Call to end all landclearing

Rosslyn Beeby

Canberra Times - 09 February 2008 - 9:26AM

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A national moratorium on all land clearing across Australia is urgently needed to address its critical contribution to climate change, a leading scientist says.

University of Queensland senior research fellow Clive McAlpine said new research showed land clearing was changing the circulation of Australia's ocean currents, because of changes in wind speeds, pressure systems and surface roughness of the landscape.

"Governments are focusing on carbon as the primary driver of climate change but are ignoring the basic interaction between landscape and climate. There is little doubt land clearing is a key driver of climate change in Australia. Every time we cut down trees, we are putting ourselves more at risk," Dr McAlpine said.

A pre-election policy document obtained by The Canberra Times, shows Labor had flagged national standards "to strictly regulate approvals for land clearing", including linking state and territory funding to "appropriate clearing controls". In a letter to Environment Business Australia chief executive Fiona Wain last November, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Labor's "action agenda to tackle climate change" would include a national emissions trading scheme "to include the agriculture sector" and incentives to reduce land clearing.

The document says Labor will "insist that funding of state, territory and landholder projects is conditional upon the states, territories and local government(s) introducing appropriate clearing control".

Dr McAlpine said there was "a critical need to bring vegetation back" to improve landscape resilience to climate change. Last October, he published research that showed land clearing was triggering hotter droughts, and decreasing summer rainfall in eastern Australia by between 4 and 12 per cent. "These findings have yet to make their way into government policy or into discussions with policy advisers," he said.

"There has been a lot of public interest in these findings, but not a lot of political interest," Dr McAlpine said.

His research team found 150 years of land clearing in NSW, Queensland and Victoria had led to a significant warming and drying of eastern Australia.

Modelling showed the 2002-03 El Nino drought in eastern Australia was on average 2 degrees hotter because of vegetation clearing.

Federal and state governments needed to introduce laws outlining a "duty of care" for farmers to protect native vegetation on their properties, he said.

"Let's say you adopt a figure of 30 per cent and I'm not saying that's necessarily the right figure of vegetation to be maintained on a property as a duty of care.

"Once you're past that level, you're eligible for various financial incentives, but if you've over-cleared, you don't get a cent until you reach the duty of care level. "That way, you reward responsibility."

Dr McAlpine has also led research on the impacts of urban development on loss of koala habitat on the south-east Queensland coast.

It was still too easy for developers and local governments to collude to bypass clearing controls by using "dodgy environmental consultancies", he said.

Governments also needed to take "a less narrow and compartmentalised approach to climate change, seeing things as functioning as a whole, instead of putting water, carbon and other elements into separate boxes and not seeing the connections".

Copyright © 2008. Fairfax Digital

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