Australia’s biodiversity report card leaves out destructive population expansion
No mention is made of the undeniable impact of Australia’s population growth on the nation’s declining biodiversity in the government’s first report to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity (KMGBF)’s monitoring framework appears to be a process to monitor decline rather than repair biodiversity loss.
Australia’s population expanded by nearly 9 million people or 46 per cent since the year 2000 and will reach 28 million usual residents in 2026. SPA estimates that there are up to another million people living in Australia below that categorisation.
Quotes attribuate to Michael Bayliss, SPA Spokesperson and Communications Manager:
“At the heart of biodiversity loss are the needs of an expanding population. All other efforts at amelioration treat the symptoms while ignoring the underlying cause, population growth and resultant consumption.”
“Industrial scale land clearing for human infrastructure, including housing, transport, extractive industries, farming and power generation, places massive stress on Australia’s biodiversity.”
“Emissions, land degradation and loss of habitat caused by human activities are all amplified as population numbers expand.”
“Band-Aid solutions will not resolve ongoing degradation, only to support managed environmental decline.”
Further information:
Australia’s first report to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) tracking progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF)’s monitoring framework has acknowledged little or no progress – and some regression – on most fronts.
“This is a disaster”, says, Sustainable Population Australia’s president, Peter Strachan, “but an entirely predictable one! Search through our report card – and the KMGB framework – to find mention of human population growth and its environmental impact and none will be found. Yet this is the primary cause of all our environmental challenges and especially declining bio-diversity. It is time to recognise this as the madness it is!”
The goal of the CBD has been described by an ABC environmental reporter as supporting “sustainable development in order to stop and reverse the loss of biodiversity, and enable the world to live in harmony with nature by 2050.” There is not the slightest hint in the Australian report that we will fulfil our contribution to this goal.
“At the heart of this failure” says Strachan, “is the incompatibility that exists between development (growth) and the prevention of environmental decline. Powerful and influential forces – including the United Nations itself — and now, sadly, some environmental organisations, pretend we can have population-fed economic growth and an undiminished natural world. We cannot, we have not, and we never will and it is time to acknowledge this. It is the reason we have always failed.
Australia’s population expanded by nearly 9 million people or 46 per cent since the year 2000 and will reach 28 million usual residents in 2026. It is estimated there are another million people living in Australia not captured in these estimates. The greater part of this population growth has come via immigration and the greater part of that has been used to grow Australia’s gross and per capita consumption. This is the ‘sustainable development’ that makes development – or growth – so unsustainable.
“For several years now, the Australian Government has focused its attention on ‘restoration’ rather than ‘prevention’. This is much along the lines of the UN convention. It is a deliberate strategy because it is impossible to grow while preventing further environmental harm. A restorative approach essentially aspires to fixing up the past consequences of growth while continuing the growth itself. The report indicates we are not doing enough in this respect and that is agreed. Nevertheless, it is a forlorn business – the effort of a weak swimmer swimming against the tide — and this will become ever more obvious in forthcoming years. It will be a great pity to lose more diversity and abundance to prove that which is already obvious. If we do not address our population growth, our environment will continue to decline, whatever else we do!