Freshwater ecosystems

7.5 Land use planning (LUP) requirements

In line with normal Australian practice, GSL’s LUP requirements are carried out largely by local government, within a framework provided by the State. The LUP framework provides for the development of land use zoning plans, and facilitates the development of catchment master plans by the community. The LUP framework includes special purpose State strategies (such as the GSL wetlands policy and the biodiversity policy) and requires that land use zoning and catchment master plans must be compatible with these policies. Consequently these plans embody conservation strategies which rest in part on bioregional inventories.
The GSL wetlands policy (recognising the historic degradation of the wetland resource) requires “no net loss” of wetland habitat²⁸⁹. Any proposal which impacts adversely on wetland habitat must develop compensatory proposals, perhaps at spatially different but ecologically similar sites. Any artificial compensatory wetland must be at least 50% larger than the wetland destroyed, must mimic the natural wetland as closely as possible, and must include ongoing maintenance funds to cover such matters as routine pest control, condition monitoring, and reporting provisions. Under the wetlands policy, freshwater ecosystems listed in the inventory are categorised by value and significance, and appropriate requirements are placed on the LUP framework to ensure special protection for the catchments of high value wetlands, as well as the inclusion of minor wetlands in the ICM planning framework.
GSL’s biodiversity legislation considers threatened species, communities and ecosystems and landscapes (see the discussion of the Qld approach). The legislation primarily targets threatening processes, but also provides protection for “critical habitat” through the LUP framework – impacting on both public and private land.
The LUP framework also embodies strategic planning provisions for the specific protection of the values of State reserves (on public land) and critical habitat (on private land) as well as habitat created and protected under voluntary landholder agreements. According to statute, land use plans, and catchment master plans, must take these values into account.
Local government land use planning decisions, and the actions of the State government, must take into consideration the relevant catchment master plan, and must be compatible with the objectives of that plan, and the objectives of the Water Act. As mentioned above, the catchment management plan is checked and endorsed by an independent panel advising the minister before becoming legally 'active', and the objectives of the plan must be developed within the framework specified by the GSL State government, keyed into State objectives and principles (see Appendix 2).

7.6 Coordination of programs

In order to coordinate programs over the five areas listed, the State has established a degree of harmony within different pieces of legislation, and the different programs established under these statutes. This has been achieved by establishing general objectives and principles covering all State programs, and reflecting these objectives and principles within two key on-ground planning frameworks: local government land use planning, and catchment-based natural resource planning developed under the guidance of a small number of State Catchment Management Agencies (established under the authority of the State's Catchment Management Act).
This coordinated approach is modelled on frameworks which have been developed in Tasmania (which has an over-arching system of objectives within a suite of legislation known as the Resource Management and Planning System) and New South Wales and Victoria - which have well developed catchment management frameworks based on statute.
Specifically, the key components of GSL's framework are:

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  incorporating in the (primary) Planning and Approvals Act a schedule of objectives and principles (refer to the example set out in Appendix 2);
  
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  reflecting these objectives and principles in each sectoral statute (including the five key areas listed above - see also Appendix 2); and
  
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  requiring decision makers to give effect to these objectives and principles in their decisions. These decision makers include: (a) State government in directing and funding State-wide natural resource programs through a single Natural Resources Management Commission²⁹⁰; (b) local government in developing planning schemes and in implementing planning schemes though approval decisions, and (c) catchment agencies in developing and implementing catchment master plans (and the component plans which make up the catchment master plans).
  

The environmental provisions of the catchment master plans must be mirrored in the State's local planning framework (see similar provisions in the NSW Water Management Act 2000).

8. Conclusions and recommendations

8.1 The current situation needs urgent review

To recapitulate: a number of important assumptions are underwriting the degradation of Australia's freshwater ecosystems. While all of these assumptions may well have once been correct, circumstances have changed over the last two centuries. Eleven of the most important of these assumptions are listed above in section 2.5. While some of these assumptions have been successfully challenged by the current water reform agenda, others remain more-or-less unscathed. Australian water managers have been slow to adjust to changing circumstances.

Of the critical management issues facing the water industry, I have argued that at least four need special attention:

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  managing the cumulative effects of incremental water infrastructure development (in line with sustainability principles);
  
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  the completion of comprehensive freshwater ecosystem inventories, and the development of systems of representative freshwater reserves;
  
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  the integration of the management of surface and groundwaters, recognising that most Australian streams and rivers are fed primarily (most of the time) from surface groundwater; and
  
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  a serious commitment to build quality assurance principles into water management processes, especially relating to compliance enforcement and auditing.
  

This is not to say that issues such as environmental flows or fish passage are unimportant - they are very important. To some extent they are components of the wider issue of managing cumulative effects. However, in my view, management processes around Australia are changing in response to some of these concerns. The four issues listed above are issues where management regimes have been particularly slow to respond to emerging needs.

Although management procedures to control cumulative effects are being considered by most States, no State has moved to implement all of the three critical components identified in Chapter 4.

On the question of the protection of biodiversity, the RFA program has at least established a system of terrestrial biodiversity reserves, and to this extent has gone a considerable way to meeting international and national commitments to protect terrestrial biodiversity. Fifteen percent of many important terrestrial ecosystems now lie in protected areas²⁹¹. However, the situation in the marine and freshwater environments is very different. Here, little progress has been made. Most Australian States (Queensland is the exception) have less than 1% of their marine waters allocated to protected areas, and an even smaller percentage to representative marine reserves. And in the freshwater area, the few representative ecosystems with adequate protection lie within large terrestrial reserves, such as those in Tasmania’s south-west World Heritage Area. The extent to which freshwater ecosystems encompassed in large terrestrial reserves meet CAR criteria has simply not been assessed in any Australian State.
Six of Australia’s eight jurisdictions have failed to establish reserves specifically to protect representative freshwater ecosystems, in spite of international and national commitments dating as far back as 1982, and in spite of commitments in the form of policy statements by all jurisdictions except South Australia and Tasmania (Tasmania has developed commitments in draft form). Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory are exceptions, as they are the only States to fund programs designed to put in place representative freshwater reserves. In Victoria’s case, the program (initiated by the 1987 State Conservation Strategy, and commenced in 1988) did not achieve its full objective of establishing a comprehensive system of representative reserves encompassing both still and flowing freshwater ecosystems (rivers and wetlands). However the framework established by the program does include fifteen Representative Rivers, and this framework could now be extended (given sufficient interest by the Victorian government) to establish a comprehensive and representative system.
While the limited Victorian reserves do not appear to be either comprehensive nor adequate (in the sense of providing coverage of all major representative freshwater ecosystems) the situation in most other States is that State governments have not adequately funded programs to implement even the limited commitments of the Ramsar convention (or the national biodiversity strategy) with respect to the establishment of comprehensive freshwater ecosystem inventories. All Australian States have developed wetland inventories, but even these, in all cases, are incomplete or inadequate when assessed by Ramsar criteria²⁹².
In the absence of comprehensive freshwater ecosystem inventories (and established systems of representative freshwater reserves) infrastructure assessment programs, looking (as they do) at discrete infrastructure proposals on a case by case basis (rather than taking a regional overview within a strategic planning context) will never be able to adequately protect freshwater biodiversity. Only State-wide strategies²⁹³, based on comprehensive inventories, and including systems of representative freshwater reserves within each IBRA region, can be effective. Such strategies, where basin catchments cross State borders, need to be consistent across the whole basin.
Putting the issue of representative reserves aside for a moment, the other three issues of cumulative effects, the integration of the management of groundwater and surface water, and compliance enforcement and auditing - all need to be addressed within the processes and programs of integrated catchment management. This is currently not happening anywhere in Australia - with a few notable exceptions, mostly in New South Wales.