The Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability in Victoria, Dr Ian McPhail, has tabled the first State of the Environment assessment, reports The Age. And the findings aren’t pretty.
In essence, Victorians are living well beyond their means. “Improvements in human wellbeing and economic development” have been “achieved at the expense of ecosystem services essential to life.” The report argues that some parts of the state are degraded beyond repair, notes the ABC.
The root cause of environmental degradation is the same that’s at the heart of the global financial crisis, says Dr McPhail: “a fixation on maximising returns in the short term and blindness to the future costs of rehabilitation and adjustment”.
For a state where “energy generation and consumption” is the biggest single environment destroyer, one of the key 250 recommendations is an argument for prioritising investment in less energy intensive transport, like walking, cycling and public transport. And renewable energy too, to redress the fact that “4% of electricity comes from renewable energy sources with solar energy contributing just 0.006%.”
In this issue, the government must become a leader:
The Victorian Government monitor and report its own greenhouse gas emissions and water use in annual budget papers and its performance against set targets. A detailed whole of government entity by entity listing of greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption should also be reported.
The report paves the way for re-opening the discussion about using recycled sewage for drinking water. And it encourages greater transparency on who owns the state’s water, by recommending that the government “should make information on the ownership of water entitlements publicly accessible.”
As for the urban scrawl, enough already. Melbourne, argues Dr McPhail, cannot afford to extend its borders. Otherwise, we’ll end up with Melbtoria — and disaster. Speaking in Parliament yesterday, he said:
The Melbourne 2030 boundary (now) needs to be fixed and needs to be vigorously imposed … We’ve simply got to stop our prodigal use of land … rather than always shoving the boundary out, because it will just keep nibbling at the farmlands and native vegetation at the edge.
There’s a lot more in the report, five years in the making. Read the full State of the Environment here. For an overview, there’s a key findings & recommendations pdf.
