Protection of Australia’s freshwater ecosystems

November 13th, 2012

Dr. Jonathan Nevill, OnlyOnePlanet Consulting, Australia

In the early 1970s Australia (and many other nations) made commitments to protect its important and representative ecosystems. The two key documents in this regard are the United Nations Stockholm Declaration, and the Ramsar Wetlands Convention. These commitments were later reinforced through the 1982 World Charter for Nature (an agreement by the UN General Assembly) and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity – one of the most widely supported of all international agreements. The CBD is particularly important as national programs continue to be guided by resolutions of the Conference of the Parties.

Under the guidance of these agreements, Australia and other nations commenced programs aimed at the protection of biodiversity in terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. These programs had two main thrusts. First, the single most important strategy world wide is the creation of networks of protected areas – permanent reserves where at least some threats to biodiversity are effectively managed or eliminated. However, it was immediately recognised that such reserves could never contain more than a small percentage (10 or 20 percent at most) of the world’s ecosystems and habitats, so the second major program is to protect as far as practical biodiversity across broad landscapes. This is achieved through a variety of legislative and incentive programs (pollution controls and land use planning, for example1).

My work since the year 2000 has focused on evaluating just how effective Australia’s programs have been in the areas of protecting aquatic biodiversity.

Considerable progress was made in the area of terrestrial biodiversity in the 1980s, as the Commonwealth Government, in cooperation with the States, developed the National Reserve System. In the 1990s attention moved to marine ecosystems, as Australia commenced a program to develop ‘comprehensive, adequate and representative’ protection for marine ecosystems through a network of marine protected areas in Commonwealth and State waters. Australian scientists, like Jamie Kirkpatrick and Bob Pressey, became world figures through their work on the theory and practice of systematic conservation planning (see the landmark paper by Margules and Pressey2).

However little systematic attention was given to freshwater ecosystems. Each Australian State did declare reserves under the Ramsar Convention, however these were not developed under a systematic national plan, and to this day no national evaluation has been undertaken to identify areas which meet the Ramsar criteria. The Ramsar reserves which were developed in response to local initiatives do protect important lentic ecosystems, however water of course moves through reserve boundaries, and all too often no management steps were taken to protect the water which sustains these ecosystems. In many cases rivers and streams flowing towards the reserves where dammed and harvested, and groundwaters drained.1

The terrestrial NRS reserves were often established with little regard for the conservation needs of riverine ecosystems. Today, four decades after Australia’s initial commitments, there has been no conservation status assessment to determine whether riverine ecosystems are adequately protected within terrestrial reserves. Dr Janet Stein of the Australian National University has recently published an analysis which found that of Australia’s 2,900,000 kilometers of mapped streams, only 12,334 km, or less than half of one percent, fell into what might be described as a “fully protected” category within terrestrial reserves. Her paper concludes: “Owing to a variety of pervasive threats, a more comprehensive conservation status assessment of these ecosystems would undoubtedly yield an even more pessimistic result. Such an assessment is recommended”.3

It should be noted that New Zealand has undertaken a comprehensive national assessment of its freshwater ecosystems. It should also be noted however, that in New Zealand, as in Australia, action to protect freshwaters on the ground has lagged far behind both policy and science.

One of Australia’s best known freshwater conservation biologists is Professor Richard Kingsford of the University of New South Wales. In 2006 he and fifty other prominent scientists published a paper calling for urgent action.4 Unfortunately, this call remains as urgent today as it was then:

The need to establish comprehensive and representative freshwater protected areas is urgent, given increasing concerns about limited water availability for Australia’s cities, industries and agriculture – and the ongoing degradation of aquatic ecosystems. This should be accompanied by effective land and water management that pays more than lip service to the environmental requirements of aquatic ecosystems. State governments should act with the support and collaboration of the Commonwealth.

The most urgent initiative appears to be a national reserve system ‘gap analysis’ which would identify those ecosystems most at risk. A comprehensive national assessment of the conservation status of freshwater ecosystems should be undertaken immediately. Such a study would provide a platform for the systematic expansion of the nation’s freshwater protected areas, as well as a catalyst for innovative ‘bottom-up’ conservation approaches driven by local stakeholders.

In other countries there have been important practical initiatives with regard to protecting river and stream ecosystems. Canada’s ‘Heritage Rivers’ and the USA’s ‘Wild and Scenic Rivers’ provide important models for other countries. However in Australia, Victoria’s ‘Heritage River’ management plans, prepared over a decade ago, were never finalised or implemented. The current Queensland State government, newly elected, came to power on a platform which included the roll-back of designated ‘Wild Rivers’. In the marine area, newly declared Commonwealth protected areas are a travesty of the original vision on which the program was founded in the 1990s.

We live in disturbing times. The sixth major global biodiversity extinction event, this time under the hand of mankind, has commenced, with the science increasingly clear. The threats to biodiversity from escalating inroads into natural habitats, as well as the effects of a warming climate and increasingly acidic oceans, are again clear from a scientific perspective. Yet, in Australia as globally, politicians, elected on short-term policy platforms, seem unable to understand, let alone act on, the damage which confronts us, damage which is already undermining the life support systems of Planet Earth.

References:

1. Nevill, J & Phillips, N (2004) The Australian freshwater protected area resourcebook, OnlyOnePlanet Australia, viewed November 24 2007, <http://www.ids.org.au/~cnevill/FW_ProtectedArea_Sourcebook.doc>

2. Margules, CR & Pressey, RL (2000) ‘Systematic conservation planning.’ Nature 405: 243-53.

3. Stein, J and Nevill, J (2011) ‘Counting Australia’s protected rivers’, Ecological Management and Restoration 12(3):xx (December 2011).

4. Kingsford, R & Nevill, J (2006) ‘Urgent need for a systematic expansion of freshwater protected areas in Australia: a scientists consensus statement’, Pacific Conservation Biology 12(1): 7-14.

Currently the director of OnlyOnePlanet Consulting (specialising in aquatic conservation policy) Jon Nevill is an environmental scientist, planner and policy analyst with a life-long interest in the conservation and management of aquatic ecosystems. His wide experience includes scientific research as well as hands-on work in a variety of pollution management situations with State environment agencies. His PhD thesis (2004-09) and the book which followed, involved an investigation of policy issues surrounding overfishing under regulation (School of Government, University of Tasmania). He is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and was a councillor in the Australian Marine Science Association until his resignation in 2010. More information on the work of Dr Jonathan Nevill can be located on the OnlyOnePlanet website: www.onlyoneplanet.com.

The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here.