposts on fossil carbon exports at the time of introduction of new carbon-related measures – such as the requirement to make 35% of coal exports available at prices well below international prices for domestic power generation.

Participation of the four countries removes the leakage issue for gas. The four neighbours would cooperate in major development programs based on expansion of zero-carbon energy supply and goods production.

There is active discussion in Indonesia of archipelago-wide electricity transmission infrastructure to allow the superior renewable energy resources of the outer islands – Papua, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Sumatra – to contribute to decarbonisation and growth of zero-carbon industry everywhere, including in the Java heartland.

The Indonesian grid would run close to neighbouring Australia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, East and West Malaysia and the Philippines. It would be the geopolitically practical means of linking Australia and Singapore, as envisaged in the SunCable project in the Northern Territory.

The Indonesian national grid could link to the Australian Sungrid discussed in my book The Superpower Transformation in Darwin and the Pilbara.

The alternatives to carbon pricing are weak

The alternatives to economy-wide carbon pricing are likely to turn out to be short-lived expedients that lead sooner rather than later to the return of today’s incoherence and underperformance in energy and climate policy and performance.

The state must provide reliability of power supply to the general population.

The Commonwealth government can do this without distorting competitive electricity markets by establishing an energy reserve I have proposed in my book The Superpower Transformation.

The superpower industries depend on electricity and hydrogen markets operating efficiently and embodying carbon prices. Otherwise the market design issues relevant to their development are similar to those for electricity.

Negative carbon externalities need to be corrected by taxation or alternative carbon pricing mechanisms. Positive externalities from innovation should be rewarded.

Positive innovation externalities are important in the introduction of new industries, technologies and business models for the zero-carbon economy.

Economy-wide carbon pricing at the social cost of carbon is essential to getting the balance right between state intervention and market exchange.

Once it is in place with fiscal rewards for innovation, the government can let businesses decide which new industries and technologies warrant investment.

Once carbon pricing is known to be coming into place reasonably soon, there is no further need for government underwriting of investment in power generation.

There is no need to include a climate trigger in assessment of a project of any kind: if it emits carbon, it will pay for the climate damage it does.

There is no need for government to take a view on climate grounds about the merits of nuclear power generation. It is zero-emissions generation and, like renewable energy, not subject to the carbon price. If it can compete with other forms of generation, it will find a place in private investment decisions on the energy mix.

There is no need for government investment in nuclear power generation. Private investors will have the same incentives to invest in nuclear as in other zero-carbon generation technologies.

There will be no need for the government to take a view on incentives for carbon capture and storage. If it is effective and emissions are actually reduced, carbon payments will be correspondingly reduced.

The carbon price will allow private investors to get on with the job of expanding renewable energy supply at a rapid pace and decarbonising the economy more generally.

This is an edited extract from Ross Garnaut’s new book, Let’s Tax Carbon: And Other Ideas for a Better Australia.

Ross Garnaut, Professorial Research Fellow in Economics, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Every year, 7.6 million tonnes of food is lost or wasted in Australia. When we think about this, we might picture mouldy fruit, stale bread and overly full fridges. But in fact, almost half of this waste happens before food ever gets to us. Waste is common in food production, processing and transportation.

For example, the process of making cheese from milk results in a comparatively small amount of cheese and a lot of whey – up to 90% the mass of the raw milk.

Whey is useful, as it still has about half the nutrients of milk. But whey remains one of the largest sources of food loss and waste in Australia’s large dairy sector. Every year, about 350 million litres goes down the drain, costing businesses over A$580 million to dispose of it and wasting some of the resources it takes to make milk.

In our new research, we interviewed cheesemakers from 42 companies – representing almost a third of Australia’s cheese industry.

We found cheesemakers knew what waste whey could be used for but were put off by practical challenges.

What can you do with whey?

You can already buy whey products such as fermented drinks and protein powders. Infant formula may contain the highly valuable lactoferrin, which would be usually left in whey. A popular Swiss soft drink, Rivella, is also made from whey.

In Australia, some producers have begun making alcoholic spirits by fermenting the lactose in whey. Researchers have found whey-based alcohol can emit less greenhouse gases than traditional grains.

Our research found over half of our cheesemakers were using multiple methods to reduce whey going to waste, from making animal feed to making ricotta to irrigating paddocks. Even so, there is still room to make much more use of whey.

What did we find?

Every year, 43% of all milk produced in Australia is used to make cheese – about eight billion litres a year. When we did this research, there were 132 cheesemakers, using cow, goat, sheep, and camel milk to make cheese. The industry is characterised by a few large manufacturers (about 2% of companies) and many small manufacturers (about 90% of the total). Cheesemakers are largely concentrated in Australia’s southeast.

To understand the challenge of avoiding whey waste, we spoke to cheesemakers, big and small, right across Australia between November 2022 and June 2023.

All of our cheesemaker respondents knew of at least one whey-based product.

But there were barriers to using whey themselves by a range of things, from the set-up cost of a new facility to the challenge of scale, competing priorities and the distance to potential partners. As one respondent said:

Every single part of the business would have to be changed, upgraded, or increased to accommodate using the whey in any way

Another said:

We’re all doing 60 to 70-hour weeks and you [need] someone to actually drive it

How can we overcome the barriers?

Based on our interviews, we found four possible ways to encourage cheesemakers to put their whey to use:

1. turning whey into value-added products in-house. This could be quite effective – one of our respondents reported making more money from whey-based products than cheese. But setting it up requires time and money.

2. engaging other companies to take the waste. Partnering with outside companies can help overcome time and money issues – but everyone needs to agree on a price for a product previously considered waste.

3. starting joint ventures, such as teaming up with other cheesemakers. This method suits cheesemakers wanting to keep the value of the whey. Successful ventures require clear leadership and transparent business plans.

4. scaling up. Some cheesemakers are already using their own whey. If they move to accept whey from other makers, they can scale up – as long as the new whey sources can meet their specifications.

We found giving Australian cheesemakers the full range of options greatly increased how willing they were to find ways to use whey.

When they only had in-house options, 33% of respondents said they would find ways to use way. This rose to 79% when all four options were available.

Which whey forward?

Our research shows there’s no silver bullet to solve whey waste. We’ll have to come at it from different angles and focus on collaboration between cheesemakers, governments, industry bodies and consumers.

One crucial thing is to make sure there there is demand for these changes. In separate research, we found there is currently little expectation from consumers and retailers about what happens to whey waste. Increasing demand for whey-based products and setting expectations for cheesemaking practices could drive this change. But food safety regulations and taxes on alcohol can make it more challenging still for makers.

In regions with a cluster of cheesemakers, it might make more sense for one or two makers to take all the whey waste and turn it into value-added products to benefit from the scale. While many cheesemakers told us they felt isolated from potential partners, we found a potential partner was right around the corner – just one or two kilometres in most cases.

This is where decision support tools may be able to help in future. These software tools help you lay out your options so you can compare them and pick the best one. They can take into account financial outlay, risks and environmental impacts.

The good news is, there is an abundant, nutrient rich byproduct able to be converted into other products. The challenge now is to find ways of boosting collaboration between cheesemakers and other companies – and ensuring whey-based products have a market.

Jack Hetherington, Phd Candidate in circular business models, University of Adelaide; Adam James Loch, Associate Professor, Centre for Global Food and Resources, University of Adelaide, and Pablo Juliano, Group leader, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s recent decision to approve expansion plans for three New South Wales coal mines disappointed many people concerned with stabilising the global climate.

Two of these mines, Narrabri and Mount Pleasant in New South Wales, featured in the high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful Living Wonders court case, intended to force the federal government to take account of climate damage done by coal mine approvals. A lawyer involved in the case said Plibersek’s decision showed a refusal to “recognise their climate harms”.

Why did Plibersek sign off on this? She has argued the mines will abide by domestic industrial emissions rules. As her spokesperson told the ABC:

The emissions from these projects will be considered by the minister for climate change and energy under the government’s strong climate laws.

But these laws apply only to emissions produced in Australia, which in this case will be from extracting and transporting coal and the relatively small amount of coal burned here. Most of the coal will be exported and burned overseas. Australian laws do not count those much larger emissions.

The government is effectively washing its hands of the far larger emissions created when the coal is burned overseas. Since taking office, the Albanese government has approved seven applications to open or expand coal mines. Just this week, NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said his state would keep exporting coal into the 2040s.

This reasoning doesn’t stack up. If we stopped expanding coal mines, coal would get more expensive – and we would accelerate the global shift to clean energy.

How can more coal be compatible with net zero?

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate action, nations must publicly commit to domestic emissions reductions goals and are expected to steadily ramp up ambition.

But these emissions cuts are domestic only – we don’t measure the emissions we enable by exporting coal and gas.

The Albanese government has increased domestic ambition by committing to a 43% reduction on 2005 figures by 2030. This seems to be a substantial advance on the 26-28% commitment made by the previous government. In reality, internal tensions in the Morrison Coalition government handed Labor an unintentional gift.

In 2021, estimates suggested Australia was already on track for a 35% reduction. But internal opposition among Coalition backbenchers stopped Morrison announcing this as a target. As a result, Labor’s change looks about twice as impressive as it should.

Still, progress is happening. Domestically, Australia is now burning less and less coal.

But in terms of exports, the government’s position – clear in Plibersek’s decision as well as the government’s plan to keep gas flowing for decades – is as long as there is a demand for coal and gas from other countries, Australia will be ready and willing to meet it.

Most of the coal unlocked by Plibersek’s decision will go overseas, given NSW exports 85% of its coal to partners such as Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan.

How does the government defend this?

Expanding coal mines while maintaining a public commitment to net zero is a consistent theme between this government and its predecessor, which also committed to net zero. It meets a minimal interpretation of our legal obligations under the Paris Agreement, but maintains the planet’s path towards dangerous warming.

In her statement of reasons given in 2023 as to why the Mount Pleasant mine expansion should be permitted, Plibersek and the Labor government offer several defences.

The first is she is simply acting in accordance with Australian law, as the project would comply with “applicable Commonwealth emissions reduction legislation”. This is a weak reed, to put it mildly. The Albanese government, with the support of Greens and independents, can change the law whenever it chooses.

In reality, the government has steadfastly resisted pressure to include a “climate trigger” in Australia’s environmental approval processes. Their resistance is relatively new – as recently as 2016, Labor policy included a climate trigger for land clearing.

Labor’s second defence has often been dubbed the “drug dealer’s defence”. That is, if Australia didn’t export coal, other producers would take our place. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has put it:

policies that would just result in a replacement of Australian resources with resources that are less clean from other countries would lead to an increase in global emissions, not a decrease.

As I’ve argued previously, this defence doesn’t work. Coal is subject to a rising cost curve – if we stopped exporting it, new or expanded production from other sources would cost more to extract and hence be priced higher. More expensive coal would, in turn, accelerate the global energy transition. We do have agency – we could choose not to unlock more coal.

Finally, Plibersek claims emissions from burning Mount Pleasant coal – estimated at over 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the mine’s extended lifetime – would not be “substantial” relative to total global emissions. For context, Australia’s total emissions are now less than 500 million tonnes a year.

This “litterbug’s defence” suggest Australia’s emissions – whether produced domestically or exported – are not big enough to make a difference. This is not true – we are now the second largest exporter of emissions globally, after Russia. That is due largely to coal.

Are fossil fuel exports untouchable?

There’s a huge gap between global pledges to cut emissions and the reductions needed to actually achieve the Paris targets. Most countries we export coal and gas to are not yet on a path to achieve the reductions in emissions necessary to stabilise the global climate – though China’s emissions may, remarkably, be about to decline.

That’s why we need to press for decarbonisation at every stage of the energy system, from extraction of coal, oil and gas to the financing of new carbon-based projects as well as at the point where the fuel is burned and emissions produced generated.

The problem for Australia is we sell a lot of coal and gas – more than ever before. So even as solar and wind energy begins to displace coal and gas in domestic power generation, our coal and gas exports seem all but untouchable.

We should be saddened but not surprised at this pattern. The Albanese government seems guided by the principle of doing nothing to generate substantial opposition – and to count on the fact a Dutton Coalition government would do even less.

John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today the perilous state of the environment is often in the news. Many stories describe how Earth is being damaged by human beings and discuss ways to prevent this.

These concerns are not new. Millennia ago, people in ancient Greece and Rome already knew humans were damaging the natural world. Literature from these ancient times contains many references to the environment and the harms it suffers.

Many of these insights ring true today. Polluting the soil we farm, air we breathe and water we drink has clear repercussions. We can only degrade the environment for so long before it will come back to haunt us.

So let’s explore what the ancient Greeks and Romans can teach us about nature and our place in the world.

An agent of destruction

The ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who lived in the first century AD, was concerned about the way human beings were abusing Earth. In his work titled Natural History, he wrote:

We taint the rivers and the elements of nature, and the air itself, which is the main support of life, we turn into a medium for the destruction of life.

He thought of the planet as something humanity ought to protect rather than harm, because we owe our existence to mother Earth:

It is my pleasant duty first of all to champion Earth’s cause and to support her as the parent of all things.

Two millennia later, Pliny’s words seem directly relevant to us.

In the modern world, concerns about the health of the environment have become one of the hottest political topics.

For example, a survey last year of almost 20,000 young people in Australia showed 44% think the environment is the most important issue of our time.

A growing understanding

Roman writers noted their soldiers eventually poisoned the water and the air around their camps. The military writer Flavius Renatus Vegetius, who lived around the fourth and fifth centuries AD, observed:

if a numerous army continues long in one place in the summer or in the autumn, the waters become corrupt, and the air infected, from whence proceed malignant and fatal distempers, which nothing but frequent change of encampments can prevent.

Roman writers also had a lot to say about the pollution of the river Tiber, which runs through Rome.

The biographer Suetonius, who was born around 70AD, tells us the river had been “filled with rubbish and narrowed by jutting buildings” before emperor Augustus (63BC-14AD) took action to clean it up.

Bad policies had polluted the river’s waters. For example, the emperor Nero (37–68AD) dumped huge amounts of rotten grain into the river.

The Roman poet Juvenal (of the first and second centuries AD) referred to the Tiber as a “gushing sewer”. And the physician Galen (129–216AD) said the Tiber was so polluted that fish caught there were not safe to eat.

Measures to protect the environment

The Greeks and Romans introduced various measures to prevent or reduce environmental harm.

In 420BC, for example, the Athenians introduced a law to protect the river Ilissus:

It is forbidden to soak the coats [of animals] in the Ilissus above the sanctuary of Heracles and to tan them. It is forbidden to throw the residue of the laundering into the river.

Modern researchers think this measure might have helped the Ilissus stay clean. That’s because authors writing in the fourth century BC (after the law was introduced) describe the Ilissus as a pure and beautiful river.

Other measures to reduce pollution included banning public defecation and urination. Bans on washing clothes or throwing rubbish into rivers were also common. But it’s unlikely the public adhered to these restrictions all the time.

Some rulers also tried to do public works such as building sewers and aqueducts to clean up pollution.

For example, the emperor Nerva, who ruled 96–98AD, undertook a series of construction projects to make Rome cleaner and healthier.

Sextus Julius Frontinus (35–103AD), manager of Rome’s aqueducts, tells us that thanks to Nerva:

the appearance of the city is clean and altered; the air is purer; and the causes of the unwholesome atmosphere, which gave the air of the city so bad a name in former times, are now removed.

Damaging the environment harms our health

Sometime in the late first or early second century AD, the Roman aristocrat and lawyer Pliny the Younger (61/62–112AD) wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan, who ruled 98–117AD. He complained about a public health issue in the city of Amastris, in modern Turkey:

Among the chief features of Amastris, Sir, is a long street of great beauty. Throughout the length of this, however, there runs what is called a stream, but is in fact a filthy sewer, a disgusting eyesore which gives off a noxious stench. The health and appearance alike of the city will benefit if it is covered in, and with your permission this shall be done.

The emperor replied that he was happy for this to be done:

There is every reason, my dear Pliny, to cover the water which you say flows through the city of Amastris, if it is a danger to health while it remains uncovered.

This story shows the ancients were aware that the health of the land, air and water is intertwined with human health. So when the environment is in an unhealthy state, this is also damaging for our health and wellbeing.

The modern world can learn from antiquity

The message from the ancient Greeks and Romans is as true today for us as it was for them. As humanity grapples with multiple environmental crises, it’s worth reflecting on this age-old knowledge.

The bottom line is, keeping the planet in a healthy state is good not just for the environment, but also for ourselves.

In a modern world where stories about pollution and related environmental problems frequently appear in the news, this message of the ancients is well worth remembering.

Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, researching Greco-Roman antiquity, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Statements have been circulating online, including leading news platforms, that battery electric cars will greatly increase the average mass of the on-road fleet. This claim is used as an argument against these cars.

Even the Australian motoring organisation NRMA has posed the question: “EVs are heavy. Are they safe on our roads and carparks?” (It does say the answer is yes.)

The stated reason for such concerns is generally that electric car batteries are heavy and increase overall vehicle mass. A heavier vehicle needs more energy to drive it and so will typically increase emissions. A greater mass also reduces traffic safety and could have damaging impacts on parking spaces and roads.

A critical review released yesterday took a closer look at these claims to see if they hold true in Australia. It finds these claims don’t stack up in a country where sales of fossil-fuelled (petrol, diesel, LPG) vehicles skew towards large and heavy utes and SUVs.

When adjusted for actual top 10 vehicles sold and using realistic mass values, the average mass of battery electric and fossil-fuelled cars differs by just 68 kilograms. That difference is not significant, especially because electric cars are much more energy-efficient.

Oversimplifying a complex topic

The claims being made often oversimplify a complex reality. They tell only part of the story, which can be misleading.

For instance, internal combustion engine cars have consistently increased in mass over time. Known as car obesity, this fact is often unfairly ignored in comparisons.

Similarly, these statements pretend to know how complex consumer behaviour will respond to future availability of battery electric cars and their fast-changing and improving features. Often, the results of overseas studies cannot be directly applied to different Australian conditions.

4 points of contention

Our report identifies and unpacks four main points of contention.

First, there are different ways to define and compare the mass of battery electric and combustion engine cars. In practice, the choice is rather arbitrary. Depending on the method, the comparison may be neither adequate nor accurate.

Often the comparison is made between similar or similarly sized battery electric and combustion engine cars. Or electric cars can be compared only to an equivalent non-electric version of models such as the VW Golf. Another variation is to simply compare the average mass of a large range of cars currently on sale, without considering the impact of sales volumes.

Second, a common argument is that batteries are heavy, so electric cars are heavier than fossil-fuelled cars. But this is simplistic – it’s not only the battery that matters.

Offsetting the extra battery mass, other parts of the electric car such as their motors are smaller and lighter. They can cut its mass by up to 50%.

And actual extra battery mass itself depends on a range of factors. Battery chemistry, battery size and energy storage capacity (which determines how often a car needs recharging) all affect the mass. Indeed, battery mass varies between 100 and 900 kilograms for cars.

Third, car obesity has greatly and consistently increased fossil-fuelled car mass. Unless we include this rise in car obesity, the comparison with battery electric cars tells only half the story.

Finally, it is challenging to accurately predict the mass impacts of electric cars. A common assumption is that future vehicle buyers’ behaviour does not change when switching to battery electric cars. This assumption seems unlikely and again oversimplifies the comparison.

For instance, market availability, marketing focus, purchase price and performance characteristics will largely guide buyers’ decisions. These considerations are all highly dynamic. They are changing significantly and fast.

So how do they compare in Australia?

A proper comparison needs, at least, to include realistic vehicle mass and sales data. Our study compares the differences in vehicle mass between the top ten best-selling cars for both battery electric and fossil-fuelled vehicles in Australia in 2022, as shown below.

Currently sold top 10 models of battery electric cars cluster more at the heavy end, but the most popular cars are relatively light. The top 10 models of fossil-fuelled cars have a larger spread in mass. Yet, when it comes to sales, most are relatively heavy SUVs or utes.

When ranked by popularity and compared, battery electric cars are not always heavier. They can be almost 300kg (12%) lighter to almost 800kg (55%) heavier than the corresponding fossil-fuelled car. Importantly, the overall difference in the average mass of the two categories when adjusted for sales is just 68kg (about 3% of total vehicle mass).

This small difference is insignificant in terms of energy and emission impacts. A more important factor here is the superior energy efficiency of battery electric vehicles.

How will they compare in future?

Clearly, future sales profiles may differ from current sales profiles. The current profile may be largely defined by a certain type of customer (such as a high-income early adopter). They might not be typical of mainstream consumers in coming years.

Buyers’ future behaviour is uncertain and hard to predict. It would depend on the effectiveness of (new) policy measures such as Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, the actual vehicles offered for sale, marketing efforts by car suppliers and possibly also cultural changes.

Any shifts in buyer behaviour could greatly influence the car fleet’s average mass. They could continue the current trend towards larger and heavier vehicles, or shift to smaller and lighter vehicles.

But this is the point: the impacts of electrification of passenger vehicles on average mass are highly uncertain. Statements on the matter are often speculative and can be unfairly biased by the methods used.

In markets where heavy petrol and diesel vehicles dominate car sales, such as Australia and New Zealand, current evidence suggests increased electric car sales are unlikely to greatly increase average vehicle mass. In fact, average mass could actually go down as cheaper and lighter electric cars go on sale here.

Vehicle mass remains important

Importantly, the report is not downplaying the importance of vehicle mass for transport emission abatement.

In previous research it was estimated that only a passenger vehicle fleet dominated by small and light battery electric vehicles may get Australia close to achieving the net-zero emissions target in 2050.

To meet the target, it is thus important to reverse the trend of increasing car obesity, for all cars. But vehicle mass should not be used as an argument against electrification.

Robin Smit, Adjunct Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles this week declared his party would hold a plebiscite on nuclear power if it returns to office at the forthcoming state election.

The move is in response to plans by the federal Coalition to build and operate seven nuclear plants around Australia if elected to government. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says the facilities would be built at sites of coal power stations scheduled for closure. Two are slated for Queensland, at the Callide and Tarong power stations.

Queensland has state laws banning the construction or operation of a nuclear facility and requiring the state government to hold a plebiscite if there are Commonwealth plans to build a nuclear plant in the state. A plebiscite is a referendum-style vote to gauge voters’ views on an issue.

Unlike a referendum, the results are not binding. There’s also very little chance a plebiscite could be held on or before the date of the next federal election, as Miles has suggested, as the laws do not allow for a plebiscite on an opposition policy.

Who has the constitutional power over nuclear facilities?

While the Commonwealth Constitution does not refer to nuclear energy, the federal parliament has passed laws to regulate nuclear matters. To do so, it relies on a web of constitutional powers, including the trade and commerce power, the corporations power, the external affairs power and the territories power.

The Commonwealth can also compulsorily acquire land for public purposes. This makes the land a “Commonwealth place” over which it can exercise full and exclusive legislative power.

The federal government has previously engaged in commercial matters by establishing trading corporations, such as NBN Co and Snowy Hydro Ltd, to deal with nation-building infrastructure.

It seems likely, therefore, that the federal parliament could pass laws to authorise and regulate the operation of nuclear power plants in Australia.

In doing so, its laws would override inconsistent state laws, such as those that prohibit nuclear facilities, under section 109 of the Constitution.

But state governments could still make it difficult for the Commonwealth to give effect to its nuclear policies. You only have to look at how state governments have successfully opposed Commonwealth efforts to create a nuclear waste facility to see the problems.

Plebiscite as booby trap

The development of a nuclear power industry in Australia has been debated before – most recently in 2006 when the Howard Coalition government commissioned the Switkowski report on the use of nuclear energy in Australia.

This report suggested the Commonwealth could act to establish 25 nuclear power stations across Australia. In response, Queensland’s parliament, under a Labor government, enacted the Nuclear Facilities Prohibition Act 2007. It banned the construction or operation of certain types of nuclear facilities in Queensland. New South Wales and Victoria had also previously done the same.

The Queensland government recognised the Commonwealth probably had the power to override such a ban. So it included a political booby trap in section 21 of the law.

It says that if the relevant Queensland minister is satisfied the Commonwealth government has taken, or is likely to take, any step supporting or allowing the construction of a prohibited nuclear facility in Queensland, the minister:

must take steps for the conduct of a plebiscite in Queensland to obtain the views of the people of Queensland about the construction of a prohibited nuclear facility in Queensland.

Unlike a referendum, which changes the Constitution, a plebiscite operates as an opinion poll.

It would not prevent a nuclear power plant being built, or stop the federal parliament overriding the state ban. But it could create a political impediment.

During the debate over the state law in 2007, then-Premier Peter Beattie made this point clearly:

If the Howard government wants to use its powers to override the strong position of Queenslanders […] this government will make certain that Queenslanders have a chance to have their say.

This was important, he claimed, because it would “put political pressure on the federal government to not go down this road”. In other words, the law can be used to apply political pressure.

Of plebiscites and federal elections

Miles suggested the plebiscite could be held the same day as the next federal election “to save people going to the polls twice”.

This could affect voting in the federal election by highlighting the impact of nuclear policies on Queensland. But if this is the tactic, Miles faces two problems.

First, Queensland law only triggers the plebiscite requirement when the relevant state minister is “satisfied the government of the Commonwealth” is likely to take a step in supporting or allowing the construction of a prohibited nuclear facility in Queensland.

But the minister could not legally be satisfied of this before the election outcome is known, as a policy of an opposition party does not amount to a proposed action of the “government of the Commonwealth”.

Second, section 394 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 says no state or territory election, referendum or vote can be held on the day of a Commonwealth election without the authority of the governor-general.

This ban was introduced in 1922, after holding state votes at the same time as federal elections resulted in a high informal vote due to different voting instructions.

The governor-general has given this permission only once, when the Northern Territory held a plebiscite on becoming a state on the same day as the 1998 federal election.

It’s doubtful the federal government would advise the governor-general to permit a partisan state plebiscite to be held on the same day as a federal election.

Where does this leave us?

It’s unlikely Queensland could hold such a plebiscite at or before the next federal election.

But if the Coalition wins the next federal election and proceeds with its nuclear policy, Queensland would be obliged to hold a plebiscite – regardless of who wins the state election, unless its law was changed.

This would make clear how much support there was for nuclear power. A clear rejection wouldn’t have any legal effect, but could well achieve the same outcome through political pressure. We might also see other states follow suit to hold plebiscites on nuclear power, although none currently are legally obliged to do so.

Anne Twomey, Professor Emerita in Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the latest global biodiversity summit gets underway in Colombia, finance for the conservation and restoration of nature is one of the key themes of negotiations.

Global wildlife populations have shrunk by an average of 73% in the past 50 years, according to the 2024 Living Planet report. Consequently, momentum is growing worldwide to deliver new nature markets, such as biodiversity credits, to unlock new sources of funding.

Basically, nature markets are systems of exchange that match demand for nature regeneration with a supply of nature-positive projects.

But this creates risks, as well as opportunities, for Indigenous peoples. Without due care for data sovereignty, Indigenous communities may lose out yet again.

Nature markets could enable Indigenous peoples to fulfill their duties of guardianship. But such markets could also forge a new form of colonialism, including enclosure and appropriation of habitats and species that Indigenous peoples have traditional connections to.

This can occur overtly through formalisation of property rights over species, ecosystems and associated lands or waters. For example, efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation (REDD+) in developing countries have been troubled by instances where Indigenous communities were dispossessed from ancestral lands, alienated from place-based traditions or excluded from the commercial benefits of carbon trading.

The current surge for nature markets is attentive to these risks, with international commitments to avoid such mistakes. Yet the processes of colonialism can be less overt and more insidious.

Indigenous data

One neglected area is Indigenous data. This relates to traditional and cultural information, population data, oral histories and ancestral knowledge relating to the environment and natural resources.

If care is not taken with Indigenous data, there are serious risks of reproducing colonialist patterns of exploitation.

Data represents reality. Data helps decision makers to know whether their interventions are effective, even when they are far away from the ecosystems being protected or restored.

If data are accurate, authentic and timely, a funder does not need to set foot in a remote habitat to know whether its carbon stock or native species abundance are improving or declining.

Biodiversity credits represent one way to operationalise a nature market. They are basically a vehicle for data. The emerging methodologies are bundles of metrics and indicators that track biodiversity and ecological function.

The data enable credit holders to make credible claims of biodiversity uplift, or avoided biodiversity loss, as a consequence of credit sales.

As a representation of ecological reality, data are at least one step removed from the habitats and species they represent. This opens up the potential for nature markets to rely on the exchange of verifiable data, without the need to commodify nature itself, and therefore impinge on the ownership rights of Indigenous communities.

However, data are not free from such considerations. To divert data into a system of market exchange raises a different but related set of concerns about ownership, benefit and sovereignty.

The rise of Indigenous data sovereignty

Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of Indigenous peoples to govern the collection, ownership and application of data about Indigenous communities, peoples, lands and resources. It relates to data produced by and about Indigenous peoples and the environments they have relationships with.

Nature and people are precious, so data that represent nature and people are imbued with that preciousness. As Māori practitioner Ngapera Riley has written:

Data is a taonga (treasure). It’s something that people gift us, and that we gift to others as we go about our daily lives.

In te ao Māori, data come in many forms. This includes whakataukī (proverbs), moteatea (chants), whaikorero (oratory), maramataka (calendar), whakapapa (genealogies), pūrākau (stories) and increasingly digital forms.

Consequently, we must take great care in how data are accessed, shared, stored and used. This is especially critical in a system of market exchange. The dominant markets of today are profit-driven, creating incentives for appropriation and exploitation.

Sovereignty means power

Indigenous peoples are conscious that, while there are risks in data and knowledge sharing, there are also opportunities. Indigenous data and knowledge is a living and evolving system, which can contribute to effective responses to environmental challenges, including the protection and regeneration of biodiversity.

The principles of Indigenous data governance emerged from deliberations about how to protect Indigenous sovereignty when sharing knowledge and data for academic research. These CARE principles hold that Indigenous data should be governed for collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics.

This is critically important in ecological research, which too often neglects duties relating to data about natural ecosystems and the people who live within them.

It is troubling that the recognition of Indigenous data sovereignty is largely lacking from the discussion of nature markets so far. Unless Indigenous data sovereignty is upheld, the legitimacy of nature markets will likely be irreversibly tarnished.

This is why, in a recent Biodiversity Credits Alliance discussion paper, we included Indigenous data sovereignty as a risk to be identified, understood and managed.

But Indigenous data sovereignty is more than a risk: it is a source of power. It is a right to self-determination, to choose how data are used and their value is distributed. By ensuring this right, nature markets might deliver on their promise of inclusive, sustainable prosperity.

David Hall, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences and Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology; Mike Taitoko, Program Director, Toha Network, Indigenous Knowledge; Nathalie Whitaker, Platform Designer, Toha Network, Indigenous Knowledge; Renee Raroa, Establishment Director of East Coast Exchange, Indigenous Knowledge, and Tasman Turoa Gillies, Head of Operations, Takiwā, Indigenous Knowledge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The playful and pudgy mammal that went viral from its Thai zoo enclosure has a sad story to tell about her fellows hippos.

Moo Deng is the two-month-old pygmy hippo who flicks her ears in joy and likes splashing in water. She lives the life of a superstar at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, where huge crowds have massed – but the chances of spotting her relatives in the wild are slim.

Pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis) are endangered and estimated to number fewer than 2,500. Their decline has been drastic: a long-term survey in a national park in Ivory Coast found 12,000 pygmy hippos in 1982; 5,000 in 1997 and 2,000 in 2011. Today, these hippos are scarce across their native west Africa.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that pygmy hippos feel most comfortable deep in the forest. Early European explorers to Liberia wrote in their diaries that this hippo chooses to forage at night and conceal itself in the water or in dense vegetation during the day.

So secretive is this species that 19th-century explorers observed:

if someone walks across one of their paths or tunnels (used to navigate through thick vegetation), they will abandon that route for a while.

Sensitive souls

Widespread deforestation and constant disturbance have made it difficult for pygmy hippos to survive, requiring as they do a combination of dense forests and swamps which already restricted them to a small area. West African forests have lost over 80% of their original area, which confines wild pygmy hippos to small spots in Gola National Forest (Sierra Leone) and Sapo National Park (Liberia).

With their forests rapidly disappearing, there simply isn’t enough space for pygmy hippos to find food, thrive and reproduce. A survey in the Gola rainforest and its surroundings revealed that many were hiding on former cropland outside the protected area.

Cocoa production is probably the biggest cause of forest loss, then gold mining and unsustainable logging. These activities now encroach on forest reserves and other supposedly protected areas.

Previous forest conservation efforts have failed. Conservationists argue for a system to financially reward farmers and authorise local forestry communities to safeguard the forests and sustainably manage what remains, as opposed to a top-down model of state management and enforcement.

A world treasure

West Africa’s forest loss is particularly heartbreaking as research shows that a remaining patch may be the most productive on Earth, surpassing even the Amazon rainforest.

Particularly productive forests harness more of the sun’s energy and turn it into lots of palatable herbs and juicy fruits – more food to support animals like pygmy hippos, and so foster rich biodiversity.

Before extensive fieldwork beginning in 2016, researchers had underestimated the value of west African forests, particularly their capacity to store carbon and thereby offset global warming. This oversight was partly the result of these forests being hidden by clouds, which makes satellite observation difficult, and their relative neglect by western researchers compared with other ecosystems elsewhere.

It’s not just Moo Deng’s wider family that is at risk. West African forests are home to more than 900 bird species and nearly 400 mammals – more than a quarter of all mammal species in Africa. Their future is highly threatened by extensive deforestation.

Underestimating the value of west African forests has kept them off the priority list for global forest restoration. It’s sadly not surprising that deforestation continues. In 2022 alone Ghana lost 44,500 acres of forest (twice the size of Manchester), close to a 70% increase from 2021.

Each tropical forest contributes irreplaceable biodiversity. From the elusive mammals of west Africa to the vibrant birds of south-east Asia, these ecosystems are equally important. Comprehensive plans are needed to restore them which involve empowering local communities to manage their long-term health.

A global initiative to designate 30% of Earth’s land and ocean as protected by 2030 (known as 30x30) should not conserve a vast area in one or two places, ignoring Earth’s other biodiversity hotspots. The lesson of Moo Deng’s disappearing home should be to value ecosystems equally – and plan their preservation with equal care.

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Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng, College Lecturer at Worcester College, and Postdoctoral Researcher at School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and Sulemana Bawa, PhD Candidate in Conservation Biology, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wildlife conservation is an exercise in human persuasion. It may seem counterintuitive that we hold the keys to the survival of wildlife, but 98% of all threatened species are threatened exclusively by human activities such as pollution, invasive species or habitat loss.

Influencing human behaviour to benefit nature is hard, but it can be done. In the case of the Amur falcon, we found that legislation and enforcement were successful at stopping hunting of this migratory raptor and maintaining changes in hunting practices. But the key to success involved fostering local pride in the bird, alongside providing economic incentives.

The Amur falcon is a bird the size of an apple with a yearly commute from Siberia to Africa and back – the equivalent in total to six trips from London to New York. One key stop in the bird’s journey is the forests of Nagaland in north-east India.

Since its construction in 2000, an artificial reservoir over Nagaland’s Doyang river has attracted vast numbers of winged termites – in turn increasing the number of Amur falcons stopping to feed on these insects. As the numbers of falcons rose, they became very easy targets for local hunters, for whom wildlife hunting is an integral part of their traditional culture. These birds were hunted for food as well as traded in local markets, earning significant seasonal revenue for the hunters.

Fast-forward to November 2012. The scale of the hunt at Doyang reservoir, particularly in Pangti village, came to the attention of conservationists like us, who estimated that between 120,000 and 140,000 birds (about 10% of the global adult population) were being caught in only ten days. These birds stopped at the Doyang reservoir to fatten up before their migration to Africa, but were trapped using fishing nets hung across trees.

A global media campaign was spearheaded by the environmental charity Conservation India. A hard-hitting short film, The Amur Falcon Massacre, was shared online to show the true horror and scale of this hunt. Conservationists tried to leverage India’s membership of the Convention on Migratory Species, and such pressure led to the Indian government making a global commitment to protect species including the Amur falcon.

The government took swift action. It warned Pangti villagers that unless the hunting stopped, it would cut off funding for crucial development projects. Faced with this threat, the village council imposed a ban on hunting falcons in 2013 – without consulting the broader community.

That decision was deeply unpopular with local villagers. Falcon hunting had been an important source of income, and many villagers were resistant to the ban. Though the hunting stopped, local trust in the council leadership was low because the ban was seen as authoritarian.

However, the decision was backed by financial incentives and environmental outreach from charitable organisations and the government’s forest department. This helped reframe the falcons as “honoured guests”, and to connect local people more empathetically with the birds. Hunting was actively discouraged; eventually, it ceased altogether.

By 2017, a sense of pride began to grow within the community. Awards and recognition from external bodies, including the Indian government, for Pangti’s conservation efforts helped create a positive image of the village worldwide. The community’s emotional bond with the falcons strengthened. Villagers even held prayers for satellite-tagged falcons before releasing them. Falcon conservation became a symbol of local identity and pride, which helped overcome the initial resistance to the hunting ban.

This allowed conservation measures to expand. The community outlawed air guns to prevent the hunting of small birds, and extended the hunting ban to cover all wildlife for six months of the year. These actions showed the community wasn’t just enforcing government rules; it was actively creating new conservation initiatives of its own.

The power of persuasion

Human actions drive biodiversity outcomes. These can be destructive, like poaching, or protective, like community-led conservation. The end of the indiscriminate killing of the Amur falcon in Nagaland highlights that, while behaviour change can take place in a short period, maintaining it over the long term is often much more challenging.

For instance, while the initial ban was effective in quickly eliminating hunting, the shift from resistance to pride in falcon conservation took years to fully develop. Sustaining this change has required continuous community engagement and building of pride in the species.

Visual storytelling – in this case, a film widely shared on social media – can also play a powerful role in turning local issues into global ones. The international attention brought to the unsustainable hunting of the Amur falcon was instrumental in prompting government action. This shows how global media exposure can elevate a local conservation issue, creating a sense of urgency that compels authorities to act.

However, while media campaigns can quickly drive policy changes, they don’t always lead to lasting behaviour change. Campaigns that rely on shock and urgency may alienate local communities, creating resistance.

Sustainable behaviour change requires building trust, understanding local values, and supporting community leadership. True change happens when people feel empowered and see benefits from their actions – not simply when they feel pressured to comply.

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Diogo Veríssimo, Research Fellow in Conservation Marketing, University of Oxford and Sahila Kudalkar, PhD Candidate in Sustainable Development, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, Columbia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fires have long been a natural part of forest ecosystems, but something is changing. Our new study shows that forest fires have become more widespread and severe amid global heating, particularly in the high northern latitudes such as Canada and Siberia where fires are most sensitive to hotter, drier conditions.

The implications of this are alarming, not just for the ecosystems affected or the cities engulfed by smoke downwind, but for the planet’s ability to store carbon and regulate the climate. The trend we discovered contrasts with declining fire extent in savannah grasslands, which may reflect the expansion of farming and changing rainfall patterns.

We established the leading causes of forest fires in different parts of the world using an AI algorithm. It grouped forest regions into distinct zones with similar fire patterns and underlying causes, uncovering the worrying extent to which climate change is fuelling the expansion of forest fires in Earth’s high northern latitudes.

More fires in ‘extratropical’ forests

Since 2001, emissions from fires in forests outside of the tropics, like parts of the boreal forest in the far north of North America and Eurasia, have nearly tripled. This rise is largely the result of hotter, drier weather occurring more frequently, combined with forests growing more efficiently in places where the cold once stunted their growth.

Climate change is creating ideal conditions for larger, more intense fires, which accelerate climate change in turn by releasing more carbon to the atmosphere. In fact, we found that global carbon emissions from forest fires have increased by 60% over the past two decades. The largest contributions come from fires in Siberia and western North America.

This trend shifts the focus of forest fire emissions from tropical forests, where fires set to make room for farmland have long contributed carbon to the atmosphere. Conservation policies have reduced deforestation rates since the early 2000s in some regions, particularly Amazonia. By contrast, increasing fires in northern forests, such as the taiga – the forest of the cold sub-arctic region – are driven by changing climate conditions and generally started by lightning, which makes them harder to prevent.

Not only is the area affected by fires expanding but the fires themselves are growing more severe and releasing more carbon, according to our new findings. This corresponds with an earlier study that found fires are doing more damage to ecosystems globally than in the past. Fires are burning through drier and more flammable vegetation as global temperatures rise and droughts become more frequent.

In northern forests, more severe fires can burn deep into the soil and release carbon that has accumulated over centuries. Forests can remain net carbon emitters for decades after burning and the more severe fires become, the longer it takes forests to rebound and recapture carbon lost during the fire.

What does this mean for the planet?

The steep rise in fire emissions from forests outside the tropics is a clear signal that the capacity of Earth’s forest to store carbon is at increasing risk.

Forests, particularly in northern regions, absorb and store CO₂ from the atmosphere. But as fires expand and become more severe, these vital carbon sinks are weakened. This undermines the global effort to tackle climate change as forests offset emissions from human activities that burn fossil fuels.

Forest fires, long considered part of the natural carbon cycle, are increasingly driven by human-caused climate change. Yet, international reporting standards don’t differentiate between “natural” levels of forest fire emissions and the higher emissions we’re seeing due to climate change.

This allows excess fire emissions caused by humans to fall outside the scope of national carbon budgets tracked by organisations like the United Nations. Gaps emerge between the carbon emissions we think we’re managing and the actual amount that’s passing between the land and the atmosphere.

What drives fires in different regions varies, so addressing this growing threat requires tailored approaches. Outside of the tropics, proactive forest management is essential. Carefully managed fires and thinning out vegetation can mean fires ultimately cause less damage when they do ignite. Monitoring vegetation growth, alongside fire-favourable weather conditions, can help identify and prioritise areas for intervention.

In tropical forests, reducing ignitions (especially during droughts) and preventing forest fragmentation is key to protecting these ecosystems and their carbon stocks. This may help prevent the more extreme fires that turn tropical forests from carbon sinks into sources.

Increasing fires are a symptom of climate change

Limiting the burning of fossil fuels is central to minimising future fire risk. Without drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, more severe and widespread forest fires are likely, with increasing damage to ecosystems, biodiversity and the climate.

Our study also highlighted the importance of updating international reporting standards on carbon emissions. As forest fires become more closely linked to human-driven climate change, it’s crucial that fire emissions be included in national carbon budgets to provide a more accurate picture of the planet’s carbon fluxes.

There is also a risk of overestimating how much carbon is stored by reforesting areas, especially outside the tropics. Many carbon offset schemes rely on planting new trees or delaying the harvest of existing ones to absorb CO₂, but if the growing threat of forest fires isn’t properly accounted for, these projects could fail to deliver the carbon savings they promise.

Forest fires are no longer just a natural occurrence. As they shift north and intensify, these fires are a clear symptom of human-caused climate change.

It’s essential to recognise the growing role that fires play in the carbon cycle. By doing so, we can better manage fire risks, safeguard forests and ensure a more resilient future for the planet.

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Matthew William Jones, NERC Independent Research Fellow in Climate Science, University of East Anglia; Crystal A. Kolden, Assistant Professor and Pyrogeographer, University of Idaho, and Stefan H Doerr, Professor of Geography and Director of the Centre for Wildfire Research, Swansea University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For many Australians, 2022 was a dark and devastating year. Major floods wreaked havoc on hundreds of communities in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. But for some, the floods themselves were only half the disaster.

As a recent report by Financial Counselling Victoria showed, many affected households had their insurance claims rejected or diminished, whether due to complicated exclusion clauses or because their “sum insured” had been whittled away by unexpected costs.

A long parliamentary inquiry sought to examine the insurance industry’s response to this disaster. Its final report – released to little fanfare last Friday – revealed a sector in crisis.

The report put forward 86 recommendations, which taken together could deliver real progress in pushing the insurance sector to deliver on its promises.

Some standout areas of focus included abolishing a principle called “like-for-like reinstatement” and increasing accountability and oversight. Making sure households can rely on their own coverage is a vital step.

But the report also highlighted just how vulnerable Australia’s housing stock is to climate change, which is no easy problem to solve.

Forced to repeat the same mistakes

To address the challenge of rising climate risk, we need to increase the resilience of Australian homes. Insurance will only be affordable if risk exposure can be brought down.

Recommendation 26 of the inquiry’s final report deals with the principle of “like-for-like reinstatement”. Written into many policies, this protects insurers from having to pay for home improvements in an insurance claim – known as “betterment” in insurance jargon.

The underlying idea is to stop households sneaking an extra en-suite bathroom into their insurer-funded rebuild. The same dimensions and building materials have to be used.

But this can mean a home that has been flooded ends up being rebuilt with exactly the same flood risk.

This was the experience of Madeleine Serle, whose home was flooded in Melbourne in 2022. She told me she had asked her insurer to rebuild using polished concrete floors in the downstairs rooms of her home, instead of the plasterboard and wood that had soaked up the floodwaters. Serle reasoned that if it flooded again, it wouldn’t cause so much damage.

Her insurer refused. Even when Serle offered to pay any extra costs herself that might arise from concrete flooring, her insurer insisted on a “like-for-like reinstatement”. This meant using the same low-resilience materials that will likely be destroyed if inundated again by floodwater.

Bringing ‘betterment’ to the fore

Serle was actively trying to reduce her future flood risk, but this was precluded by the terms of her insurance contract.

By seeking an end to like-for-like reinstatement, recommendation 26 is pushing for “betterment” to be brought to the forefront of how we think about insurer rebuilds.

It proposes allowing households to swap out size for quality in an insurer rebuild. That could allow them to use the money saved from reducing the footprint of their home on resilience measures, which are often much more expensive.

This wouldn’t just reduce their exposure to climate risks – fire, flooding and so on. It could also improve the energy efficiency of our houses, which is another key part of the climate challenge in Australia.

Standardised products

Many of the report’s other recommendations centred on the better handling of claims and better outcomes for households.

This includes by strengthening accountability through stronger regulatory oversight (recommendations 2, 4, 9, 41, 47, 49), tightening up some key loopholes (recommendations 3, 10, 13), and penalising insurers for delays in the resolution of claims (recommendations 19 and 57).

It also laid out ways to improve communications between insurers and households (recommendations 6, 10, 24, 25, 28, 33), so people can better understand what they should expect from their insurer – and when their insurer might be falling short.

These proposed reforms aim to create more standardised insurance products across the industry. But they could have gone further. The report didn’t go as far as recommending a fully standardised insurance product that all insurers would have to offer.

As the Financial Rights Legal Centre has argued, standardisation is vital to untangling the “confusopoly” that leaves households unable to make informed decisions about the merits of different policies on the market without reading reams of product disclosure statements.

Reform alone isn’t enough

The inquiry’s final report recommends the government buy back some of the riskiest homes (recommendation 81), alongside much stronger government support for households looking to mitigate their own risks.

But insurance reform alone isn’t enough to solve the problem that Australian households face in securing their housing amid worsening climate risk.

The bigger overarching problem faced by Australia is one of climate change mitigation and adaption. While our country is exposed to relatively high levels of climate risk, much of this risk is borne by individuals through home ownership.

With nearly half of all renter retirees living in poverty, Australians know owning their own home is a powerful way to secure their economic future. That’s why home ownership is referred to as part of the “third pillar” of the retirement income system (voluntary private savings), along with superannuation and the public pension.

Reforming our insurance system can make important strides in providing households with better tools to manage climate risk.

Only with stronger safety nets, and by grappling with risks at the societal level, can we counteract the extreme individualisation of climate risk that we experience here in Australia.

Antonia Settle, Lecturer, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sydney’s popular Coogee beach has been closed until further notice after hundreds of strange black balls washed up on the shoreline.

The balls were discovered on Tuesday afternoon. The local authority, Randwick City Council, says samples have been collected for testing, and the incident has been reported to the Environment Protection Authority and Beachwatch NSW.

A council spokesperson said the debris may be “tar balls” formed when oil comes into contact with debris and water – typically the result of oil spills or seepage.

I am a senior research scientist at CSIRO, specialising in environmental toxicity. While the objects could be tar balls, in my view, it is also possible they are something else. But in any case, the debris poses a potential risk to marine life and the public, and authorities were right to close the beach.

What are tar balls?

Tar balls are typically dark, sticky blobs found on beaches after an oil spill. They occur when oil comes into contact with the ocean’s surface and becomes weathered by wind and waves. This breaks the oil patches into smaller pieces.

Tar balls usually form in a variety of shapes and sizes – ranging from big, flat pancakes to tiny spheres. The image below shows a typically irregular tar ball that washed up on an island in the United States.

On this basis, I am not certain the pieces of debris found at Coogee are tar balls. They certainly might be. I haven’t seen them in person, but from the publicly available images, the objects appear to be relatively uniform, perfectly round shapes. That would be very unusual for tar balls – but not impossible.

The balls could be plastic debris washed off a container ship, such as squash balls or plastic used in manufacturing. But obviously, we have to wait until tests have been conducted on the objects before we can determine their origin and composition.

And finally, the balls appear to have washed up only at Coogee beach. It would be uncommon for oil spill remnants to drift to a single location unless the spill happened very close to shore.

What are the potential harms?

Whatever the objects are, they could pose a hazard to marine life.

If the objects are sticky or oily, they may coat animals that come into contact with them. An animal that ate the objects may also be harmed. The balls would be difficult to digest and might stay in the animal’s stomach for a long time, preventing it from eating other food.

If the objects are in fact tar balls, this is dangerous to animals because oil can be carcinogenic.

What should be done?

Every precaution should be taken until we know exactly what these mysterious objects are.

Authorities are doing the right thing in keeping people away from the beach as the cleanup and testing continue. The public should heed official advice not to enter the beach and especially, not to touch the spheres.

At this stage, it appears no other beach is affected, so there are plenty of other nearby options for beach-lovers.

In the meantime, we should let the forensic scientists and other experts do their job.

Sharon Hook, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Australian government has committed A$95 million to fight a virulent strain of bird flu wreaking havoc globally.

With the arrival of millions of migratory birds this spring, there is an increased risk of a deadly strain arriving in Australia, known as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1.

Australia is the only continent free of this rapidly spreading strain. Overseas, HPAI H5N1 has been detected in poultry, wild birds and a wide range of mammals, including humans. But our reprieve will likely not last forever.

As Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek warned on Monday, “the awful reality of this disease is that – like the rest of the world – we will not be able to prevent its arrival”. HPAI H5N1 is like nothing we’ve seen in Australia. The extra funding, which is in addition to Australia’s current biosecurity budget, will help us prepare and respond.

A trail of destruction

Avian influenza is a virus that infects birds, but can infect other animals.

In Australia we have various strains of avian influenza that don’t cause disease, referred to as low pathogenic avian influenza. While these viruses occur naturally Australian wild birds, it is the disease-causing strains, such as HPAI H5N1 and HPAI H7 we are worried about. These HPAI strains have enormous consequences for wild birds, domestic animals, and animal producers and workers.

HPAI H5N1 first emerged in Asia in 1996, and has been circulating in Asian poultry for decades. Following genetic changes in the virus, it repeatedly jumped into wild birds in 2014, 2016 and again in 2020, after which it caused an animal pandemic, or panzootic.

Starting in 2021, the virus rapidly spread. First, from Europe to North America in 2021. Then into South America in 2022. There, in South America, the virus caused the death of more than 500,000 wild birds and 30,000 marine mammals.

While we had seen large outbreaks in wild birds globally, the huge outbreaks in seals and sea lions in South America was unprecedented. With this came substantial concern that the virus was spreading from mammal to mammal, rather than just bird to bird or bird to mammal, as was happening elsewhere.

About a year after arriving in South America, the virus was detected in the sub-Antarctic, and a few months later, on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Australia and New Zealand are still free of the virus, for now.

The rising death toll

Beyond wildlife, HPAI H5N1 is having a huge impact on poultry.

In 2022 alone, it caused 131 million poultry across 67 countries to die of the illness or be euthanased because they were infected.

In contrast, earlier this year Australia’s biggest avian influenza outbreak to date – caused by a different strain, HPAI H7 – caused the death or destruction of 1.5 million chickens. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to what is occurring globally.

Concerningly, in the United States, the virus has jumped into dairy cattle and so far has affected more than 200 dairy herds in 14 states. It has also jumping into humans: in the past ten days alone, six human cases have occurred – all in dairy workers in California.

Given HPAI H5N1 has spread around the globe, the risk of the virus entering Australia has increased.

In a recent risk assessment, my colleague and I identified two main pathways for H5N1 into Australia.

The most likely route is that H5N1 is brought in from Asia by long-distance migratory birds. Birds such as shorebirds and seabirds arrive in the millions each spring from Asia (and in some cases as far away as Alaska).

A second route is with ducks. If the virus spreads across the Wallace Line (a biogeographical boundary that runs through Indonesia), it will come into contact with endemic Australian duck species.

Unlike shorebirds and seabirds, ducks are not long-distance migrants, and don’t migrate between Asia and Australia. That endemic Australian ducks are not exposed to this virus because they don’t migrate to Asia may be one of the reasons why H5N1 has not yet arrived in Australia.

So, what’s the plan?

The Australian government’s new $95 million funding commitment is a crucial response to the heightened level of risk, and the dire consequences if H5N1 entered the country.

The funding is divided between environment, agriculture and human health – the three pillars of the “One Health” approach.

Broadly, the money will be spent on:

• enhancing surveillance to ensure timely detection and response if the disease enters and spreads in animals within Australia

• strengthening preparedness and response capability to reduce harm to the production sector and native wildlife

• supporting a nationally coordinated approach to response and communications

• taking proactive measures to protect threatened iconic species from extinction

• investing in more pre-pandemic vaccines to protect human health.

Importantly, the funding covers preparedness, surveillance and response.

Preparedness includes proactive measures to protect threatened birds – for example, vaccination or reducing other threats to these species and improving biosecurity.

Surveillance is essential to catch the virus as soon as it arrives and track its spread. Australia already has a wild bird surveillance program which, among other things, investigates sick and dead wildlife as well as sampling “healthy” wild birds. The additional commitment will bolster these activities.

Response will include things like better and faster tests. It will also include funding for practical on-ground actions to limit the spread and impacts of HPAI H5N1 for susceptible wildlife. This might include a vaccination program for vulnerable threatened species, as an example.

Work has already begun

This funding is a long-term investment, and mostly allocated to future activities. In the short term, my colleagues and I have already begun our spring surveillance program.

We aim to test about 1,000 long-distance migratory birds arriving in Australia for avian influenza. Based on our risk assessments, we are focusing on long-distance migratory seabirds such as the short-tailed shearwater, and various shorebirds including red-necked stints, arriving from breeding areas in Siberia.

This surveillance program is supported by, and contributes to, the national surveillance program managed by Wildlife Health Australia

In addition to our active surveillance, we need your help! If you see sick or dead wild birds or marine mammals, call the Emergency Animal Disease Watch Hotline on 1800 675 888.

In addition, the Wildlife Health Australia website offers current advice for:

• people who encounter sick or dead wild birds

• vets and other animal health professionals

• bird banders, wildlife rangers and researchers

• wildlife managers and wildlife care providers, who can access risk mitigation toolboxes.

For more information, visit birdflu.gov.au or Wildlife Health Australia’s avian influenza page

Michelle Wille, Senior research fellow, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

First Peoples’ names for animals and plants undeniably enrich Australian culture. But to date, few names taken from a language of Australia’s First Peoples have been widely applied to birds.

About 2,000 Australian bird species and subspecies occur in Australia and its territories. However, just 35 of these have common names taken directly from First Peoples’ languages. These names are variations of just a handful of First Peoples words: galah, gang-gang, budgerigar, currawong, brolga, kookaburra, chowchilla, Kalkadoon and mukarrthippi.

By contrast, many more bird names promote colonial power, by memorialising (mostly male) foreign explorers, naturalists, administrators or royalty – some of whom never even visited Australia.

There is growing interest in the use of First Peoples’ words, as a global movement to decolonise the common names of species gathers pace. But as we and our colleagues explain in a paper published today, the practice is far more complex, and sometimes contentious, than it might appear.

A bird by many names

In Aoteoroa/New Zealand, many birds are known by their Māori names. Kiwis have never been known by any other name, and nor have kākāpō or kākā.

It seems natural to assume using Indigenous names for our flora would help recognise First Peoples’ rights and knowledge, and their important role in Australian bird conservation.

But we should proceed with both caution and respect.

More than 250 First Peoples languages exist in Australia. This is unlike New Zealand where there is one Māori language (though many dialects).

Most Australian birds occur on Country of more than one First Peoples’ group, and each group is likely to have at least one name for each species.

The galah is a good example. For the first 100 years after Europeans arrived, naturalists most commonly used the name rose-breasted cockatoo.

Gradually, however, the name used by the Yuwaarlaraay of north-western New South Wales – gilaa – took hold. In 1926, the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, now BirdLife Australia, adopted a variant of this, galah, as the official Australian name for the species.

Since then, galahs have become deeply embedded into the national psyche. When Home and Away character Alf Stewart calls someone a “flamin’ galah” most Australians knows he is being uncomplimentary.

Similarly, there could be no mistaking which species a survey respondent was referring to when they stated their favourite bird was a “glar”.

But in the Kimberley region, the Gooniyandi peoples call galahs girlinygirliny. In the NSW Riverina, the Wemba-Wemba name is wilek-wilek.

Likewise, the white-throated grasswren is known by the name yirlinkirrkkirr or yirrindjirrin in the Kunwinjku dialect. It’s also known as djirnidjirnirrinjken in the Kune dialect, from the Bininj Kunwok language group. The Jawoyn name for the same species is nyirrnyirr.

The situation is even more complicated for birds shared with other countries.

These multiple words for a species mean governments and other organisations could be seen as favouring one group over another if they recognise a particular First Peoples’ name.

So sometimes it’s best to keep the English name, even though First Peoples’ names exist. This was the case with the endangered golden-shouldered parrot, known by Queensland’s Olkola people as alwal.

The bird is highly significant in the Olkola creation story. However, a team working on the species’ recovery, chaired by an Olkola representative, decided to stick with the English name because neighbouring language groups refer to the bird by other names.

Sadly, the parrots themselves no longer occur on the Country of some First Peoples, and only the name of the bird remains.

Protecting the secret and sacred

The words First Peoples use to describe species may have special cultural significance.

First Peoples’ names for birds, and other species, are often built around the birds’ relationships with people, kin and with Country. For example, the name may describe:

• a connection between a person and a species
• a group of people’s relationship with each other which is related to a shared ancestor
• relationships between people and a sacred site or Dreaming track.

Sometimes the names have sacred or secret meanings – and these can change with the place or with the speaker.

For these reasons, First Peoples may not want names from their language to be publicly available or used in official documents without their consent.

Permission is key

There are cases where English names should and can be replaced by a First Peoples’ name.

For example, in 2020 the bird now known as the mukarrthippi grasswren was recognised as a separate subspecies and needed its own common name. Australia’s rarest bird, it is known from just a few sand dunes on Country of the Ngiyampaa people in western New South Wales.

Ngiyampaa elders together settled on the name mukarrthippi. It is a combination of Ngiyampaa words – mukarr or spinifex (the spiny grass in which the grasswrens live) and thippi which means little bird.

Across Australia, 14 other bird subspecies have only ever been known from Country of a single First Peoples group. This means conversations with elders could be had about ascribing a First Peoples’ name to these birds.

In other cases, language users from multiple First Peoples groups could decide together on a name.

Where First Peoples offer alternative names for animal and plant species, governments should embrace the change. But no new First Peoples’ names should be adopted for species without explicit permission of the speakers of the language.

Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University and Sophie Gilbey, Research Projects Officer, Environment Research Unit, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay in Florida and Barataria Bay in Louisiana are exhaling microplastic fibers, according to our new research published in the journal PLOS One.

Tiny plastic pieces have spread all over the planet – on land, in the air and even in clouds. An estimated 170 trillion bits of microplastic are estimated to be in the oceans alone. Across the globe, research has found people and wildlife are exposed to microplastics mainly through eating and drinking, but also through breathing.

Our study found the microplastic particles exhaled by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are similar in chemical composition to those identified in human lungs. Whether dolphins are exposed to more of these pollutants than people are is not yet known.

Why it matters

In humans, inhaled microplastics can cause lung inflammation, which can lead to problems including tissue damage, excess mucus, pneumonia, bronchitis, scarring and possibly cancer. Since dolphins and humans inhale similar plastic particles, dolphins may be at risk for the same lung problems.

Research also shows plastics contain chemicals that, in humans, can affect reproduction, cardiovascular health and neurological function. Since dolphins are mammals, microplastics may well pose these health risks for them, too.

As top predators with decades-long life spans, bottlenose dolphins help scientists understand the impacts of pollutants on marine ecosystems – and the related health risks for people living near coasts. This research is important because more than 41% of the world’s human population lives within 62 miles (100 km) of a coast.

What still isn’t known

Scientists estimate the oceans contain many trillions of plastic particles, which get there through runoff, wastewater or settling from the air. Ocean waves can release these particles into the air.

In fact, bubble bursts caused by wave energy can release 100,000 metric tons of microplastics into the atmosphere each year. Since dolphins and other marine mammals breathe at the water’s surface, they may be especially vulnerable to exposure.

Where there are more people, there is usually more plastic. But for the tiny plastic particles floating in the air, this connection isn’t always true. Airborne microplastics are not limited to heavily populated areas; they pollute undeveloped regions, too.

Our research found microplastics in the breath of dolphins living in both urban and rural estuaries, but we don’t yet know whether there are major differences in amounts or types of plastic particles between the two habitats.

How we do our work

Breath samples for our study were collected from wild bottlenose dolphins during catch-and-release health assessments conducted in partnership with the Brookfield Zoo Chicago, Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, National Marine Mammal Foundation and Fundación Oceanogràfic.

During these brief permitted health assessments, we held a petri dish or a customized spirometer – a device that measures lung function – above the dolphin’s blowhole to collect samples of the animals’ exhaled breath. Using a microscope in our colleague’s lab, we checked for tiny particles that looked like plastic, such as pieces with smooth surfaces, bright colors or a fibrous shape.

Since plastic melts when heated, we used a soldering needle to test whether these suspected pieces were plastic. To confirm they were indeed plastic, our colleague used a specialized method called Raman spectroscopy, which uses a laser to create a structural fingerprint that can be matched to a specific chemical.

Our study highlights how extensive plastic pollution is – and how other living things, including dolphins, are exposed. While the impacts of plastic inhalation on dolphins’ lungs are not yet known, people can help address the microplastic pollution problem by reducing plastic use and working to prevent more plastic from polluting the oceans.

Leslie Hart, Associate Professor of Public Health, College of Charleston and Miranda Dziobak, Instructor in Public Health, College of Charleston

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you notice a tiny, strikingly coloured spider performing an elaborate courtship dance, you may have seen your first peacock spider.

New species of peacock spider are discovered every year; the tally is now 113. One newly discovered species, Maratus yanchep, is only known to exist in a small area of coastal dunes near Yanchep, north of Perth.

As Perth’s suburbs sprawl ever further north and south, it means one problem – the housing crisis – is worsening another, the extinction crisis.

The dunes which are home to Maratus yanchep are just 20 metres from land being cleared for large new estates.

If the species was formally listed as threatened, it could be protected. But the spider was only described in 2022 and has not been listed on state or federal threatened species lists. That means Maratus yanchep has no protection, according to the state government.

What’s so special about a spider?

Peacock spiders are tiny. Many have bodies just 4–5 mm across. The males only put on their mating displays during short periods of the year, typically August to September. Their size and habits also make it hard to learn about their populations and preferred habitats. This is partly why we’re only now realising how many peacock spider species there are.

Concerted effort by enthusiasts such as Jurgen Otto has greatly expanded our knowledge. Of the 113 described species, each has distinctive colouring and its own dances (males have the colour and the moves). But we know there are more species of peacock spider waiting to be recognised by western science.

Many species of peacock spider are only known from within a very small area of suitable habitat.

This puts the species at high risk of extinction because a single threat such as a large bushfire or a suburban development can destroy all their habitat at once.

How can this be allowed?

Before any native bushland is cleared in Australia, developers have to undertake an environmental impact survey to look for threatened species and assess what damage the development would do. If a threatened species is found, the development can be scaled back or denied.

The problem is, these surveys only look for species known to be in danger. If a species isn’t listed on Australia’s growing list of threatened species, it won’t be looked for.

But Maratus yanchep has not been assessed to see if it is threatened. This means it has no protection from development.

This points to a wider problem. Large, well-known Australian vertebrates such as koalas and platypuses tend to get more attention – and conservation efforts – than humble invertebrates. We face an uphill battle to conserve our wealth of invertebrates.

Worldwide, many invertebrates are in real danger of disappearing. Australia is home to at least 300,000 invertebrate species, dwarfing the 8,000-odd vertebrates – but only 101 are currently listed under the federal government’s laws protecting threatened species, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act. The problem here is we don’t have enough data to assess most invertebrate species for formal conservation listing and protection.

Data takes money

Listing a species as threatened requires a large amount of data on where the species is and isn’t found. This takes time and specialist knowledge. But funding is scarce.

As a result, our efforts to gather data on invertebrates often relies on passionate volunteers and enthusiasts, who may often pick one genus – say peacock spiders – and set out to expand our knowledge.

When clear and immediate threats do appear – such as clearing coastal dunes in Yanchep – we are again reliant on the unpaid work of volunteers to gather information.

The problem of sprawl

Perth is one of the longest cities in the world. Its suburbs sprawl for 150 kilometres, running from Two Rocks in the north to Dawesville in the south.

Many Perth residents want to live by the coast, driving demand for new housing on the city outskirts. This drives destruction of native bushland and pushes species towards extinction. Some species tolerate the change from bushland to suburbia, but these are a minority – less than 25%. Small, localised species are at highest risk of extinction.

Perth’s sprawl shows no sign of slowing. Land clearing for housing has contributed to the worsening plight of the Carnaby’s cockatoo. Fifty years ago, the iconic cockatoo flew over the city in flocks as large as 7,000. There’s nothing like that now.

What can we do?

Efforts are underway to protect Maratus yanchep. The not-for-profit charity Invertebrates Australia is working to nominate it for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. Greens MP Brad Pettitt raised the issue in Parliament in August.

The one thing peacock spiders have going for them is their looks. They are spectacularly beautiful. They’re also easily identified by the distinct patterns on the males – for most species you don’t need expert training to tell them apart, just decent eyesight.

As a result, peacock spiders have drawn attention from dozens of amateur arachnologists and photographers who collect and share information on where they can be found. This citizen science data is often able to be used as evidence in listing a species as threatened – and unlocking vital protection.

Images of these spiders also boosts their public profile and support for their protection.

Despite the recent groundswell of interest in saving this tiny spider, it may be too late. To avoid the mass extinction of iconic Australian species, we must find better ways of building without large-scale habitat clearing. 

Lizzy Lowe, Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow in Ecology and Entomology, Edith Cowan University; Jess Marsh, Visiting researcher in ecology, University of Adelaide, and Leanda Denise Mason, Vice Chancellor Research Fellow in conservation ecology, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The contest between truth and post-truth matters when trying to solve big public policy questions. One of these questions is how to sustainably manage water in Australia for the benefit of all.

Truths can be confirmed or, at the very least, can be proved false. Post-truths, however, are opinions that masquerade as facts and are not supported by verifiable evidence.

Post-truths muddy political and policy debates. They leave everyday people simply not knowing what to believe anymore. This prevents good policy being enacted.

As I outline in a speech to the National Press Club today, several post-truths, espoused by a wide range of people and organisations, are getting in the way of Australian water reforms. These reforms are essential to secure a better water future for the driest inhabitable continent.

Water policy in Australia is now at a crucial juncture. This year is the 20th anniversary of the National Water Initiative that was meant to lay the foundations for sustainable water management. The completion date of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, accompanied by billions of dollars in funding, is just two years away.

Yet the so-called “water wars” are raging again. Here are five post-truth claims to watch out for.

1. Water buybacks to sustain rivers harm communities

The Australian government buys water rights from willing sellers to return water to the environment. These buybacks have been controversial and blamed, with little evidence, for causing many farmers to become distressed and bankrupt, and to leave farming.

It’s true some irrigators are opposed to buybacks and prefer subsidies to build more efficient irrigation infrastructure on their properties.

But converting state water licences to a system of tradeable water rights gifted irrigators rights now worth tens of billions of dollars. In return, the government was supposed to buy back enough water from willing sellers to return rivers to health.

But insufficient water has been bought back from irrigators, for a couple of reasons.

First, the federal budget for buybacks was much less than needed to reduce irrigators’ water use to sustainable levels.

Second, the Abbott government capped buybacks in 2015. Its justification was the post-truth claim, based on “low quality” consultant reports, that buybacks were “destroying” irrigation communities.

The truth is, buybacks from willing sellers are much more cost-effective than taxpayer-subsidised irrigation infrastructure. Research shows infrastructure subsidies give irrigators an incentive to use even more water.

And there is robust evidence that, overall, the net social and economic impacts of water buybacks are positive. They give sellers the flexibility to adjust their farming practices in ways that are best for them.

2. Efficient irrigation ‘saves’ water and increases stream flows

Australia’s irrigation industry, in general, uses water efficiently. It’s a result of many practices, ranging from drip irrigation to covered water channels to digital monitoring technology, among other things.

However, spending on irrigation efficiencies has not saved much water.

Landholders have been paid billions of dollars for efficiency improvements. These same taxpayer dollars, paradoxically, may have reduced stream flows in some of our largest rivers. That’s because more efficient irrigation can decrease the amount of water flowing from farmers’ fields to rivers and aquifers.

3. Australia has world-best water management

Australia has one of the world’s largest formal water markets. But that doesn’t mean everyone benefits.

For a start, the water markets are unjust. First Peoples, who were dispossessed of their land and water from 1788 onwards, still have only a tiny share of Australia’s water rights.

In key areas, Australian water management is also far from best practice. For example, building weirs and dams has partly or completely disconnected groundwater from surface water and prevented or restricted the water flows to floodplains and wetlands that keep them healthy.

Fish, bird and invertebrate habitats have been destroyed as a result. This must change if we are to avoid further degradation of river ecosystems.

There is no more obvious sign of the ongoing destruction of Australia’s waterways than the fish kills along the Baaka (Lower Darling River) at Menindee. This happened in 2018–19, during a drought, and again in early 2023, when there was no drought.

The New South Wales Office of the Chief Scientist and Engineer investigated the 2023 fish kill. Its report found:

Mass fish deaths are symptomatic of degradation of the broader river ecosystem over many years […] failure in policy implementation is the root cause of the decline in the river ecosystem and the consequent fish deaths.

4. All Australians have reliable access to good-quality water

It’s true that residents of Australia’s biggest cities and towns enjoy reliable, good-quality water supplies 24/7. But it’s also true that hundreds of thousands of Australians in rural and remote areas regularly face multiple drinking water threats.

These threats result in temporary public advice notices to boil water to remove microbiological pollution and health warnings about contaminants that boiling cannot remove, such as nitrates. A few dozen communities have elevated levels of the “forever chemicals”, PFAS, in their tap water.

5. Dams can ‘drought-proof’ Australia

It’s true that dams have helped Australia cope with variable rainfall from year to year. It’s also true, however, that despite building very large water storages in the 20th century, too much water is being diverted in multiple places. They include the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia’s “food bowl”.

Australia is over-extracting the available water in its dams. It’s happening in the northern Murray-Darling Basin, where there is little control over how much overflow from rivers onto floodplains can be taken.

Over-extraction is a big problem, especially during long droughts when there may be very little water to spare. It means the livelihoods of downstream irrigators with perennial plantings, such as grapes or fruit trees, are at stake. If their trees die, so do their businesses.

A sustainable future must be built on facts

Responding to Australia’s water crises is a huge challenge. It’s made even more difficult if we accept the post-truth claims, rather than verifiable facts about how we manage our waters.

Real reform is needed to secure a sustainable Australian water future. To achieve this, we must tell the truth, acknowledge what’s wrong and be clear about what works and what doesn’t.

Quentin Grafton, Australian Laureate Professor of Economics, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University and John Williams, Adjunct Professor in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management, Charles Sturt University, and Adjunct Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As humpback and southern right whales return to Antarctica at the tail end of their annual migration, east coast whale watchers may think the show will soon be over. But some whale species are still here, possibly year-round. And we need to find out more about them.

My team’s new research concerns one of these little-known species – the Bryde’s whale. You may have seen it feeding, breaching or surfing, without realising what it was.

My colleagues and I wanted to learn more about where Bryde’s whales can be found in Australian waters. So we tapped into observations shared on social media, including drone footage and photographs from whale-watching tours. We also gathered observations from scientists.

We discovered a wealth of information. It includes evidence of feeding and “surfing” behaviours possibly never documented before. Findings from this research will directly help inform conservation efforts to protect this species, which we still know so little about in Australian waters.

Observing whales through citizen science

Scientists can’t always be out in the field, or on the water. That’s why the data gathered by everyday people, known as “citizen scientists”, can be so useful. It captures valuable information about wildlife that can be used later by professional researchers.

Citizen science projects involving marine life have grown over recent years. They include people documenting humpback whale recovery by counting northward migrating humpback whales off Sydney, and people watching sharks off Bondi Beach via the @DroneSharkApp.

Hungry hungry whales

Like humpback whales, these giants are “baleen” whales, meaning they are toothless. But Bryde’s whales have a much pointier mouth and lack that famous hump.

A preference for warmer waters means Bryde’s whales are also known as tropical whales. They can be found in tropical or subtropical waters.

Around the world, Bryde’s whales have demonstrated interesting feeding behaviours, from high-speed seafloor chases to “pirouette feeding”.

Hanging out in shallow and deep waters

Our study documented Bryde’s whales feeding in both deep and shallow waters off the east coast of Australia, alone or sometimes with other whales.

We tapped into more than an hour of drone vision and more than 200 photos of Bryde’s whales shared by citizen scientists on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

In offshore environments, Bryde’s whales were typically seen “side lunging” – where they propel themselves forward and turn onto their side then open their mouth to engulf their food. They also swam from below and scooped up their prey, much like humpback whales.

In shallow waters, Bryde’s whales were observed feeding directly within or behind the surf break.

We believe this is a new feeding behaviour for this species. We call it “shallow water surf feeding”.

Whales may be using the surf to assist with their feeding efforts, or, perhaps they are there because that’s where the bait fish are hanging out.

Regardless, it’s impressive to see such a large whale in the surf and in shallow waters.

Spotted: mums with their calves

We also documented mothers with calves. This indicates some parts of the Australian east coast could possibly serve as an important area for nursing mothers with their young. They could also be using these waters for calving.

We don’t yet fully understand the species’ movements around Australia, and whether they swim in New Zealand waters. For example, the world-famous white humpback whale Migaloo has been known to swim across the Tasman Sea.

Could these Bryde’s whales we see here in Australian waters be the same ones seen in New Zealand waters? Are they calving in New Zealand or Australia and moving between the two? If so, what does this mean for their protection?

Whales don’t recognise international boundaries. They go where they want, when they want. This is why collaborative research like this is important for our growing knowledge of this species.

The more we know, the better we can protect

This is the first dedicated paper on both the occurrence and feeding behaviour of Bryde’s whale in Australian waters.

As humans continue to expand our footprint in the ocean through activities such as offshore wind energy, shipping, fishing and tourism, knowledge of this species and others can help inform future decisions in our blue backyard.

Findings of this study will directly contribute to Australia’s efforts to protect whales. One immediate action will be contributing information to the federal review of Biological Important Areas for protected marine species. The more we know, the better we can target conservation efforts to provide for a species we know relatively little about in Australian waters.

And even though the humpbacks and southern rights are headed back south to Antarctica for the summer, it’s still worth keeping your eyes on the water. You might be the next person to spot a Bryde’s whale in Australian waters. Let us know if you do! 

Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Queensland has joined Tasmania as the second Australian state or territory to offer a A$500 rebate for buyers of new e‑bikes. The pre-election announcement includes a smaller $200 rebate for e‑scooters.

The Queensland e‑mobility rebate scheme is first come, first served, until its $2 million budget ($1 million was added last week) is used up. The Tasmanian scheme has closed for this reason.

These schemes follow a trend of government incentives to buy e‑bikes in North America and Europe. The Australian schemes differ from most schemes overseas by including e‑scooters too.

It’s a welcome move to promote sustainable transport. These personal transport devices have smaller environmental footprints to produce and operate than electric cars. Owning e‑bikes or e‑scooters can enable people to drive less – reducing congestion and emissions – and avoid high fuel costs.

However, my research and other studies suggest ownership doesn’t guarantee much greater use. Additional measures will be needed to boost use of these sustainable transport modes.

Why own e-bikes or e-scooters when you can share?

The rebate is likely to boost retailers’ sales. More than 860 rebate applications were received within three days of the scheme starting on September 23.

And existing owners now have an incentive to upgrade or replace models. They might then sell their pre-loved e‑bikes or e‑scooters on the second-hand market. This means others could get them more cheaply.

Queensland was the first Australian state to legalise the use of e‑scooters in 2018, when Brisbane introduced shared e‑scooter operations. Regional cities such as Townsville and Cairns launched similar schemes. Dockless e‑bikes later replaced Brisbane’s initial CityCycle bike-sharing scheme.

I recently conducted research to understand why South-East Queensland residents want to own e‑scooters. The study methods were comparable to an earlier e‑bike user survey.

Both sets of owners cite replacing car use as their top reason for ownership. However, their motivations differ.

E‑scooter owners are mainly driven by the lower price and the fun factor of riding. E‑bike owners focus more on fitness and the health benefits of getting some exercise when riding. Australian regulations require e‑bikes to be pedal-assisted.

But does this mean people will ride more?

Since 2022, the Queensland government has offered a rebate of up to $6,000 for buying full-sized electric vehicles (that scheme closed last month). It now appears to have responded to calls to do the same for e‑bikes and e‑scooters.

Buyers certainly won’t mind freebies and rebates, but rebate-induced ownership might not increase overall use by much.

An Australia-wide survey in 2023 found 57% of respondents had access to at least one working bicycle at home and this proportion has been increasing. However, only 15% reported riding in the previous week. Only 36.7% had ridden in the past year.

Overall cycling participation has declined over the past decade, except during the COVID pandemic when work and travel patterns were more local. For all periods, men are significantly more likely to cycle than women.

The same 2023 survey revealed only about 2.1% own e‑bikes. The rebate will likely increase this rate in Queensland.

Some preliminary evidence suggests e‑bike users ride more often and further than those riding non-electric bikes. It also helps older people get into cycling. And it has the potential to replace car use even in rural areas.

Despite e‑bikes offering advantages over traditional bikes, riders of both face obstacles to greater use, such as road safety and poor cycling infrastructure.

What kinds of incentives do other countries offer?

Australian policymakers should consider offering incentives to ensure the new purchases are well used, not sitting idle most of the time.

The United Kingdom has a long-standing cycle-to-work scheme that offers commuters a tax exemption for buying bicycles or e‑bikes.

In the Netherlands, incentive schemes have used smartphone technology to track their mileage. For example, in the B-Riders scheme, riders earn €0.08–0.15 (A$0.13–0.21) per kilometre. There was a 68% increase in e‑bike use by former car commuters after one month and 73% increase after six months of participation.

Schemes in North America tend to be aimed at lower-income households. They are more likely to be involuntarily carless, so e‑bikes can improve their access to jobs, goods and services.

There are alternatives to rebates. North Vancouver, for example, is trialling e‑cargo bike lending to replace car shopping trips, as these bulky bikes are not practical for every household to own.

In France, residents can claim a bike or e‑bike subsidy of up to €2,000 (A$3,210). Second-hand devices sold by approved repairers are covered too, which is likely to help reduce e‑waste. Australian schemes so far only cover new purchases.

What more can be done?

For e‑bike and e‑scooter owners, the main barrier to riding more is the lack of safe and well-connected infrastructure. Numerous studies have connected rates of riding to the quality and quantity of infrastructure. Extensive, high-quality and safe cycling networks can deliver lasting shifts towards sustainable transport.

When the Spanish city of Seville built such networks, cycling rates surged 11-fold in a few years.

In the Netherlands, this infrastructure is so well-funded and extensive that it’s no surprise cycling is popular there.

Riders don’t just need bikeways. They also need end-of-trip facilities with secure parking (and maybe free charging too).

In Australia, cycling gets only around 2% of transport funding.

In Brisbane, despite not being anywhere close to the European level of cycling infrastructure, new “green bridges” and bikeways will be expanded to more areas of the city (and other Queensland venues). It’s part of preparations to host “climate-positive” Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032. This year’s games host, Paris, successfully upgraded infrastructure and boosted cycling rates.

Another benefit of more riders on the streets is that it creates “safety in numbers”. Greater numbers would also help attract more funding for infrastructure that makes cycling and scooting safer and more attractive.

Both e‑bikes and e‑scooters are already worthwhile investments. Using them often would free yourself from car dependence – and that’s good for the planet and your wallet.

Abraham Leung, Senior Research Fellow, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Battery electric vehicle sales in Australia have flattened in recent months. The latest data reveal a sharp 27.2% year-on-year decline (overall new vehicle sales were down 9.7%) in September. Tesla Model Y and Model 3 cars had an even steeper drop of nearly 50%.

Sales also fell in August (by 18.5%) and July (1.5%). There’s a clear downward trend.

Before this downturn, electric vehicle sales had been rising steadily, supported by increased choices and government incentives. In early 2024, year-to-date sales continued to grow compared to the same period in 2023. Then, in April, electric vehicle sales fell for the first time in more than two years.

Australia isn’t simply mirroring a broader global trend. It’s true sales have slowed in parts of Europe and the United States — often due to reduced incentives. But strong sales growth continues in other regions, such as China and India.

A range of factors or combinations of them could help explain the trend in Australia. These include governments axing incentives, concerns about safety and depreciation, and misinformation.

Governments are cutting incentives

Electric vehicles typically cost more upfront. However, the flood of cheaper Chinese vehicles is lowering the cost barrier.

Federal, state and territory governments also provide financial incentives to buy electric vehicles. These have been among the main drivers of sales in Australia.

Nationally, incentives include a higher luxury car tax threshold and exemptions from fringe benefits tax and customs duty. But several states and territories have scaled back their rebate programs and tax exemptions in 2023 and 2024.

New South Wales and South Australia ended their $3,000 rebates on January 1 this year. At the same time, NSW ended a stamp duty refund for new and used zero-emission vehicles up to a value of $78,000. Both incentives had been offered since 2021.

Victoria ended its $3,000 rebate, also launched in 2021, in mid-2023.

In the ACT, the incentive of two years’ free registration closed on June 30 2024.

Queensland’s $6,000 electric vehicle rebate ended in September.

The market clearly responded to these changes. However, reduced financial incentives alone cannot explain the full picture. Despite several rounds of price cuts, sales of popular Tesla models are falling.

Buyers are increasingly opting for hybrid vehicles instead. In September, sales of hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles were up by 34.4% and 89.9%, respectively.

These sales trends reflect other consumer concerns beyond just the upfront cost.

Resale value worries buyers

One major issue for car buyers in Australia, and globally, is uncertainty about their resale value. Consumers are concerned electric vehicles depreciate faster than traditional cars.

These concerns are particularly tied to battery degradation, which affects a car’s range and performance over time. And batteries account for much of the vehicle’s total cost. Potential buyers worry about the long-term value of a used electric vehicle with an ageing battery.

For example, a 2021 Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus with nearly 85,000km currently lists for about $34,000. It has lost roughly half its value in just three years.

While Tesla offers transferable four-year warranties and software updates, the rapid evolution of EV technology also makes older second-hand models less desirable, further reducing their value.

Fires raise fears about safety

Electric vehicle fires have made headlines globally. This has created doubts among consumers about the risks of owning them.

In Korea, a high-profile battery fire in August 2024 led to a ban on certain electric vehicles from underground car parks. While similar bans are not common in Australia, some have been reported. These could have harmed local consumer confidence.

Incidents of electric vehicle fires have increased along with vehicle numbers. Statistically, these vehicles are not more prone to fires than conventional cars – in fact, the risk is clearly lower.

For example, analysis of publicly available statistics from South Korean government agencies, one of the early adopters of electric vehicles, show the number of fires per registered electric vehicle is steadily increasing. Fire risk remains lower than for traditional vehicles, although the gap is shrinking as the electric vehicle fleet ages. And the highly publicised nature of their fires is a source of growing buyer hesitancy.

Misinformation and politicisation are rampant

The full environmental benefits of electric vehicles depend on widespread adoption. However, there is a wide gap between early adopters’ experiences and potential buyers’ perceptions.

Persistent misconceptions include exaggerated concerns about battery life, charging infrastructure and safety. Myths and misinformation often fuel these concerns. Traditional vehicle and oil companies actively spread misinformation in campaigns much like those used against other green energy initiatives.

In response, coalitions such as Electric Vehicles UK have formed to combat these false narratives and promote accurate information.

The politicisation of green initiatives adds to the challenge. When electric vehicles become associated with a specific political ideology, it can alienate large parts of the population. Adoption then becomes slower and more divisive.

Green transition is a work in progress

The electric vehicle market in Australia is facing challenges, despite the growing variety of models and price cuts.

The EV sales trend signals deeper issues in the market. Broader trends, such as the dominance of SUVs and utes, underscore the fact that while the transition to greener vehicles is progressing, it remains uneven.

Further efforts will be needed to reduce misconceptions and misinformation, and bridge the gap between owners’ experience and potential buyers’ perceptions. Only then can Australia enjoy the environmental benefits of widespread EV adoption.

Milad Haghani, Senior Lecturer of Urban Analytics & Resilience, UNSW Sydney and Hadi Ghaderi, Professor in Supply Chain and Freight Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Clusters of severe thunderstorms are expected to strike Australia’s southern regions over Thursday and Friday.

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued severe weather warnings and forecasts related to these unusually widespread stormy conditions as they move through South Australia today and into Victoria.

Some areas have already experienced golf ball-sized hail and intense winds.

While we might not always think of thunderstorms as a threat, severe storms can be surprisingly damaging. The enormous Sydney thunderstorm of 1999 dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hail, causing widespread damage to cars and roofs. At the time, it was the most expensive natural disaster on record, overtaken only by the unprecedented 2022 floods across eastern Australia – which were themselves partly caused by severe thunderstorms in addition to other weather systems.

When severe thunderstorms bring torrential rain, they can often trigger flash flooding. This is because extreme rain from thunderstorms usually falls over a relatively short time – less than an hour or two in many cases. Lightning can also pose a threat.

In recent years, severe thunderstorms have also shown they can damage the power grid. In 2016, huge rotating supercell storms brought intense winds and at least seven tornadoes to South Australia, toppling transmission towers and causing a statewide blackout. Smaller thunderstorms caused major outages in Victoria in February this year after taking down six towers.

But what makes a thunderstorm “severe”?

The ingredients for a storm

What triggers thunderstorms? Climate scientists and meteorologists often talk about the ingredients necessary for thunderstorms.

To make a normal thunderstorm, you need to have a lot of moisture in the air. Then you need vertical instability in the atmosphere, meaning relatively warm moist air near the surface and very cold air above. You also need a mechanism to lift warmer surface air up to a level where the atmospheric instability can be released.

For a severe thunderstorm, you need all those ingredients and usually one more: vertical wind shear. This means that wind speeds and direction differ with height. For example, you might have strong northerly winds down low, and strong southerly winds up higher.

Vertical wind shear can make a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm much more intense, in a range of ways. For instance, wind shear can help warm updrafts stay separate from cold downdrafts and rainfall, which can help make the storm last longer.

If a thunderstorm has large hail, damaging wind gusts or could trigger a tornado or flash flooding, this makes it a severe thunderstorm, according to Bureau of Meteorology classification.

You might have also heard of supercell storms. These are convective thunderstorms, characterised by strong, rotating updrafts that last for a long time.

Forecasters can predict the potential for severe thunderstorms several days out by looking for moisture-laden air and winds. But predicting exactly where and when they might pop up is extremely challenging.

What’s unusual about these storms?

The storms this week are unusually widespread, with thunderstorms possible from Kalbarri in central Western Australia down through Esperance, across into South Australia, into Victoria and up through New South Wales and southern Queensland.

These conditions are due to a large-scale low pressure system moving west to east.

Ahead of the arrival of this low pressure system, winds from the north are bringing down moisture and instability and priming the system for thunderstorms. When air near the low pressure system begins to rise, energy from the warm, moisture-laden and unstable air can be released. This includes energy release due to condensation of water vapour. These rising air currents can travel several kilometres up into the atmosphere, even reaching the top of the troposphere, 10–15km up.

Severe thunderstorms in southern Australia are more likely in spring and summer. That’s because there’s plenty of moisture available from the tropics and the warm oceans around Australia, while low pressure systems and cold fronts can still emerge from the cold oceans to our south.

Thunderstorms, tornadoes and fire

Severe thunderstorms can also pack a hidden punch. They can trigger tornadoes in extreme cases.

In August, severe thunderstorms hit northern Victoria and triggered a tornado, a destructive whirling column of air that damaged houses and farms in the high country.

This surprised many people. It’s generally known that Australia has tropical cyclones in the north, intense tropical storms coming in off the sea, but not as well known to have tornadoes.

In fact, Australia does get tornadoes – an estimated 30–80 each year. In 2013, a total of 69 known tornadoes caused almost 150 injuries. Many of these tornadoes spin out of supercells.

In Australia’s hotter months, many fires burn around the country. Thunderstorms can make fires worse by bringing strong, warm northerly winds, often with rapid variations in speed and direction that can increase the rate of spread of a fire.

Firefighters and first responders dread these conditions. Australia’s most deadly bushfire was Black Saturday in 2009, which killed 173 people. One reason it was so dangerous was its suddenness. Intense northerly winds brought down powerlines and started fires, which were quickly whipped into intense firestorms, including thunderstorms generated in the fire plumes.

Will climate change bring more severe storms?

As the world heats up, more water is evaporating off warm sea surfaces and hanging in the air as water vapour. This means there’s more of this ingredient necessary to fuel severe thunderstorms and more intense rain from thunderstorms.

What we don’t know for certain yet is how prevailing air currents over Australia are changing. This could shift moisture to different regions, or affect other thunderstorm ingredients like vertical wind shear, instability, and lifting mechanisms. If circulation patterns do change, we could see severe storms develop in new areas, or different times of the year.

Andrew Brown, Research Fellow in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne and Andrew Dowdy, Principal Research Scientist in Extreme Weather, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Islands have long intrigued explorers and scientists. These isolated environments serve as natural laboratories for understanding how species evolve and adapt.

Islands are also centres of species diversity. It has long been speculated that islands support exceptionally high amounts of global biodiversity, but the true extent was unknown until now.

In world-first research published in Nature today, my colleagues and I counted and mapped the diversity of plant life on Earth’s islands. We found 21% of the world’s total plant species are endemic to islands, meaning they occur nowhere else on the planet.

These findings are important. Island plants are at higher risk of extinction than those on mainlands. Detailed knowledge of plants species, and where they grow, is essential for monitoring and conserving them.

Mapping island floras worldwide

The study involved an international team of scientists. We developed an unprecedented database of vegetation information from more than 3,400 geographical regions worldwide, including about 2,000 islands.

The definition of an island is somewhat arbitrary. Conventionally, an island is a landmass entirely surrounded by water and smaller than a continent. This means Tasmania and New Guinea are islands, but mainland Australia – a continent in itself – is not. This is the definition we used.

We found 94,052 plant species, or 31% of the world’s total, are native to islands. Of these, 63,280 plant species, or 21%, only occur on islands.

Endemic species were concentrated on large tropical islands such as Madagascar, New Guinea and Borneo. On Madagascar alone, 9,318 plant species – 83% of its total flora – grow there and nowhere else.

Fewer plant species overall were found at ocean archipelagos such as Hawaii, the Canary Islands and the Mascarenes (east of Madagascar, including La Reunion and Mauritius). But a large share of their species were still unique to these islands.

Two palms are endemic to Australia’s Lord Howe Island – Howea forsteriana and H. belmoreana. They are one of the best-researched examples of “sympatric speciation”, or in other words, species that evolve from a common ancestor at the same location.

This mode of evolution has long been hypothesised to exist. But examples are rare, and highly useful for evolutionary research.

The Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla) is, of course, named after the tiny island where it is found. This species, while endangered in the wild, is now widely planted along Australia’s beaches where it is instantly recognisable to us.

Islands are of great conservation concern

Islands cover just 5.3% of the world’s land area, but contribute disproportionately to global biodiversity.

Island plants are at much greater risk of extinction than species found in mainland areas, for reasons such as:

• small population sizes
• unique evolutionary traits that make them vulnerable to invasive species such as herbivores
• specific habitat requirements
• habitat degradation
• threats from invasive plant and animal species
• climate change.

Some 57% of the island-endemic species we assessed are considered critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, or near-threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Alarmingly, 176 of plant species endemic to islands are already classified as extinct, accounting for 55% of all known extinct plant species globally. Among these is Hawaii’s vulcan palm (Brighamia insignis), which is now considered extinct in the wild. However, the species is popular as an ornamental plant and still survives in gardens.

Other species might be less lucky; extinction in the wild may mean being lost for ever.

So, assessing the conservation status of island floras is important. Under a globally agreed United Nations target, 30% of the world’s land and oceans should be protected by 2030. We calculated how much of global islands is conserved today. Disappointingly, only 6% of endemic plant species occur on islands that meet this target.

For instance, New Caledonia, Madagascar and New Guinea – known for their many endemic plant species – contain relatively low levels of protected areas.

Protecting our island plants

Urgent action is needed to protect island biodiversity. This includes expanding protected areas, prioritising regions with high numbers of endemic species, and implementing habitat restoration projects.

Without such measures, the unique floral diversity of islands may continue to decline, with potentially severe consequences for global biodiversity.

Much more research is needed to determined the best conservation strategies for all these plant species. Accurate data is vital to guide future conservation strategies and safeguard against further loss.

Our study also serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need for targeted plant conservation efforts on islands. Many species teeter on the brink of extinction, and time is running out to preserve this irreplaceable natural heritage.

Julian Schrader, Lecturer in Plant Ecology, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nature loss directly threatens half the global economy. The rapid destruction of biodiversity should alarm the many Australian businesses dependent on nature, such as those in agriculture, tourism, construction and food manufacturing. Yet nature considerations are often ignored in business decision-making.

At the Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney this week, scientists, politicians, conservationists and business leaders have gathered to discuss ways to help nature in Australia – not just by protecting it from damage, but improving it. Getting more businesses interested in – and taking positive action on – nature conservation is key to the talks.

Reducing the environmental impact of a business first requires measuring that impact. It might seem an impossibly difficult task. Nature is a diverse and intricate web of connections. How can we capture that in a number?

Nature is indeed complex – but measuring how a business intersects with it need not be.

Uncovering impacts on nature

The fishing industry depends directly on stocks of wild fish. And a housing developer has a direct impact on nature if they clear natural vegetation to build a new suburb.

Businesses interactions with nature can be indirect, too – for example, a margarine producer who uses canola oil from a grower who depends on bees for pollination. Builders might indirectly harm rainforests in Indonesia by buying timber grown there. A superannuation company investing in that developer is also having an indirect negative impact.

From next year, Australian companies will be required to measure and report their climate impacts. While businesses are not yet required to disclose their impacts on nature more broadly, many are moving in that direction – both in Australia and globally.

For example in 2022, more than 400 of the world’s largest corporations called for mandatory disclosure of nature impacts. They included Nestlé, Rio Tinto, L'Oréal, Sony and Volvo. And many early-adopter businesses have begun voluntary disclosures.

Guidelines are available to help businesses understand and measure their impacts, however progress is slow. This is partly due to a perception from business that the task is too complex.

Nature assessment is challenging. Unlike identifying a company’s contributions to climate change – by measuring tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – there is no agreed single measure of impacts on nature.

What’s more, different people ascribe different values to aspects of nature. Rightly or wrongly, for instance, most people would probably value a koala over a mosquito.

Drawing on the expertise of ecologists

Despite the difficulties, gauging the extent to which a business affects the environment can be done. Essentially, it involves three steps:

1. understanding how a business broadly intersects with nature

2. evaluating how specific business activities intersect with and put pressure on nature

3. measuring and reporting the degree to which specific activities are impacting on the condition of nature. In other words, is the state of animals, plants and ecosystems improving or worsening?

Online tools such as ENCORE can get businesses started on the first step – understanding a business’ broad impacts and dependency on nature.

Many businesses are moving to the second stage - evaluating the specific business activities that put pressure on the environment, and determining the extent to which businesses depend on particular services ecosystems provide.

The pressure a business places on nature can be measured via specific metrics, such as the amount of water consumed, air pollutants emitted, waste generated or area of land changed. Again, a suite of online tools and metrics can help with this.

The next step is more complicated, yet essential. It requires businesses directly measuring their impacts on specific animals, plants and ecosystems. For this, we can turn to the expertise of ecologists.

Individuals of a species can be hard to count, and extinction risk can be hard to measure. So ecologists often describe and monitor a species’ habitat – the environments in which a species can survive and reproduce – as a proxy for the fate of the species itself.

Ecosystems – such as a rainforest, wetland or desert – can be described as being in good or poor condition. The rating depends on whether all the ecosystem’s plants, animals and other components are present, or whether unwanted components, such as weeds or invasive species, are found there.

In addition, maps, showing ecosystem condition and extent are available for much of Australia.

Habitat mapping is also available for most threatened animals and plants, and thousands of other species. And mapping exists for World Heritage areas, important wetlands, national parks, Indigenous Protected Areas and other environment types.

These resources are not difficult or expensive to access, and people and organisations with the skills to interpret and use such data are becoming more common.

Some businesses are attempting these measurements. For example, plantation forestry company Forico last year prepared a natural capital report on a range of nature metrics, including the extent of species habitats, and assessment of vegetation condition.

But many businesses are not yet grappling with this deeper nature analysis.

Looking ahead

We have the information and metrics to help businesses measure their impact on nature.

Collaboration is urgently needed between business and nature experts, so the data available can be tailored to the needs of businesses, and presented in a form they can use.

Governments can support this – for example by establishing accessible and practical online data platforms, and funding training for more nature experts who understand business.

A new federal government agency, Environment Information Australia, will also hopefully become an important hub for data and information.

By measuring what might seem immeasurable, businesses can become part of the solution to the nature crisis. There is cause for optimism – but no time to waste.

Brendan Wintle, Professor in Conservation Science, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne; Sarah Bekessy, Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning, Leader, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT University; Simon O'Connor, Honorary Fellow, Melbourne Biodiversity Institute, The University of Melbourne, and William Geary, Lecturer in Quantitative Ecology & Biodiversity Conservation, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This week, Australia hosts the inaugural Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney. It comes at a crucial time: biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse is one of the biggest risks the world faces in the next decade.

The event, which begins tomorrow, brings together leaders from government, business, academia, environment groups and Indigenous Peoples. Together, they will seek ways to drive investment in nature and improve its protection and repair.

More than half the world’s economy directly depends on nature. Biodiversity loss threatens global financial stability, putting at least US$44 trillion (A$64 trillion) of economic value at risk.

Industries such as agriculture, fishing, forestry, tourism, water and resources rely heavily on nature. But ultimately, all of humanity depends on the natural world – for clean air, water, food, and a liveable climate.

In Australia significant investment is needed to reverse the decline in our natural environment. It will require action from governments, landholders and the private sector.

That’s why this week’s summit is so important. Nature conservation and restoration is expensive and often difficult. The task is beyond the capacity of governments alone.

What’s going on at the summit?

According to the World Economic Forum, “nature positive” is an economic worldview that goes beyond limiting environmental damage and aims to actually improve ecosystems.

Under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to which almost 200 countries have signed up, at least 30% of land and waters must be protected or restored by 2030. The summit is exploring ways to realise this global commitment, which is also known as the 30x30 target.

The federal and New South Wales governments are co-hosting the event.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek will address the summit on day one, outlining her government’s Nature Positive Plan. It commits to the 30x30 target as well as “zero new extinctions”. Achieving these commitments involves environmental law reform, setting up a Nature Repair Market and establishing a national Environment Protection Agency.

Delegates are expected to demonstrate their commitment and progress towards the 30x30 goal. They will then turn to the main point of the summit: building consensus on the economic settings needed to increase private investment in nature.

Finance models and corporate partnerships are on the agenda, along with how to make this work, including how to measure, monitor and report on progress and manage risk.

Sessions will focus on specific sectors of the environment such as agriculture and farming, cities, oceans and forests. On Thursday, delegates will visit nature sites around Sydney.

Investing in a market for nature repair

Substantial co-investment from the private sector, including landholders, will be required to repair and protect nature at the scale required.

Market-based approaches can drive private investment in natural resources. But most existing environmental markets focus on water and carbon. A more holistic approach, including nature repair, is needed.

Australia’s Nature Positive Plan includes building a nature repair market. This world-first measure is a legislated, national, voluntary biodiversity market in which individuals and organisations undertake nature repair projects to generate a tradeable certificate. The certificate can be sold to generate income. Demand for certificates is expected to grow over time.

But the role the government will take remains unclear. For example, will the government both regulate market prices and decide what, in a scientific sense, amounts to repairing nature?

On day two, the summit explores how nature markets can unlock new sources of finance. We can expect this discussion to include ways carbon and biodiversity markets can work together: so-called “carbon-plus” outcomes.

For example, when landholders conserve vegetation, the plants can both draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide habitat for animals, preventing biodiversity loss. Markets could be designed so landholders are rewarded for achieving these dual results.

Significant economic returns

Under optimistic estimates, the global nature-positive transition will unlock business opportunities worth an estimated US$10 trillion (almost A$15 trillion) a year and create 395 million jobs by 2030.

The potential benefits for Australia are also substantial. They include benefits to nature such as restoring habitat for wildlife, while storing carbon. It can also provide returns for agriculture, by improving land value, yield and quality.

A strong nature-positive stance from Australia will also help safeguard our access to global markets. For example, the European Union has already established trade barriers to imports that damage forests. This could have serious consequences for the Australian beef industry.

So the potential benefits have to be weighed against the risks of not doing anything. The summit is a chance to get a wide range of people on board, working towards a shared vision of a more positive future.

It’s time for a nature-positive mindset

The Albanese Labor government came to power promising to overhaul Australia’s national environment laws, following a scathing independent review.

When the summit was conceived, the government may have envisaged having cause for celebration by now. But some proposed reforms stalled in the Senate.

Nonetheless, the Nature Repair Market, a significant government win, is taking shape.

This week’s summit offers Australia an opportunity to show the world we have embraced the nature-positive mindset. There really is no time to waste.

Australia, the sixth most biodiverse country in the world, has listed 2,224 species and ecological communities as threatened with extinction. These losses are predicted to escalate if we continue business as usual and allow continued decline of ecosystems.

Despite having pledged to end deforestation by 2030, Australia is the only deforestation hotspot among developed nations. Land clearing continues apace in northern Australia, often without being assessed under national environmental laws.

We desperately need to reverse the decline in nature, once and for all.

Andrew Lowe, Director, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

You don’t have to look far to see what climate change is doing to the planet. The word “unprecedented” is everywhere this year.

We are seeing unprecedented rapidly intensifying tropical storms such as Hurricane Helene in the eastern United States and Super Typhoon Yagi in Vietnam. Unprecedented fires in Canada have destroyed towns. Unprecedented drought in Brazil has dried out enormous rivers and left swathes of empty river beds. At least 1,300 pilgrims died during this year’s Hajj in Mecca as temperatures passed 50°C.

Unfortunately, we are headed for far worse. The new 2024 State of the Climate report, produced by our team of international scientists, is yet another stark warning about the intensifying climate crisis. Even if governments meet their emissions goals, the world may hit 2.7°C of warming – nearly double the Paris Agreement goal of holding climate change to 1.5°C. Each year, we track 35 of the Earth’s vital signs, from sea ice extent to forests. This year, 25 are now at record levels, all trending in the wrong directions.

Humans are not used to these conditions. Human civilisation emerged over the last 10,000 years under benign conditions – not too hot, not too cold. But this liveable climate is now at risk. In your grandchild’s lifetime, climatic conditions will be more threatening than anything our prehistoric relatives would have faced.

Our report shows a continued rise in fossil fuel emissions, which remain at an all-time high. Despite years of warnings from scientists, fossil fuel consumption has actually increased, pushing the planet toward dangerous levels of warming. While wind and solar have grown rapidly, fossil fuel use is 14 times greater.

This year is also tracking for the hottest year on record, with global daily mean temperatures at record levels for nearly half of 2023 and much of 2024.

Next month, world leaders and diplomats will gather in Azerbaijan for the annual United Nations climate talks, COP 29. Leaders will have to redouble their efforts. Without much stronger policies, climate change will keep worsening, bringing with it more frequent and more extreme weather.

Bad news after bad news

We have still not solved the central problem: the routine burning of fossil fuels. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases – particularly methane and carbon dioxide – are still rising. Last September, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere hit 418 parts per million (ppm). This September, they crossed 422 ppm. Methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, has been increasing at an alarming rate despite global pledges to tackle it.

Compounding the problem is the recent decline in atmospheric aerosols from efforts to cut pollution. These small particles suspended in the air come from both natural and human processes, and have helped cool the planet. Without this cooling effect, the pace of global warming may accelerate. We don’t know for sure because aerosol properties are not yet measured well enough.

Other environmental issues are now feeding into climate change. Deforestation in critical areas such as the Amazon is reducing the planet’s capacity to absorb carbon naturally, driving additional warming. This creates a feedback loop, where warming causes trees to die which in turn amplifies global temperatures.

Loss of sea ice is another. As sea ice melts or fails to form, dark seawater is exposed. Ice reflects sunlight but seawater absorbs it. Scaled up, this changes the Earth’s albedo (how reflective the surface is) and accelerates warming further.

In coming decades, sea level rise will pose a growing threat to coastal communities, putting millions of people at risk of displacement.

Accelerate the solutions

Our report stresses the need for an immediate and comprehensive end to the routine use of fossil fuels.

It calls for a global carbon price, set high enough to drive down emissions, particularly from high-emitting wealthy countries.

Introducing effective policies to slash methane emissions is crucial, given methane’s high potency but short atmospheric lifetime. Rapidly cutting methane could slow the rate of warming in the short term.

Natural climate solutions such as reforestation and soil restoration should be rolled out to increase how much carbon is stored in wood and soil. These efforts must be accompanied by protective measures in wildfire and drought prone areas. There’s no point planting forests if they will burn.

Governments should introduce stricter land-use policies to slow down rates of land clearing and increase investment in forest management to cut the risk of large, devastating fires and encourage sustainable land use.

We cannot overlook climate justice. Less wealthy nations contribute least to global emissions but are often the worst affected by climate disasters.

Wealthier nations must provide financial and technical support to help these countries adapt to climate change while cutting emissions. This could include investing in renewable energy, improving infrastructure and funding disaster preparedness programs.

Internationally, our report urges stronger commitments from world leaders. Current global policies are insufficient to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Without drastic changes, the world is on track for approximately 2.7°C of warming this century. To avoid catastrophic tipping points, nations must strengthen their climate pledges, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

Immediate, transformative policy changes are now necessary if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Climate change is already here. But it could get much, much worse. By slashing emissions, boosting natural climate solutions and working towards climate justice, the global community can still fend off the worst version of our future.

Thomas Newsome, Associate Professor in Global Ecology, University of Sydney and William Ripple, Distinguished Professor and Director, Trophic Cascades Program, Oregon State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change is usually discussed in terms of rising temperatures.

But scientists often use a different measure, known as “equilibrium climate sensitivity”. This is defined as the global mean warming caused by a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels in the atmosphere.

We use this measure to describe the range of potential temperature increases on longer timescales, and to compare how well climate models reproduce observed warming.

But the predicted range of rising temperature has remained stubbornly wide, somewhere between 2°C and 5.5°C of warming, as assessed in several generations of reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is despite concerted efforts to narrow it down.

Measuring long-term climate sensitivity is central to future predictions, but we are already seeing the effects of warming across the world with extremes in weather, even at the low end of the range. We argue efforts to boil down Earth’s response to climate change to one number may be unhelpful.

The continued uncertainty could be seen as a failure of climate models to converge on the correct value. Using equilibrium climate sensitivity as a metric for “precisely” predicting the amount of warming expected from a given amount of greenhouse gases is, at best, ambiguous.

History of climate sensitivity

About a century before the first computational estimates of Earth’s climate sensitivity were published in 1967, the Swedish physicist and 1903 Nobel laureate Svante August Arrhenius was the first to estimate values at 4-6°C.

Since the early efforts to model Earth systems, computer simulations have steadily increased in complexity. The first models only simulated the atmosphere, but they have evolved to include vegetation, processes in the ocean and sea ice.

While undoubtedly beneficial to the understanding of fundamental science, each of these added processes has introduced uncertainties in the models’ warming response.

Indeed, given the level of complexity (which differs between models) and resolution of some current models, it is not surprising the estimates of climate sensitivity differ so much.

Self-enforcing feedbacks

Climate feedbacks are central to our argument that equilibrium climate sensitivity is poorly defined. An example of this is the relationship between ice volume and reflectivity.

As highly reflective ice melts on land or sea, the underlying surface is exposed and less sunlight reflected back into space. This increases the amount of warming for a given amount of greenhouse gases. It’s what scientists refer to as a positive feedback loop.

Another such self-enforcing feedback concerns potentially large climate impacts from the release of methane from tropical wetlands and permafrost melt.

Atmosphere models can’t account for this alone, and when they are coupled with an ice-sheet or sea-ice model, the estimate of climate sensitivity changes.

Overheated arguments

It quickly became apparent when studying some recent climate model results that some simulations are producing equilibrium climate sensitivity ranges noticeably higher than before.

In some models, this has been linked to larger self-enhancing cloud feedbacks and how aerosols are represented.

There has been some hesitancy to trust the results produced by these models. They are considered “too hot”.

But we feel these high equilibrium simulations still have value. While we are not arguing they are correct, they force us to consider the what-if situation of very high climate sensitivity, where a doubling of CO₂ would result in warming of 5°C or higher. We know the impact on our environment would be devastating.

Some view high equilibrium climate sensitivity as more consistent with warmer climates in the past, but others have questioned this.

There are several reasons why past climate sensitivity may differ from modern conditions. We may be in a different phase of Earth’s orbital cycles or the balance between volcanism and weathering.

Of course, we should treat all scientific results with caution, but the potential insights gained for uncertain futures are of particular importance when climate change is already being felt across the globe.

Where to from here?

We are continually improving our understanding of the climate – how it has changed in the past and how we think it may change in the future. Equilibrium climate sensitivity has consequently become the single solution we are seeking from climate models, even though the precise value will arguably never be known.

Equilibrium climate sensitivity is undoubtedly a convenient way of distilling future projections. However, it is important not to over-rely on an idealised quantity, because its utility as a useful comparative measure of climate models can give the false impression of a lack of progress in understanding.

There is similarity with the common misconception of a 50% probability of rainfall in a weather forecast, which is often misinterpreted as forecasters not knowing whether it will rain or not.

Communicating uncertainty in projections of future climate conditions is a “wicked” problem. But we risk losing perspective of Earth’s system response by focusing on the effort to make climate models agree on one measure. This is not the answer future generations need.

Jonny Williams, Climate Scientist, University of Reading and Georgia Rose Grant, Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Paleontology, GNS Science

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Global warming has the potential to reshuffle the spaces used by life on Earth, across all ecosystems. And our new research shows whale sharks – the world’s largest fish – could be at risk, as warming oceans may force them into busy human shipping lanes.

More than 12,000 marine species are expected to redistribute in future as seas warm up. Those animals that are unable to move to remain within suitable environments risk being wiped out entirely.

But things are different for larger and highly mobile animals that can move freely to find conditions that suit their needs. For them, changing ocean conditions may not be such a huge threat in isolation, as they can migrate to cooler seas. Rather, shifting conditions may force species into new and more dangerous areas where they come into contact with ship propellers and other direct human threats.

We fear this will happen with whale sharks. These huge sharks can reach up to 18 metres – about four cars end to end – but despite their size and robust appearance, their numbers have already declined by over 50% in the last 75 years.

In previous research we discovered this decline may be partly due to collisions with large ships. Whale sharks are particularly vulnerable as they cruise around feeding on plankton and other tiny organisms, rarely needing to swim faster than human walking pace. While spending long periods moving slowly near the surface, they’re often struck by ships and killed.

Our new research builds on this previous work. We find that climate change will put these docile giants in even greater danger as their preferred habitats move in into new areas with heavy ship traffic.

An uncertain future

The research was carried out by an international team of over 50 scientists from 18 countries involved in the Global Shark Movement Project, using 15 years’ worth of satellite tracking data from almost 350 individually tagged whale sharks.

Movement tracks were matched to temperature, salinity and other environmental conditions at the time to determine what sort of habitat the sharks preferred. These relationships were then projected forward in time based on climate models (powerful computer programmes that simulate the climate) to reveal which parts of the ocean may in future have similar conditions to those used by the species today.

Our state-of-the-art approach uncovered totally new areas that may be able to support whale sharks in future, such as US waters in the Pacific in the region of the California bight, Japanese waters in the eastern China Sea and the Atlantic waters of many west African countries. We quickly realised that these regions are home to some of the world’s busiest sea ports and shipping highways, so we overlaid our maps of habitat preference with those of global shipping to determine sharks are expected to run into ships.

Through this we project that co-occurrence between sharks and ships will be be 15,000 times greater by the end of this century if we continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels, compared to only 20 times greater if we follow a sustainable development scenario.

This does not mean that collisions will increase by 15,000 times, or even by 20 times, as we can only predict where whale sharks will be in future and the precise number of ships will vary. However, if the sharks do move into these new areas and their busy shipping lanes, increased mortality is a very real possibility.

We’ve already recorded shark-attached satellite tags abruptly stopping transmissions in shipping lanes, with depth-recording tags showing the sharks slowly sinking – likely dead – to the seafloor.

Changing tack

Our results are alarming but highlight that we do have the capacity to change the population trajectory for whale sharks. In this case, through mitigating climate change, we can also indirectly ensure that the ocean is a safer place for some of its largest residents.

We already know which strategies to trial for limiting collisions between ships and sharks. In February 2024 a meeting of signatories to the UN’s convention on the conservation of migratory species put forward a series of recommendations with specific focus on whale sharks. These include slowing speeds and re-routing around key sites, and setting up a collision-reporting network. It is now up to individual governments to take action.

It’s possible that other species will experience similar pressures as a result of climate change. For example, heat waves in the oceans may force other sharks into cooler surface waters which are being exploited by longline fisheries, or into deeper depths where there is less oxygen.

It’s time to shift our focus on to these interacting stressors in future, so that we can start to quantify the mosaic of threats that marine animals must endure in the oceans of tomorrow and protect those most at risk.

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Freya Womersley, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Marine Biological Association and David Sims, Professor of Marine Ecology, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Albanese government has today declared stronger protections for the waters around Heard Island and McDonald Islands, one of Australia’s wildest, most remote areas. The marine park surrounding the islands will be extended by 310,000 square kilometres, quadrupling its size.

Announcing the decision, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said Heard Island and McDonald Islands – about 4,000 kilometres southwest of Perth – are a “unique and extraordinary part of our planet. We are doing everything we can to protect it.”

But the announcement, while welcome, is a missed opportunity on several fronts.

Important areas around the islands remain unprotected, despite a wealth of scientific evidence pointing to the need for safeguards. On this measure, the government could have done far more to protect this unique wildlife haven.

A special place

Heard Island and McDonald Islands are a crucial sanctuary for marine life in the Southern Ocean. The land and surrounding waters support a food chain ranging from tiny plankton to fish, invertebrates, seabirds and marine mammals such as elephant seals and sperm whales.

Both the marine and land environments of the islands are globally recognised for their ecological significance, and include species not found elsewhere in Australia.

In 2002, a marine reserve was declared over the islands and parts of the surrounding waters. The reserve was extended in 2014.

The expansion announced today means most waters around the islands have protection. The new safeguards primarily extend to foraging areas for seals, penguins and flying birds such as albatrosses.

The expansion covers some deep water areas but excludes important deeper water locations including underwater canyons and seamounts, and a feature known as Williams Ridge.

This is an important oversight that compromises the strength of the expanded protections.

The science is clear

In March this year, my colleagues and I released a report showing existing protections for Heard Island and McDonald Islands were no longer adequate and should urgently be expanded.

The report drew on more than two decades’ of research and new scientific understanding. In particular, we found climate change was warming the waters around the islands, posing risks to marine life such as the mackerel icefish.

The icefish lives in shallow water and is an important food source for other animals. To maintain the islands’ biodiversity as the climate warms, we recommended extending the existing marine reserve to cover more shallow waters in the east, and protecting currently unprotected deeper waters.

Today’s announcement does not protect these deeper waters. This is a major shortcoming. Our report showed deeper water areas to the east of Heard Island are significant to the region’s biodiversity, and to its ability to cope with warmer seas under climate change.

The government says its decision came after extensive consultation with a range of parties – including the fishing industry and conservation groups.

Heard Island and McDonald Islands host valuable fisheries for Patagonian toothfish and mackerel icefish. The footprint of fishing operations has expanded over the past 30 years.

The fishery for mackerel icefish uses a range of methods including bottom trawling. This is the only fishery in the Southern Ocean to use bottom trawling methods. This is a damaging fishing technique that uses towed nets to catch fish and other marine species on or near the seabed.

A range of non-target fish species, especially skates, are accidentally caught by the fisheries around Heard Island and McDonald Islands. Skates are a vulnerable species because they are slow to grow and mature. Indicators suggest skate bycatch is too high.

The new measures should have prevented fishing in some deeper waters to reduce pressure on this and other vulnerable species. In particular, bottom trawling should have been prohibited.

As climate change worsens and fishing activity continues, the area must be managed to take account of these dual pressures. The management should also maximise the resilience of species imperilled by climate change, such as mackerel icefish – a cold-adapted species not found anywhere else in Australia’s marine zone.

My colleagues and I proposed deep-sea protections over about 30% of the existing fishing grounds around Heard Island and McDonald Islands. Catch limits would not have been adjusted, and the fisheries were not likely to have been substantially affected.

The decision to allow fishing, including bottom-trawling, in some areas of high conservation value means other measures will be needed to protect marine life in deep areas under pressure from climate change.

An opportunity missed

Today’s announcement follows a decision by the government last year to triple the size of Macquarie Island Marine Park. The move was largely in keeping with the science, and both protected important biodiversity regions and provided for fisheries.

The protection awarded to Heard Island and McDonald Islands falls short of this standard. It fails to protect vulnerable marine species from climate change and fishing, and squanders a chance for Australia to show international leadership.

Andrew J Constable, Adviser, Antarctica and Marine Systems, Science & Policy, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When it rains heavily, plastic waste is washed off our streets into rivers, flowing out to the ocean. Most plastic is trapped in estuaries and coastal ecosystems, with a small fraction ending up offshore in the high seas.

In the coastal ocean, waves and tides break down plastic waste into smaller and smaller bits. These micro and nanoplastics linger in the environment indefinitely, impacting the health of marine creatures from microorganisms all the way up to seabirds and whales, which mistake them for food.

When we look at the scale of the problem of microplastics (smaller than 5mm) and nanoplastics (defined as 1 micrometer or less), we find something alarming. Our new research shows the shallow embayment of Moreton Bay, off Brisbane in Southeast Queensland now has roughly 7,000 tonnes of accumulated microplastics, the same as 700 million half-litre plastic bottles.

This bay accumulates plastics fast, as the Brisbane River funnels the city’s waste into it, along with several other urban rivers. The research hasn’t yet been done, but we would expect similar rates of microplastics in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay and Sydney Harbour.

Our research shows how much plastic waste from a big city makes it into its oceans.

Plastic buildup in Moreton Bay

What volume of microplastics does a large city accumulate offshore? It’s hard to measure this for cities built on open coastlines. That’s because sediments and microplastics are rapidly washed away from the original source by waves and currents.

But Moreton Bay is different. The large sand islands, Moreton (Mugulpin) and North Stradbroke (Minjerribah) Islands largely protect the bay from the open ocean. This is why the bay is better described as an enclosed embayment. These restricted bays act as a trap for sediments and pollutants, as waves and currents have limited ability to wash them out. These bays make it possible to accurately measure a city’s microplastic build-up.

The bay supports a range of marine habitats from mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs, as well as an internationally recognised wetland for migrating seabirds. Dugong and turtles have long grazed the seagrass in Moreton Bay’s shallow protected waters, while dolphins and whales are also present. But microplastic buildup may threaten their existence.

Most types of plastic are denser than water, which means most microplastics in coastal seas will eventually sink to the seafloor and accumulate in sediment. Mangroves and seagrass ecosystems are particularly good at trapping sediment, which means they trap more microplastics.

We wanted to determine whether Moreton Bay’s varying ecosystems had accumulated different amounts of plastics in the sediment.

We measured the plastic stored in 50 samples of surface sediment (the top 10cm) from a range of different ecosystems across Moreton Bay, including mangroves, seagrass meadows and mud from the main tidal channels.

The result? Microplastics were present in all our samples, but their concentrations varied hugely. We found no clear pattern in how plastics had built up. This suggests plastics were entering the bay from many sources.

We tested for seven common plastics: polycarbonate (PC), polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

Of these, the most abundant microplastic was polyethylene (PE). This plastic is widely used for single-use plastic items such as chip packets, plastic bags and plastic bottles. It’s the most commonly produced and used plastic in Australia and globally.

In total, we estimate the bay now holds about 7,000 tonnes of microplastic in its surface sediments.

In our follow-up paper we explored how rapidly these plastics had built up over time. We took two sediment cores from the central part of the bay, where sediment is accumulating. Cores like this act as an archive of sediment and environmental changes over time.

The trend was clear. Before the 1970s, there were no microplastics in Moreton Bay. They began appearing over the next three decades. But from the early 2000s onwards, the rate rose exponentially. This is in line with the soaring rate of plastic production and use globally. Our analysis shows a direct link between microplastic concentration and population growth in Southeast Queensland.

The challenge of measuring microplastics

To date, we have had limited knowledge of how much plastic is piling up on shallow ocean floors. This is because measuring microplastics is challenging. Traditionally, we’ve used observation by microscope and a technique called absorption spectroscopy, in which we shine infrared light on samples to determine what it’s made up of. But these methods are time-consuming and can only spot plastic particles larger than 20 micrometres, meaning nanoplastics weren’t being measured.

Our research team has been working to get better estimates of microplastic and nanoplastic using a different technique: pyrolysis-gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Here, a sample is dissolved in a solvent and then heated until it vaporises. Once in vapour form, we can determine the concentration of plastic and what types of plastics are present.

This method can be used to estimate how much plastic pollution is present in everything from water to seafood to biosolids and wastewater.

What’s next?

It’s very likely microplastics are building up rapidly in other restricted bays and harbours near large cities, both in Australia and globally.

While we might think microplastics are safe once buried in sediment, they can be consumed by organisms that live in the sediments. Currents, tides and storms can also wash them out again, where marine creatures can eat them.

This is not a problem that will solve itself. We’ll need clear management strategies and policies to cut plastic consumption and improve waste disposal. Doing nothing means microplastics will keep building up, and up, and up.

Elvis Okoffo, PhD candidate in Environmental Science, The University of Queensland; Alistair Grinham, Honorary Associate Professor in Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland; Ben Tscharke, Research fellow, Analytical Chemistry, The University of Queensland; Helen Bostock, Associate Professor in Marine Geology, The University of Queensland, and Kevin Thomas, Professor of Environmental Health, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ocean fish populations have fallen dramatically in the past half-century, and climate change is expected to make the problem worse. Governments have designated “marine protected areas”, where where human activity is constrained to protect ocean life. But have these efforts worked?

About 8% of Earth’s oceans are protected, including about 3% where fishing is banned altogether. Our new study of nearly 2,600 tropical coral reefs around the world is the first to examine whether these areas have helped fish populations.

We found about one in ten kilograms of fish on coral reefs is the result of efforts such as marine protected areas and other restrictions on fishing. This is promising news. But our study also reveals great room for improvement.

Getting to grips with marine protection

Maintaining healthy fish populations is important. Many communities depend on fishing for their food and livelihoods. And fish play a vital role in ocean ecosystems.

Marine protected areas are a key policy tool used to increase fish populations. They cover a range of ocean areas including lagoons, coastal waters, deep seabed waters and coral reefs.

The areas go by several names, including marine parks and conservation zones. Some, where fishing is prohibited, are known as no-take zones.

Governments often quote figures on the area of ocean protected when seeking to tout their conservation policies. For example in Australia, we are told the federal, state and territory governments have established marine parks covering 4.3 million square kilometres or 48% of our oceans.

But the extent to which marine protected areas actually conserve marine life varies enormously from place to place. So simply counting up the protected ocean area doesn’t tell you much about what has actually been achieved.

Measuring success

We and our colleagues wanted to assess the extent to which marine protection efforts have increased the amount of fish on coral reefs.

We developed a computer model based on about 2,600 reefs across the global tropics, which includes reefs in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans. From that, we estimated the amount of fish currently on each reef – measured in the kilograms of fish per hectare, or “biomass”.

The estimations were based on information such as:

• environmental conditions such as ocean temperature and the type of habitat where the reef is located

• the intensity of fishing activity, known as “fishing pressure”

• how strong the protection is – for example whether it bans fishing, or just restricts it

• the level of compliance with no-take zones.

We then simulated what would happen if we changed the type of protection strategy in each location while keeping everything else the same.

We ran a few scenarios:

• no coral reef conservation existed anywhere and all reefs could be fished without constraint

• sites currently fished without constraint (which amounted to over half of our sites) had restrictions in place

• fishing was prohibited on 30% of all reefs.

And the results?

We found both marine protected areas and other fishing restrictions account for about 10% of the fish “biomass” on reefs. In other words, about one in ten kilograms of fish on coral reefs is due to protection efforts.

No-take zones punch above their weight. Of the fish biomass attributable to protection efforts, about 20% comes from just 3% of sites in no-take zones. This proportion would be even higher if illegal fishing in no-take zones was stamped out.

But we found any type of fishing restriction was useful. If everywhere currently fished without constraint was subject to some level of protection – such as banning nets or spear guns – the biomass of fish globally would be another 10.5% higher, our study found. This essentially matches all conservation efforts to date.

Our modelling also showed fish on coral reefs could be increased by up to 28% globally if the area of no-take zones rose to 30%.

But these reefs must be chosen strategically. That’s because protection strategies can lead to wildly different results, depending on local conditions. For example, sites with lower fishing pressure in the surrounding seascape got a bigger boost from protection than places surrounded by intensive fishing effort.

This may be because at heavily fished locations, algae often overtakes coral as the dominant feature. Algae is less fish-friendly than coral, so fish populations may not bounce back quickly even when fishing pressure is reduced.

Grounds for optimism

Our study tested the mettle of global coral reef conservation. On one hand, we found conservation efforts have made a contribution to the amount of fish on global coral reefs, which provides grounds for cautious optimism.

But on the other hand, this contribution is quite modest. Our study shows much greater gains could be made not only by expanding protected marine areas, but also by improving compliance in existing ones.

Most nations have signed a global agreement to protect 30% of Earth’s land and waters by 2030. That means the amount of ocean in marine protected areas globally will increase nearly fourfold in just six years.

As governments continue this task, we hope our results help identify ocean sites that will benefit most from protection.

Joshua Cinner, Professor & ARC Laureate Fellow, Thriving Oceans Research Hub, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney and Iain R. Caldwell, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Water flows in mainland Australia’s most important river system, the Murray-Darling Basin, have been declining for the past 50 years. The trend has largely been blamed on water extraction, but our new research shows another factor is also at play.

We investigated why the Darling River, in the northern part of the basin, has experienced devastating periods of low flow, or no flow, since the 1990s. We found it was due to a decrease in rainfall in late autumn, caused by climate change.

The research reveals how climate change is already affecting river flows in the basin, even before water is extracted for farm irrigation and other human uses.

Less rain will fall in the Darling River catchment as climate change worsens. This fact must be central to decisions about how much water can be taken from this vital natural system.

A quick history of the Darling

The Darling River runs from the town of Bourke in northwest New South Wales, south to the Murray River in Victoria. Together, the two rivers form the Murray-Darling river system.

The Indigenous name for the Darling River is the Baaka. For at least 30,000 years the river has been an Indigenous water resource. On the river near Wilcannia, remnants of fish traps and weirs built by Indigenous people can still be found today.

The Darling River was a major transport route from the late 19th to the early 20th century.

In recent decades, the agriculture industry has extracted substantial quantities of water from the Darling’s upstream tributaries, to irrigate crops and replenish farm dams. Water has also been extracted from Menindee Lakes, downstream in the Darling, to benefit the environment and supply the regional city of Broken Hill.

A river in trouble

Natural weather variability means water levels in the Darling River have always been irregular, even before climate change began to be felt.

In recent years, however, water flows have become even more irregular. This has caused myriad environmental problems.

At Menindee Lakes, for example, fish have died en masse – incidents experts say is ultimately due to a lack of water in the river system.

Periods of heavy rain in recent years have dramatically improved water flows.

But in between those episodes, water levels and quality have declined, due to factors such as droughts, expanded water extraction, salinity and pollution from farms.

Compounding the droughts, smaller flows that once replenished the system have now greatly reduced. Our research sought to determine why.

What we found

We examined rainfall and water flows in the Darling River from 1972 until July 2024. This includes from the 1990s – a period when global warming accelerated.

We found a striking lack of short rainfall periods in April and May in the Darling River from the 1990s. The reduced rainfall led to long periods of very low, or no flow, in the river.

Since the 1990s under climate change, shifts in atmospheric circulation have generated fewer rain-producing systems. This has led to less rain in inland southeast Australia in autumn.

The river system particularly needs rainfall in the late autumn months, to replenish rivers after summer.

The periods of little rain were often followed by extreme floods. This is a problem because the rain fell on dry soils and soaked in, rather than running into the river. This reduced the amount of water available for the environment and human uses.

In addition to the fall in autumn rainfall, we found the number of extreme annual rainfall totals for all seasons has also fallen since the 1990s.

We also examined monthly river heights at Bourke, Wilcannia and Menindee. We found periods of both high and low water levels before the mid-1990s. But the low water levels at all three locations from 2000 onwards were the lowest in the period.

Ensuring water for all

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on Earth. Ensuring steady water supplies for human use has always been challenging.

Falls in Darling River water levels in recent decades have largely been attributed to water extraction for farm dams, irrigation and town use.

But as our research shows, the lack of rainfall in the river catchment – as a result of climate change – is also significant. The problem will worsen as climate change accelerates.

This creates a huge policy challenge. As others have noted, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan does not properly address climate change when determining how much water can be taken by towns and farmers.

Both the environment and people will benefit from ensuring the rivers of the basin maintain healthy flows into the future. As our research indicates, this will require decision-makers to consider and adapt to climate change.

Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney and Lance M Leslie, Professor, School of Mathematical And Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When dead animals are left lying around in nature, who takes advantage of the free feed – carnivores or herbivores? The answer may surprise you.

In Australia, people tend to think carnivores – such as dingoes, ravens, foxes and wedge-tailed eagles – lead the clean-up crew.

But our new research shows common brushtail possums – often thought to be herbivores – also dine on animal carcasses.

Understanding when and where brushtail possums scavenge is important. It can improve our knowledge of how carcasses are disposed of in nature, and how nutrients cycle through ecosystems.

Seeking a nutritious meal

Scavenging may provide specific essential nutrients otherwise lacking in herbivore diets.

Carcasses often contain much greater levels of crude protein than leafy greens do. Similarly, chewing on bones, may increase the intake of calcium and phosphorus, two key minerals essential for growth.

Scavenging on carrion may also help herbivores meet nutritional requirements in regions where typical food resources may be restricted during some seasons. Similarly, in times of drought, thirst may also drive herbivores to scavenge in an attempt to extract fluids from carcasses.

Though it may seem gruesome, scavenging is crucial to healthy ecosystems. Clearing carcasses from the landscape by feeding them back into food chains recycles nutrients into living systems.

Our previous research has found native marsupial herbivores feasting on the dead.

In alpine Australia, possums accounted for 61% of all recorded carcass scavenging – a proportion far surpassing species more typically considered carcass consumers.

In our latest research, we wanted to understand the factors that influence carrion consumption by brushtail possums in different ecosystems.

What we did

We monitored fresh eastern grey kangaroo carcasses across both alpine (Kosciuszko National Park) and temperate (Wolgan Valley, Greater Blue Mountains National Park) regions in New South Wales. We also compared sites in both open (grassland with no canopy cover) and closed (woodland) habitats, in cool and warm seasons.

At each carcass, we used a remote camera “trap” to record scavenging behaviours.

We found possums were one of the main scavengers, often feeding from carrion more than typical scavengers such as dingoes and ravens.

Possum scavenging rates varied by habitat and season. Regardless of region, possums scavenged exclusively in closed canopy habitats under the trees, probably for protection from predators and other scavengers such as dingoes, red foxes, and wedge-tailed eagles.

Out in the cold

Possum scavenging activity varied according to the season.

In temperate regions, possums scavenged only in winter when other food resources were limited.

In alpine areas, where food is scarce even in summer, possums scavenged year-round. But they still ate more from carcasses in cooler months. This may be necessary for possums to get the nutrition they need when other normal food resources — such as leaves, flowers and fruit — are limited.

Competition between scavengers may also change with the seasons. For example, in alpine regions, we saw fewer large scavengers such as dingoes in winter, possibly reducing competition and making it easier for possums to access carrion.

During warmer months, insect activity increases. These tiny scavengers often start eating a carcass within minutes of its death, accelerating its decomposition. It means animals such as possums have less time to feed on the carrion.

Flexible ‘herbivores’ around the world

Previous research has shown many herbivore diets are more flexible than previously thought. All over the world, certain plant-eaters have been found scavenging on animal remains – especially when other food sources are limited, such as during drought or after fire.

In Africa, hippopotamuses were found to have consumed flesh from the carcasses of other animals. In the United States, white-tailed deer fed on discarded fish.

Similarly, on a small island off Cape Town, introduced European fallow deer ate dead rabbits. On the Eurasian tundra (treeless plains), reindeer devoured lemming carcasses. In Italy, crested porcupine ate dead pigeons.

These are all still primarily herbivorous animals, they just happen to dip into carcass resources when they need to.

Improving our understanding of ‘bloody hungry’ herbivores

Our study found brushtail possums are an important scavenging species across several Australian ecosystems. It also highlights how scavenging can vary with a region, season and habitat.

Understanding the unusual foraging behaviour of the common brushtail possum could also help inform more effective wildlife management. Specifically, understanding how carcasses can support possum populations during cooler months in places like New Zealand, where they are considered an invasive pest, may lead to more effective control measures.

Our methods could also help scientists understand herbivore scavenging in other environments. This may provide valuable insights into complexities of food webs and how nutrients move through ecosystems.

Patrick Finnerty, Postdoctoral research fellow in conservation, University of Sydney and Thomas Newsome, Associate Professor in Global Ecology, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Over the last decade, several groups in Australia have successfully mobilised against fossil fuel interests. But which ones have gone the distance?

The urgent global threat of climate change might suggest groups running large-scale campaigns are the ones likely achieve lasting change. But my research suggests groups focused on local efforts are often more successful.

I’ve studied coalitions and campaigns, the climate movement and people-power globally. I’ve found groups with strong local roots can evolve and endure better than larger, more dispersed groups.

The trajectory of two major environmental groups in Australia demonstrate the point.

The first is focused around the Northern Rivers in New South Wales. There, the threat of gas extraction in the 2010s prompted the community to start organising through the national anti-gas group Lock the Gate. When floods struck the region in 2017 and 2022, many organisers shifted focus to form a new, successful alliance.

The second is the Stop Adani group. Organising began around 2010 after plans for the giant Adani coal mine in central Queensland were announced. The group successfully reduced the size of the proposed mine, but energy behind the movement dwindled.

Examining the way these groups organised and operated – and how long they lasted – offers lessons for others.

Northern Rivers

The Northern Rivers region has attracted environmentally-minded people from the 1960s peace movement onward. This activist history was almost certainly not considered by gas companies when they began planning large-scale fracking operations.

Locals began meeting under the banner “Lock the Gate”. In 2014, they launched the Bentley Blockade camp-in on land earmarked for gas extraction. The campaign worked and the Northern Rivers remains gasfield-free.

When unprecedented floods hit in 2017 and 2022, locals involved in Lock the Gate shifted focus. They formed the Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance to work on mutual aid and ongoing resilience.

Stop Adani

In 2010, the multinational Adani Group announced plans for the Carmichael coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. Climate groups around the country were outraged.

People began campaigning against the mine, initially locally focused on the coal port. By 2017 the campaign became national under the banner Stop Adani.

By 2017, Stop Adani had built a national strategy coordinating more than 100 community groups across many cities and regions. The movement used public pressure to slow progress. It reduced but did not stop the mine, which began exporting coal in late 2021.

Who was in these groups?

To tackle the gasfield threat, Northern Rivers residents doorknocked neighbours and local councils voted to declare their region gasfield free. Lock the Gate organisers deliberately set out to make their group as representative as possible.

Disagreements were inevitable. Farmers worried about the effect of gasfields on groundwater while environmentalists focused on the climate. But their relationships in the same place helped maintain unity. This broad base also meant opponents couldn’t write them off as “angry greenies”. As organiser Annie Kia has said, the movement “maximised self-organisation”.

By contrast, my analysis and interviews have shown Stop Adani involved local groups mostly comprised of white, middle class, well-educated urban women from the east coast. This made it easier to find agreement. But individual groups were smaller and less diverse than the Northern Rivers group.

Who designed the strategy?

Northern Rivers organisers tapped experienced campaigners to create the strategy. This helped overcome tensions within the broad coalition and arguably drove more creativity.

The Stop Adani strategy was done nationally. Community groups were invited to plan coordinated local actions. The led to effective public pressure on banks financing the mine, and other organisations.

But national-local separation comes at a cost, as my research has found. Local groups tasked with carrying out a national plan and had less ability to build their own plans.

Framing matters

Both groups focused on stopping fossil fuel extraction, but their framing differed.

Northern Rivers residents were motivated by a range of concerns, from avoiding damage to water tables to tackling climate change. To harness these motivations, the group framed their demand positively – fighting for a gasfield-free Northern Rivers region.

Stop Adani was built on a simple negative: stop the mine. This drove urgency and led to high levels of participation. But it also prompted a backlash, such as tense stand-offs between Central Queensland residents and a convoy organised by Bob Brown against the mine in 2019.

The stark framing created a challenge in negotiating with government. But success is not always black or white. State and federal governments slashed the size of the mine to just one-sixth the size of the original plans.

The negative framing also made it hard to retain participants. When years of protests failed to stop the mine, mass participation fell away.

But Stop Adani didn’t give up. In recent years, Traditional Owners have kept up the pressure on the mine’s financial and political backers.

What does success look like?

Stop Adani and Northern Rivers had very similar goals: stop the mine, stop the gasfields. By this metric, both groups were largely successful.

But Northern Rivers organisers also focused on building a broad movement beyond the usual environmentally-minded people. That’s why the group is still going strong, even after gas plans were defeated.

This is a remarkable community asset. When much of Lismore went underwater in 2022, state and federal help was slow. So community groups sprang into action, pooling resources and cooperating during the immediate emergency and the long clean-up.

Other communities now look to the Northern Rivers as a model of ground-up disaster recovery.

Their success should give us hope. As the climate warps, groups with strong community roots are well-placed to lead the response to the changing demands of the climate crisis.

Amanda Tattersall, Associate Professor in Urban Geography and Host of ChangeMakers Podcast, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has triggered concern about potentially detrimental effects on humans. However, the technology also has the potential to harm animals.

An important policy reform now underway in Australia offers an opportunity to address this. The federal government has committed A$5 million to renewing the lapsed Australian Animal Welfare Strategy. Consultation has begun, and the final strategy is expected in 2027.

While AI is not an explicit focus of the review, it should be.

Australians care about animals. The strategy could help ensure decision-makers protect animals from AI’s harms in our homes, on farms and in the wild.

Will AI harms to animals go unchecked?

Computers are now so developed they can perform some complex tasks as well as, or better than, humans. In other words, they have developed a degree of “artificial intelligence”.

The technology is exciting but also risky.

Warnings about the risks to humans include everything from privacy concerns to the collapse of human civilisation.

Policy-makers in the European Union, the United States and Australia are scrambling to address these issues and ensure AI is safe and used responsibly. But the focus of these policies is to protect humans.

Now, Australia has a chance to protect animals from AI.

Australia’s previous Animal Welfare Strategy expired in 2014. It’s now being revived, and aims to provide a national approach to animal welfare.

So far, documents released as part of the review suggest AI is not being considered under the strategy. That is a serious omission, for reasons we outline below.

Powerful and pervasive technology in use

Much AI use benefits animals, such as in veterinary medicine. For example, it may soon help your vet read X-rays of your animal companion.

AI is being developed to detect pain in cats and dogs. This might help if the technology is accurate, but could cause harm if it’s inaccurate by either over-reporting pain or failing to detect discomfort.

AI may also allow humans to decipher animal communication and better understand animals’ point of view, such as interpreting whale song.

It has also been used to discover which trees and artificial structures are best for birds.

But when it comes to animals, research suggests AI may also be used to harm them.

For example, it may be used by poachers and illegal wildlife traders to track and kill or capture endangered species. And AI-powered algorithms used by social media platforms can connect crime gangs to customers, perpetuating the illegal wildlife trade.

AI is known to produce racial, gender and other biases in relation to humans. It can also produce biased information and opinions about animals.

For example, AI chatbots may perpetuate negative attitudes about animals in their training data – perhaps suggesting their purpose is to be hunted or eaten.

There are plans to use AI to distinguish cats from native species and then kill the cats. Yet, AI image recognition tools have not been sufficiently trained to accurately identify many wild species. They are biased towards North American species, because that is where the bulk of the data and training comes from.

Algorithms using AI tend to promote more salacious content, so they are likely to also recommend animal cruelty videos on various platforms. For example, YouTube contains content involving horrific animal abuse.

Some AI technologies are used in harmful animal experiments. Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink, for instance, was accused of rushing experiments that harmed and killed monkeys.

Researchers warn AI could estrange humans from animals and cause us to care less about them. Imagine AI farms almost entirely run by smart systems that “look after” the animals. This would reduce opportunities for humans to notice and respond to animal needs.

Existing regulatory frameworks are inadequate

Australia’s animal welfare laws are already flawed and fail to address existing harms. They allow some animals to be confined to very small spaces, such as chickens in battery cages or pigs in sow stalls and farrowing crates. Painful procedures (such as mulesing, tail docking and beak trimming) can be legally performed without pain relief.

Only widespread community outrage forces governments to end the most controversial practices, such as the export of live sheep by sea.

This has implications for the development and use of artificial intelligence. Reform is needed to ensure AI does not amplify these existing animal harms, or contribute to new ones.

Internationally, some governments are responding to the need for reform.

The United Kingdom’s online safety laws now require social media platforms to proactively monitor and remove illegal animal cruelty content from their platforms. In Brazil, Meta (the owner of Facebook and WhatsApp) was recently fined for not taking down posts that had been tagged as illegal wildlife trading.

The EU’s new AI Act also takes a small step towards recognising how the technology affects the environment we share with other animals.

Among other aims, the law encourages the AI industry to track and minimise the carbon and other environmental impact of AI systems. This would benefit animal as well as human health.

The current refresh of the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy, jointly led by federal, state and territory governments, gives us a chance to respond to the AI threat. It should be updated to consider how AI affects animal interests.

Lev Bromberg, PhD Candidate and Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne; Christine Parker, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne, and Simon Coghlan, Senior Lecturer in Digital Ethics, Centre for AI and Digital Ethics, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In a race against time, scientists are exploring new ways to restore natural systems. Alongside traditional methods such as planting trees, reducing pollution and reintroducing native species, a surprising new tool is emerging: sound. Ecologists can harness sound to bring life back to degraded ecosystems.

On land and at sea, natural soundscapes are being replicated to stimulate growth, reproduction and even communication among species. Sound is already being used to restore oyster beds and coral reefs.

In our new research, we found beneficial plant microbes are also receptive to sound. We used high-frequency white noise to stimulate a fungus that promotes plant growth. The noise is a bit like the sound emitted in between channels of an old-fashioned radio.

This adds a new dimension to restoration projects. Imagine using tailored soundscapes to restore wetlands, forests or grasslands, simply by artificially amplifying the sonic cues that attract wildlife, stimulate growth and rebuild relationships between species. We see a bright future for this “biodiversity jukebox”, with tracks for every ecosystem.

Sound as an ecological tool

In healthy ecosystems, everything from animal calls to water trickling underground creates a sonic landscape or “soundscape” that ultimately supports biodiversity.

Conversely, the soundscapes in degraded ecosystems are often diminished or altered. This can change the way species behave and ecosystems function.

Marine biologists were among the first to explore sound as a tool for restoring Australia’s southern oyster reefs. Intact oyster reefs provide habitat for many species and prevent shoreline erosion. But pollution, overharvesting and dredging almost wiped them out more than a century ago.

It turns out playing sounds of healthy reefs, namely snapping shrimp, underwater encourages baby oysters to settle and grow. These sounds mimic the natural environment of thriving oyster beds.

The results have been impressive. Oyster populations show signs of recovery in areas where soundscapes have been artificially restored.

Similarly, fish support healthy coral reefs by grazing on algae that can otherwise smother corals. Playing the sounds of healthy coral reefs can attract young fish to degraded reefs. This helps kickstart reef recovery.

The power of sound in plant microbiology

Building on these successes, we ventured into new territory. In our new research we used sound to stimulate the growth of soil microbes.

These microbes play an essential role in plant health. Some promote nutrient uptake in plants, others protect against disease. But these communities of microorganisms can be diminished and disrupted in degraded soils, hampering plant growth and ecosystem recovery.

We wanted to find out whether specific sounds could encourage the growth of these beneficial microbes. We ran a series of experiments, to test the effect of sound on the growth and reproduction rate of a particular fungus known to stimulate plant growth and protect against diseases.

We grew the fungus in the laboratory in 40 Petri dishes and subjected half of them to treatment with sound. We played a sound recording similar to the high-frequency buzz of white noise for 30 minutes a day over five days. Then we compared the amount of fungal growth and the number of spores between the two groups.

In technical terms, the frequency was 8 kHz and level was 80 dB, which is quite loud, like the sound of a busy city street or vacuum cleaner, almost loud enough to damage hearing.

We used a monotonous sound for experimental reasons, because it is easy to control. But a more natural or diverse soundscape may be even better. We plan to do more research on this in the near future.

We found sound stimulated the fungi, increasing the growth rate by more than seven times and the production of spores by more than four times compared to the control (no sound).

Why sound works

Why does sound have such a powerful effect on ecosystems? The answer lies in the way organisms interact with their environment.

Sound travels almost five times faster in water than in air, making it an efficient means of communication for marine life such as oysters, fish and whales.

Trees detect the soundwaves produced by running water, and their roots move towards the vibration.

We already know sound influences the activity of microbes. We think it stimulates special receptors on the membranes of the microbes. These receptors might trigger a response in the cells, such as switching genes responsible for growth on or off.

Is sound the future of restoration?

Microbes support plant life, help maintain soil structure, hold water and store carbon. By stimulating beneficial microbes with sound, we may be able to improve large-scale restoration projects. This approach may also support regenerative agriculture, where farming works with nature rather than against it.

Our next steps include refining the sound patterns that are most effective in different ecosystems. We then need to scale up our research to test different sounds in diverse environments. We envisage creating a “biodiversity jukebox” of beneficial sounds to enhance ecosystem health.

It’s clear what we hear – and don’t hear – profoundly influences the environment. So we’re also interested in noise cancellation. By this, we mean barriers to protect ecosystems from potentially undesirable noises. For instance, we’re asking questions such as: do traffic and industrial noises harm the ecosystem?

As ecosystems face increasing pressure from climate change, biodiversity loss and habitat destruction, sound can become a powerful tool for restoration.

While the science is still in its infancy, it has huge potential.

Ultimately, sound-based restoration might offer a low-impact and cost-effective approach to help ecosystems recover. The future of restoration could be as much about what we hear as what we see.

Jake M Robinson, Ecologist and Researcher, Flinders University and Martin Breed, Associate Professor in Biology, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pollution and waste, climate change and biodiversity loss are creating a triple planetary crisis. In response, UN Environment Programme executive director Inger Andersen has called for waste to be redefined as a valuable resource instead of a problem. That’s what urban mining does.

We commonly think of mining as drilling or digging into the earth to extract precious resources. Urban mining recovers these materials from waste. It can come from buildings, infrastructure and obsolete products.

An urban mine, then, is the stock of precious metals or materials in the waste cities produce. In particular, electronic waste, or e‑waste, has higher concentrations of precious metals than many mined ores. Yet the UN Global E‑waste Monitor estimates US$62 billion worth of recoverable resources was discarded as e‑waste in 2022.

Urban mining can recover these “hidden” resources in cities around the world. It offers sustainable solutions to the problems of resource scarcity and waste management. And it happens in the very cities that are centres of overconsumption and hotspots for the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.

What sort of waste can be mined?

Materials such as concrete, pipes, bricks, roofing materials, reinforcements and e‑waste can be recovered for reuse. Urban waste can be “mined” for metals such as gold, steel, copper, zinc, aluminium, cobalt and lithium, as well as glass and plastic. Mechanical or chemical treatments are used to retrieve these metals and materials.

Simply disposing of this waste has high financial and environmental costs. In Australia, about 10% of waste is hazardous. Landfill costs are soaring as cities run out of space to discard their waste.

The extent of this fast-growing problem is driving the growth of urban mining around the world. We are then salvaging materials whose supply is finite, while reducing the impacts of waste disposal.

What’s happening globally?

In Europe, the focus is largely on construction and demolition waste. Europe produces 450 million to 500 million tonnes of this waste each year – more than a third of all the region’s waste. Through its urban mining strategy, the European Commission aims to increase the recovery of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste to at least 70% across member countries by 2030.

In Asia, urban mining has focused on e‑waste. However, the region recovers only about 12% of its e‑waste stock. Rates of e‑waste recycling vary greatly: 20% for East Asia, 1% for South Asia, and virtually zero for South-East Asia. China, Japan and South Korea are leading the way in Asia.

Australia is on the right track. Our recovery rate for construction and demolition materials climbed to 80% by 2022 — the highest among all types of waste streams. However, we recover only about a third of the value of materials in our e-waste.

Africa has also recognised the growing value of urban mining resources. Regional initiatives include the Nairobi Declaration on e‑waste, the Durban Declaration on e‑Waste Management in Africa and the Abuja Platform on e‑Waste.

Urban mining solves many problems

The OECD forecasts that global materials demand will almost double from 89 billion tonnes in 2019 to 167 billion tonnes in 2060. The United Nations’ Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 shows the amount of waste and costs of managing it are soaring too. It’s estimated the world will have 82 million tonnes of e‑waste to deal with by 2030.

These trends mean urban mining is becoming ever more relevant and important.

Urban mining also helps cut greenhouse gas emissions. Unlocking resources near where they are needed reduces transport costs and emissions. Urban mining also provides resource independence and creates employment.

In addition, increasing recovery and recycling rates reduce the pressure on finite natural resources.

Urban mining underpins circular economy alternatives such as the “deposit and return” schemes that give people financial incentives to return e‑waste and containers for recycling in cities such as Singapore, Sydney, Darwin and San Francisco. By 2030, San Francisco aims to halve disposal to landfill or incineration and cut solid waste generation by 15%.

What more needs to be done?

Governments have a role to play by adopting and enforcing policies, laws and regulations that encourage recycling through urban mining instead of sending waste to landfill. European Union laws, for example, mandate increased recycling targets for municipal waste overall and for packaging waste, including 80% for ferrous metals and 60% for aluminium.

In Australia, 2019 legislation prohibits landfills from accepting anything with a plug, battery or cord. Anything with a plug is designated as e-waste.

Product design is an important consideration. A designer must balance a product’s efficiency with making it easy to recycle. Products with greater efficiency and easy-to-recycle parts are more likely to use less energy, lead to less waste and hence less natural resource extraction.

Our urban mining research documents a more sustainable approach to product design. Increasing product stewardship initiatives are expected to encourage better product design and standards that promote reuse and recycling, producer responsibility and changes in consumer behaviour.

Good information about the available resources is essential too. The Urban Mine Platform, ProSUM and Waste and Resource Recovery Data Hub collect data on e‑waste, end-of-life vehicles, batteries and building and mining waste. These centralised databases allow easy access to data on the sources, stocks, flows and treatment of waste.

Traditional mining is not the only method for extracting raw materials for the green transition. Waste is set to be increasingly recycled, reducing demand for virgin materials. A truly circular economy can become a reality if governments develop and apply an urban mining agenda.

Michael Odei Erdiaw-Kwasie, Lecturer in Sustainability| Business and Accounting Discipline, Charles Darwin University; Matthew Abunyewah, Research Fellow, The Australasian Centre for Resilience Implementation for Sustainable Communities, Charles Darwin University, and Patrick Brandful Cobbinah, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Evidence is mounting that modern medicines present a growing threat to ecosystems around the world. The chemicals humans ingest to stay healthy are harming fish and other animals.

Modern pharmaceuticals have revolutionised disease prevention and treatment. But after our bodies use medicines, they excrete them. Eventually, the chemicals can end up in rivers, oceans and soils.

This is a problem, because medicines designed to treat humans can also affect other species in serious ways, changing their bodies and behaviour. The chemicals can also pass through food webs and affect animals higher up the chain.

Urgent action is needed to design drugs that work on humans, but don’t harm nature.

Evidence of harm

In the past two decades, studies have emerged showing the extent to which medicines persist in nature.

In August this year, Australian researchers found the antidepressant fluoxetine – sold under the brand name Prozac, among others – can harm male guppies in ways that affected their body condition and breeding.

Research in 2022 examined pharmaceuticals in rivers in 104 countries of all continents. It found pharmaceutical contaminants posed a threat to the health of the environment or humans in more than a quarter of locations studied.

In 2018, a study of watercourses and surrounds in Melbourne found more than 60 pharmaceutical compounds in aquatic invertebrates and spiders.

Researchers in the United States have found hormones in the contraceptive pill have caused male fish to produce a protein usually produced by female fish. This “feminisation” led to collapses in fish populations.

And a psychoactive drug found in wastewater effluent has been found to alter wild fish behaviour and feeding.

Benign by design

So how do we solve this problem?

More effective and economical wastewater treatments must be developed to remove pharmaceuticals from wastewater before it is discharged into the environment.

In addition, researchers developing pharmaceuticals must adopt a “benign by design” approach across the entire life of a drug.

From the outset, drugs must be designed to decompose quickly and fully after being excreted by humans. It’s possible for drug scientists to alter the chemical and physical properties of drugs so after humans excrete them, the active ingredients mineralise, or change form, to base substances such as carbon dioxide and water.

Traditionally researchers have designed drugs not to break down, either on the shelf or in the human body. While these properties remain important, drug developers should ensure medicines degrade quickly once in the environment.

Taking action

The principles of sustainable drug discovery should be included in Australia’s academic curriculum.

This would hopefully produce a generation of drug researchers who prioritise, where possible, medications that don’t harm the environment.

Regulation is also needed to ensure “greener” drug development. The International Pharmaceutical Federation last year took steps in this direction. The global body, representing more than 4 million pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists, released a statement calling for all medicines to be rigorously tested for environmental risk.

The European Medicines agency has gone even further. It requires the environmental risk of a medicine to be assessed before it’s approved for use.

The assessment considers a medicine’s chemical properties, potential ecological harm and where in the environment it may end up, such as water or soil. Pharmaceutical companies are also required to produce waste management plans that minimise environmental impact.

Research has found Australia lags behind on introducing similar requirements for environmental risk assessments for medicines.

By prioritising eco-friendly practices, the pharmaceutical sector can contribute to a healthier planet, while continuing to provide safe and effective medicines.

Everyday Australians can also take action to reduce environmental pollution from medicines. The federal government’s Return Unwanted Medicines project allows household drugs to be returned to pharmacies for safe and correct disposal.

By dropping off old medicines to your local chemist – instead of flushing or throwing them away, as some people mistakenly do – you can help look after fish and other wildlife in your area.

Lauren T. May, Senior Lecturer and Group Leader, Drug Discovery Biology, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University and Manuela Jorg, Research Fellow & Lab Head in Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A city street may seem an unusual place to save species found in critically endangered grasslands. My new research, though, shows we can use plants from these ecosystems to create beautiful and biodiverse urban wildflower meadows. This means cities, too, can support nature repair.

Species-rich grassy ecosystems are some of the most threatened plant communities on the planet. Occupying easily developed flat land, grassy ecosystems are routinely sacrificed as our cities expand.

In south-east Australia, the volcanic plains that support Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs were once grasslands strewn with wildflowers, “resembling a nobleman’s park on a gigantic scale”, according to early explorer Thomas Mitchell. But these exceptionally diverse, critically endangered ecosystems have been reduced to less than 1% of their original area. The few remnants continue to be lost to urban development and weed invasion.

Unfortunately, efforts to restore the grasslands around Melbourne have had mixed results. In 2020 the City of Melbourne took matters into its own hands. Recognising it is possible to enrich the diversity of birds, bats and insects by providing low-growing native plants, the council set a goal to increase understorey plants by 20% on the land it manages.

Creating a large native grassland in inner-city Royal Park would help achieve this goal. Adopting a technique used by wildflower meadow designers, we sowed a million seeds of more than two dozen species from endangered grasslands around Melbourne. All but one of these species established in the resulting native wildflower meadow.

What were the challenges at this site?

Existing restoration techniques remove nutrient-enriched topsoils full of weed seeds before sowing native seeds. The target plant community can then establish with less competition from nutrient-hungry weeds.

However, this approach could not be used at the Royal Park site. Topsoil removal cannot be used on many urban sites where soils are contaminated or there are underground services. Alternative approaches are needed to reduce weed competition while minimising soil disturbance.

I saw a possible answer in the horticultural approaches used to create designed wildflower meadows.

While still rare in Australia, designed wildflower meadows can increase the amenity and biodiversity of urban environments. They also reduce the costs of managing and mowing turf grass. These meadows are designed to be infrequently mown or burnt.

Wildflower meadow designers typically use an international suite of species that can be established from seed and persist without fertiliser or regular irrigation. An abundance of flowers makes people more accepting of “messy” vegetation. Recognising this, designers select a mix of species that will flower for as much of the year as possible.

To reduce competition from weeds, these meadows are often created on a layer of sand that covers the original site soils. The low-nutrient sand buries weed seeds and creates a sowing surface that resists weed invasion from the surrounding landscape.

However, the grasslands around Melbourne grow on clay soils, not sand. Would these techniques work for plants from these ecosystems?

A deep sand layer controls weeds and slugs

To find out we sowed more than a million seeds on sites with two depths of sand (10mm and 80mm) and one without a sand layer in Royal Park. Within one year, 26 of the 27 species sown had established to form a dense, flowering meadow across all sand depths. These plants included three threatened species.

Crucially, the deepest sand layer reduced weed numbers and therefore time spent weeding.

Interestingly, slugs played a role in determining the diversity of the native meadow. South-east Australia’s grasslands have largely evolved without slugs. As a result, seedlings lack chemical or physical defences against grazing by slugs, which can greatly reduce species diversity in native meadows.

Again, sand provided a real benefit. Fewer slugs occurred on the deepest sand layer compared to bare soil. The suggestion that sand can deter slugs is consistent with meadow research in Europe.

Now to repair nature in all our cities

Our research gives us another technique to reinstate critically endangered plant communities. We can use it to bring nature back to city parks and streets.

Working in urban contexts also unlocks other advantages. There’s ready access to irrigation while the meadow gets established and to communities keen to care for natural landscapes. Creating native wildflower meadows in cities also helps native animals survive, including threatened species that call our cities home.

People will be able to engage with beautiful native plants that are now rare in cities. Enriching our experience of nature can enhance our health and wellbeing.

My colleagues and I trialled these approaches with the support of the City of Melbourne. We are continuing our research to improve the scale and sustainability of native wildflower meadows in other municipalities.

Native wildflower meadows and grassland restoration projects could genuinely help Australia meet its commitment to restore 30% of degraded landscapes. But first we need to invest much more in seed production. Reinstating native species on degraded land requires a lot of seed.