Original story by Lyndon Schneiders at The Australian
IN the next few months the Queensland government will release for comment a new regional plan for Cape York. It is the intent of the Newman government that this plan will remove a raft of conservation protections provided by existing “wild river” declarations and will open up large areas of Cape York to mining and development.
Public comments about Queensland’s wild rivers at the Wilderness Society.
If successful, the revocation of the declarations will be a win for vocal opponents of wild river protection, including the mining industry and Noel Pearson. But will it be a Pyrrhic victory, particularly for Pearson?
Proposals to protect wild rivers were first put by the Beattie government in 2004, with legislation passed unanimously by the Queensland parliament in 2005. Wild river declarations are in place on rivers on Cape York, in the Gulf Country and in the Channel Country.
The rivers protected under the act are some of the last truly healthy river systems left. A study in Nature in 2010 found that about 65 per cent of the world’s river systems are “highly threatened” from over-development and that global efforts to reduce and manage these threats are limited. The magnificent Wenlock River on Cape York, protected under the act, but again threatened by strip mining for bauxite, is home to more species of freshwater fish (48) than any other river system in Australia.
Under a declaration, conservation occurs through the regulation of a small number of highly destructive developments by ensuring a setback away from waterways and wetlands (the “high preservation area”). The protection of river systems this way is a departure from more conventional approaches to conservation that rely on the creation of a small number of strictly protected national parks and nature reserves to protect a “sample” of nature.
The wild rivers approach protects those areas that are sensitive to the most damaging developments such as dams and mines, and supports a vast range of development opportunities outside those sensitive areas including mining, pastoralism, aquaculture and agriculture. In the case of the Wenlock, 80 per cent of the catchment remains available for the full range of development purposes while the most sensitive wetlands, springs and waterways are protected.
This is precisely the sort of conservation approach, which protects values and encourages multiple use of the landscape, that has been promoted by critics of the environmental movement who accuse us of trying to “lock up” the entire landscape. This is why the protection of wild rivers in the Channel Country and the Gulf Country has been uncontroversial.
The same cannot be said for the rivers of Cape York. It is on the Cape that debate has raged fiercely, with traditional owners divided between pro and anti-wild river camps.
Yet even the most passionate opponents of the wild river declarations support the protection of the Cape rivers. Interviewed in 2008, Pearson said: “And when it comes to the protection of rivers, there’s absolutely no disagreement on our part that those rivers should remain in the way they’ve been managed by Aboriginal people for thousands of years and for the past 200 years.”
Even Queensland Environment Minister Andrew Powell, who ultimately may be responsible for stripping away river protection, said in September last year that the government was committed to the protection of pristine waterways.
The issue is not the protection of these rivers. Rather, it is the way in which the rivers are protected and the process in which traditional owners decide what happens on homelands.
In 2009, the federal government became a signatory to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples following years of opposition by the Howard government. Enshrined within UNDRIP is the concept of free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples in respect to all decisions that affect their communities and rights and interests.
In March 2011, Pearson cited the failure of the wild river process to obtain consent from traditional owners consistent with UNDRIP as a chief reason for opposing the protection of rivers on Cape York.
In November 2010, Tony Abbott said that the motivation for his failed bid to introduce a private member’s bill to overturn wild rivers protection was to ensure the “absolute necessity of consent by Aboriginal people for a Queensland wild rivers declaration to apply over their land”.
Of course consent as defined under the UNDRIP is not just the right to say yes or no to conservation measures. Article 32 clearly states that signatory states should obtain “free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilisation or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources”.
A transparent consent process that empowers communities to truly decide the future of their homelands would be embraced by most Australians. Now that Abbott has the ability to put his words into action, and now that Pearson has friends in high places in the Queensland government, the opportunity to deliver a true consent-based process is in their hands.
To achieve this, The Wilderness Society would support further review and reform of the Wild Rivers Act 2005 at state level and reform of the Native Title Act 1993 at commonwealth level to fully embrace the concept of free, prior and informed consent for conservation and development.
This principle would apply across the board: to mining, agriculture and other development as well as environmental protection.
The alternative, to which the Queensland and federal governments appear committed, is to strip back environmental protections, fast-track development proposals and turn their backs on their previous lofty works of support for the principle of consent by traditional owners. That certainly seems a long way from the halcyon days of 2010.
Lyndon Schneiders is the national director of The Wilderness Society.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.