প্রকাশ: 20/07/2022
A five-year government report found Australia’s environment
continues to deteriorate due to climate change, resource extraction and other
causes, prompting leaders on Tuesday to promise new laws and enforcement of
them.
The State of the Environment report also adds political
pressure on the government to set a more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction
target when Parliament resumes next week for the first time since May 21
elections.
The previous conservative government received the report in
December but decided against making it public before the elections.
The center-left Labor Party won on pledges including greater
action on climate change.
It wants a target to reduce emissions by 43% below 2005 by
the end of the decade enshrined in law when Parliament sits on July 26.
Several unaligned lawmakers want a more ambitious target.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the report sent a “very strong message
that we need to do better, but she rejected calls for deeper emission cuts.
“On the 43% target, we made a promise to the Australian
people. We’re going to keep the promise we made to the Australian people,”
Plibersek told the National Press Club.
She said she would introduce new environmental protection
laws to Parliament next year and the government would create an agency to
enforce them.
The government will also set a target of having 30% of
Australia’s land and surrounding sea declared protected areas. It wants to
create an east Antarctic marine park.
“I am optimistic about the steps that we can take over the
next three years. Legislating strong action on climate change is a great
start,” Plibersek said.
The wide-ranging report found the number of Australian
species listed as threatened had increased by 8% since the 2016 report.
That number will increase substantially after wildfires in
2019 and 2020 destroyed vast tracts of southeast Australian forests, the report
said.
Kelly O’Shanassy, chief executive of the Australian
Conservation Foundation, an environmental organization, said land clearing was
the major cause of habitat loss.
“There’s nothing in this report we don’t know. This is the
fourth State of the Environment Report and every time it’s told us that the
environment is getting worse and worse and worse because we’re not taking the
type of action we need,” O’Shanassy told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
She welcomed the government’s commitment to law reform.
“That’s what we need to do pretty quickly, otherwise these
endangered species will go extinct and they’ll do that in our lifetimes,”
O’Shanassy said.
– AP/UNB
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