Australia faces some significant environmental challenges in the coming year. Despite what we know about climate change, our greenhouse emissions are still rising, urban and rural Australians face worsening water shortages and the condition of our inland rivers remains dire.
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| The Murray from the air |
ACF believes Australia’s most pressing environmental problems in 2008 are to:
• Establish a strong, national, science-based 2020 target to reduce Australia’s emissions.
• Play a leadership role internationally, making sure the United Nations’ Bali roadmap helps the world avoid dangerous climate change. Click here for Bali roadmap scorecard
• Bring the Murray-Darling basin back to health through buying water from willing sellers and returning it to the environment.
• Set water use and water recycling targets and introduce water audits for large agricultural, industrial and commercial water users to improve efficiency and cut waste.
• Recognise the value of Australia’s old growth forests – and set a timetable to end the destructive logging of old growth forests.
• Recognise – at Federal, State and Territory levels – the role Indigenous Australians play in conservation, especially in Northern Australia.
• Work with our neighbours in the region – especially Indonesia and Papua New Guinea – to end the destruction of tropical rainforests, the lungs of the Earth, by banning imports of illegally logged timber and supporting an effective, internationally recognised timber certification scheme.
• Put Australia on the path to long term sustainability by establishing a Sustainability Charter, with a goal of sustainability within a generation, so Australia’s economic prosperity is underpinned by environmental health and social cohesion.