Appendix 2:
Freshwater biodiversity conservation: international and national agreements
Edited (updated) extract from Nevill 2001.
A2. International and national context A2.1 The cornerstone:
Effective protection of biodiversity depends on two key elements: sympathetic management of utilised ecosystems and the creation of protected areas.
A cornerstone of biodiversity protection (first articulated in the international context in the World Charter for Nature 1982) is the tenet that, where ecosystems are subject to significant modification by humans (through harvesting, pollution, resource extraction, or the introduction of new species, for example) it is necessary to set aside representative examples of these ecosystems to provide biodiversity “banks”, and benchmarks against which human management of the ecosystems can be measured in the long term.
The “mirror” of this tenet states that actions should also be taken in managed (utilised) ecosystems to minimise impacts by protecting natural values (including biodiversity) as far as practicable. Threatening processes need to be identified and managed over the entire landscape, not just within reserves.
Where reserves are created to protect representative ecosystems, such reserves should be ecologically viable. They should be large enough to support species at the top of the food chain, such as the peak predators, and should be of sufficient size to permit ongoing evolutionary processes to occur. In the words of the International Convention on Biological Diversity (UNEP 1992) they should be comprehensive, adequate and representative.
The above cornerstone is one of the key foundations of the International Convention on Biological Diversity, and has been broadly adopted by all national biodiversity strategies developed by signatory-nations to the Convention, including Australia's strategy. The Australian biodiversity program was established by the National Strategy for the Conservation of Biological Diversity 1996, to which all Australian States are signatories. This is referred to below in shorthand form as the national biodiversity strategy. This strategy was developed to provide a framework for Australia’s programs carried out in recognition of both international responsibilities273 and ongoing national responsibilities and programs (within the framework established by the Australian Constitution).
A2.2 Development of a national biodiversity strategy
Australia made a commitment to the development of systems of representative ecological reserves at least as far back as 1982, when Australian representatives at the United Nations supported the World Charter for Nature, a resolution of the General Assembly of the UN in October of that year. The reservation of representative examples of all ecosystems – terrestrial, marine and freshwater – is an important tenet of the Charter.
A decade later, the Australian Government ratified the international Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 on 18/6/93. This convention emerged from the Rio 1992 global environmental summit (the “Earth Summit”) and, among other things, laid the groundwork for the development of international and national systems of “protected areas”.
The commitments made by the Australian government in 1982 (and reinforced in 1992) to establish systems of reserves to protect representative ecosystems were expanded and re-enforced by the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity 1996, which listed this goal amongst its key objectives (Principle 8, page 6).
Principle 8
Central to the conservation of Australia’s biological diversity is the establishment of a comprehensive, representative and adequate system of ecologically viable protected areas *, integrated with sympathetic management of all other areas, including agricultural and resource production systems.
* The use of the term “protected area” is derived from the work of the IUCN, reinforced by the international Convention on Biological Diversity, and applies equally to terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems274.
The “reserves” aspect of this principle has been applied to Australia’s terrestrial ecosystems, principally through State conservation reserves, Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs), and funding from the National Reserve System (NRS) component of the Natural Heritage Trust program. As a result, most terrestrial forest ecosystems have a reasonable degree of protection, with many approaching the RFA’s 15% target275.
Funds from the NRS program have been used to acquire some wetland areas, but this has not been done on a systematic basis targeted at the development of 'comprehensive, adequate and representative' freshwater reserves. Nevertheless, the NRS Program has been successful in acquiring several major wetlands, particularly in NSW - as part of the terrestrial reserve program.
Principle Eight of the national biodiversity strategy is currently being applied to non-forest terrestrial ecosystems (such as grassy ecosystems) and to Australia’s marine ecosystems through the National Oceans Policy, Commonwealth and State marine reserve programs276, and other Commonwealth and State programs aimed at managing threatening processes in the marine environment.
However, with respect to freshwater ecosystems, the principle has either not been systematically applied by State governments, or attempts to apply the principle have not been effective. Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria, the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, and New South Wales have all, at one time or another, made policy statements committing to the development of systems of representative freshwater reserves. Tasmania seems likely to make this commitment in the near future. So far, only Victoria and the ACT have funded programs designed to put such a system in place. Unfortunately the Victorian program has not achieved its full objectives, and is in urgent need of review. Recent Victorian policy statements on protecting representative river ecosystems essentially re-state existing commitments which have remained without effective implementation since 1987.
In June 2001 the Commonwealth Government and five of the eight State and Territory jurisdictions launched the National Objectives and Targets for Biodiversity Conservation 2001-2005. The protection and restoration of freshwater ecosystems was identified as a priority, and a target was set “by 2005, all jurisdictions should have effective legislation and management plans in place to protect wetlands of national significance”. Given that some Ramsar management plans are still failing to deliver adequate environmental flows, that freshwater ecosystem inventories remain either incomplete or out-of-date in all jurisdictions, and that no jurisdiction except the ACT has implemented protective regimes for representative river ecosystems – it seems hard to argue that this target has been achieved.
Other international commitments are being implemented through the listing of large, especially important areas in the World Heritage Register, and the development of areas managed as Biosphere Reserves under the UNESCO Biosphere Reserves Program. At this stage Macquarie Island is Australia’s only formal biosphere reserve, although 12 areas have been nominated for reservation.
While considerable success has been achieved in protecting biodiversity at the terrestrial level, freshwater and marine ecosystem protection is lagging seriously behind. In Victoria, the Environment Conservation Council’s (ECC) figures show that at present only 0.05% of Victoria’s marine areas are currently protected. The ECC has recommended this be expanded to around 6%. (ECC 1999)277.
A2.3 CoAG Water Reform Agenda
The Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) Water Reform Agenda278 (a major national strategy formalised by a CoAG agreement in 1994) lists ecological sustainability as a central element of the agenda.
As part of the CoAG water reform agenda, all Australian States have revised, or are revising, water legislation. One aspect of this revision allows investors (within certain constraints) to build dams and sell water – not an option available to the private sector under previous arrangements in several States. In some States (notably Tasmania and Queensland) these changes have produced a flurry of interest by investors in the construction of new dams.
The agenda stresses that issues of sustainability, and the environmental needs of rivers must be taken into account in planning water infrastructure developments.
In regard to the CoAG requirements relating to the sustainable development of water resources, the Strategic Water Reform Framework (1994) declared that:
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‘future investment in new schemes or extensions to existing schemes be undertaken only after appraisal indicates it is economically viable and ecologically sustainable’ and
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‘where significant future irrigation activity or dam construction is contemplated, appropriate measures are to be undertaken to…allow natural resource managers to satisfy themselves that the environmental requirements of the river systems would be adequately met before (my emphasis) any harvesting of the water resource occurs’.
As mentioned above, the agenda lists ecological sustainability as a central element of the agenda. An essential part of any ecological sustainability program is the protection of biological diversity, and, as discussed above, a system of representative protected areas is one of the two central themes of biodiversity conservation, world-wide. However, this logical link has not been incorporated into CoAG processes or programs, as these programs operate only through existing Commonwealth / State multilateral agreements, which are themselves deficient in this respect. See discussion below.
Overall, the agenda has been a powerful influence in both environmental and economic areas, and readers are referred to Fisher (2000) for an overview of the environmental outcomes of the agenda's microeconomic reform package.
The support which the CoAG water reform framework has provided for both catchment management and the National Water Quality Management Strategy has been crucial in furthering good land and water management practices and Government programs over the last few years, and it is critical that these elements be maintained and strengthened by the outcomes of the CoAG meeting planned for April 2004.
A2.4 Current Australian natural resource management frameworks
The community is becoming more aware of the need to manage cumulative effects, and administrative decisions are starting to reflect this awareness (see Attachment One, which describes such a decision in Victoria in 2002). The frameworks which have been established to manage natural resources have moved in a positive direction, but have not moved fast enough or far enough. This section provides an overview of Australian natural resource management (NRM) administrative arrangements.
Both the Commonwealth Government and the State Governments have strong interests in promoting good management of the nation’s natural resources. As previously mentioned, the Commonwealth lacks the constitutional powers (but has the funds), while the States possess the powers to manage those resources (but in general rely on the Commonwealth for funding). The Commonwealth has the ability to provide incentives (through targeted funding programs) and the ability to impose limited prohibitions (through the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999).
The principal Commonwealth programs targeting NRM are:
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the National Action Plan for Water Quality and Salinity (the NAP); and
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the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT).
Bilateral agreements exist between the Commonwealth and the States which establish frameworks for funding within both the NAP and the NHT programs. These agreements set out the terms of cooperation between the parties; in particular, they provide for the accreditation by the Commonwealth of regional NRM plans developed by regional NRM authorities established under State legislation. These authorities are empowered to spend (and in some cases to raise) public money. Appropriate reporting and other accountability arrangements have also been established for these agencies by State governments. These bilateral agreements provide the heads of authority under which Commonwealth funds are allocated to State natural resource management projects.
Taking the Tasmanian situation as an example, the State Government established a NRM Council, and three “regional committees” through the Natural Resource Management Act 2003. The State is divided into three NRM regions, West, North and South.
A single non-statutory NAP region spans parts of the north and south NRM regions. This region has been created as a device to assist planning related to the achievement of NAP objectives.
Under this framework, the NRM regional committees established by the Act develop regional plans, working within existing State statutory, policy and administrative arrangements. These regional plans are aimed at meeting both State and Commonwealth natural resource management objectives. The plans provide for the development of regional investment strategies, which in turn will be executed through the activities of State and local government agencies, and through activities (which could be carried out by farmers, contractors or corporations, for example) funded by either (or both) Commonwealth or State funds. Under existing arrangements, the regional plans must be accredited by the Commonwealth, and accepted by the States, by June 2004.
Ideally, a national framework including the development of comprehensive freshwater ecosystem inventories, and the identification and selection of freshwater protected areas (emphasizing river and aquifer protected areas) should be in place before June 2004, to allow the NRM planning process to incorporate mechanisms for putting controls in place necessary to manage the wider catchments of these areas. Given the timeframe, this seems unlikely to happen.
A2.5 Freshwater biodiversity programs: an important “gap”
It is worth noting that a cornerstone of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the national biodiversity strategy (that is: the creation of representative reserves279) did not appear in the “Actions” listed later in the national biodiversity strategy (see section 2.5 Water, p.21). Under subsection 2.5.1 we find that the “recommended action” relates solely to “establishing inventories of the condition and extent of wetlands, floodplains and riparian ecosystems”. There is no mention of the use of such inventories in strategic conservation planning, or their use in developing a system of representative reserves based on such information – even though these actions were (and are) being applied to terrestrial ecosystems280. The words chosen in the strategy were taken directly from the 1992 National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (objective 18.2), continuing what appears to have been an oversight in this earlier document.
This oversight appears to be a major gap that merits attention in the context of the ongoing program to implement the national biodiversity strategy (including the National Reserves System, and the Australian Biological Resources Study), as well as the ongoing program to implement the Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) Water Reform Agenda (such as the National River Health Program)281.
A2.6 International agreements relating to wetlands A2.6.1 International Convention on Biological Diversity 1992
The Convention (discussed above), ratified by Australia in 1993, requires that signatories to the agreement identify and monitor major representative ecosystems. The scope of the definitions of "ecosystems" and "habitats" in the extract below includes terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments:
Convention Annex I
IDENTIFICATION AND MONITORING
1. Ecosystems and habitats: containing high diversity, large numbers of endemic or threatened species, or wilderness; required by migratory species; of social, economic, cultural or scientific importance; or, which are representative, unique or associated with key evolutionary or other biological processes (my emphasis);
2. Species and communities which are: threatened; wild relatives of domesticated or cultivated species; of medicinal, agricultural or other economic value; or social, scientific or cultural importance; or importance for research into the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, such as indicator species; and
3. Described genomes and genes of social, scientific or economic importance.
To fulfil this obligation, Australian States need to classify rivers, lakes, wetlands and aquifers according to criteria which will allow representative values to be identified, and representative reserves selected. Victoria has made some progress in this regard, while other States have not developed comprehensive freshwater inventories which could allow such identification and selection.
The convention committed Australian governments to establish protected areas. The commitment to establish freshwater protected areas was reinforced in 2004, when a revised programme of work on inland waters was adopted by the 7th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Malaysia. Among a raft of key expectations it has of parties, the revised program states that each signatory should establish “....comprehensive, adequate and representative systems of protected inland water ecosystems …”
A2.6.2 Ramsar convention
The Australian Government, on behalf of all its States, is a party to a number of “special purpose” international conventions that require it to protect natural areas. The most directly relevant of these for freshwater ecosystems is the Convention on Wetlands – often called the Ramsar Convention – which the Australian government signed in 1974, and which came into effect in 1975. “Wise use” is a key principle of the Convention282.
Under the convention, parties are required to:
• nominate suitable sites as Wetlands of International Importance and to manage those sites (and all wetlands in their jurisdiction) to maintain their ecological values;
• formulate and implement land-use planning procedures to include wetland conservation considerations;
• develop national systems of wetland reserves; and
• to co-operate with other nations in promoting the wise use of wetlands, where wetlands and their resources, such as migratory birds, are shared.
Listing of a wetland on the Ramsar list means that the member country undertakes to take special measures to ensure protection of the values for which it was listed. Australia was the first country to become a party to the Convention and also the first to nominate a site to the Ramsar list. This was the Coburg peninsula, an Aboriginal Land and Wildlife Sanctuary in the Northern Territory, which then became the world’s first Wetland of International Importance. Australia now has 49 wetlands on the list.
It is important to note that Ramsar's Criteria for identifying wetlands of international importance283 starts with "representative or unique wetlands". This criteria cannot be applied in the absence of comprehensive inventories which embody classifications of wetland type284. After 30 years, Australia has fulfilled only part of its obligations under the Convention. Comprehensive wetland inventories, and comprehensive national reserve systems remain uncompleted.
A2.6.3 CAMBA and JAMBA
Australia is also a signatory to the Japan-Australia Migratory Birds Agreement (JAMBA) and the China-Australia Migratory Birds Agreement (CAMBA) which call for the protection of species and their habitats listed in the Agreements.
A2.6.4 Definitions
The definition of “wetlands” used in the Ramsar convention is of great importance, as the original definition encompassed all freshwater ecosystems, other than groundwater or karst285 ecosystems, and, importantly, includes all flowing waterways286. In other words, Ramsar’s use of “wetlands” includes all rivers and streams, as opposed to the meaning more commonly attributed to the term in Australia, which excludes such water bodies. However, in order to fulfil Australia's obligations under Ramsar, programs need to be developed covering all those ecosystems which are encompassed by the full Ramsar definition. In this document I use the term “freshwater ecosystems” to include all wetlands and rivers, plus all groundwater ecosystems.
Definitions used by the Commonwealth and States, and their implications, are discussed below in the section dealing with State programs. The most important variation (in terms of our discussion) relates to the inclusion or exclusion of rivers and streams.
A2.6.5 Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia
The Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia has been developed in part fulfillment of Ramsar obligations. In the directory, Australian wetlands have been broadly categorised according to their importance: ie: at international (per Ramsar), national and State levels. It should be noted that the Directory is incomplete at this stage, but has the potential to incorporate freshwater sites generally (both flowing as well as still) when Australian programs expand to cover all Ramsar wetland categories.
The Directory provides criteria for the identification of important wetlands within recognised bioregions and also has the ability to include wetlands additional to the Ramsar system, such as rock pools.
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