Volunteer divers from The University of Queensland’s Underwater Club have began their descent on the North Stradbroke Island Point Lookout dive sites, to measure changes in plant and animal life over the past 13 years.
Uni Dive members will assess the reef until late October.
The UniDive PLEA (Point Lookout Ecological Assessment) project aims to provide an assessment of Shag Rock, Flat Rock and Manta Bombie and to compare the findings against a 2001 study of the same sites.
UniDive member Lachlan Pollard said between 50 and 70 divers would be involved in the study, running until the end of October.
“Many considerations have been made in the development of the underwater study, ensuring flora and fauna are correctly compared over the 13-year period,” he said.
Mr Pollard said there had been a range of changes since the 2001 study.
“There has been an increase in marine activities such as diving and fishing, Flat Rock has been listed as a protected zone, and boat moorings have been put in place to reduce anchor damage,” he said.
“And South East Queensland’s population has grown, and we have had large scale weather events such as the 2011 Queensland floods.”
Repeating data-collection techniques used in the original UniDive study, the divers will make 400 dives during summer, autumn, winter and spring.
The collected data will be analysed and the results will be presented to the local community, researchers, management and monitoring agencies at the end of 2014.
Scientific divers will provide training to volunteer club members from UQ’s School of Geography, Veterinarian Science and Marine Science.
Training modules will include fish, invertebrates, coral, substrate and impacts identification, habitat mapping and general surveying techniques.
The training will allow the divers to compare coral and fish life within a defined area against the 2001 study.
Project PLEA has been made possible by a Redland City Council Community grant of $9500 and support from businesses, conservation groups and University of Queensland research groups.
UQ Research Fellow and Project Organiser Dr Chris Roelfsema can be contacted on 0400207401 for further information.
View previous project results by UniDive volunteers here.
Global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions were the likely cause of last year's record-breaking temperatures in Australia, say researchers.
Last summer's record temperatures occurred in neutral, slightly 'La Ni' conditions . Photo: Will Burgess/Reuters
The Australian summer of 2012/13 was the hottest on record and the calendar year 2013 saw the highest average temperatures recorded in over 100 years of observations,University of Melbourne research fellow Dr Sophie Lewis, told the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society's annual conference in Hobart today.
Modelling analysed by Lewis and Professor David Karoly points the finger at human influences on climate, particularly emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
Since records began in 1910, the average temperature in Australia has climbed by around 1°C, says Lewis.
This may not seem much, but Lewis says it is important: "With a degree change in average temperature we can get very large changes in the frequency and severity of climate extremes."
In 2013 the average temperature, across the nation's network of weather stations, was 1.2°C above the average for the 30 years between 1961 and 1990. Lewis and Karoly set out to find out why.
Parallel worlds
The researchers used "state-of-the art" climate models to run two different 'experiments'.
One experiment puts all the known influences on temperature into the models: radiation coming from the Sun, emissions from volcanic eruptions, and human influences such as carbon dioxide and aerosol emissions.
The second experiment puts in the same data for natural events, but no data for human influences.
"It gives us that hypothetical parallel world ... the world that might have been without human influences," says Lewis.
The models simulate the global climate over the past 150 years or so. By comparing the outputs of the two experiments, the human influence can be quantified.
Using output from nine climate models used by international groups throughout the world, the pair were able to calculate the odds of last year's unusual temperatures.
"We found that the human greenhouse gas influences had increased the risk of that 2012/13 hot summer by at least five times," says Lewis.
But, it was the results for the calendar year of 2013 that were most striking, she says.
"We found it was nearly impossible to reach the temperatures we experienced [in 2013] in the model experiments with just the natural climate variations."
In fact, of the 13,000 model-years they looked at, where only natural factors were allowed to influence climate, only one reached the temperatures we saw last year.
ENSO found 'not guilty'
Natural variations caused by the 'El-Niño Southern Oscillation' (ENSO) would, if anything, have favoured lower temperatures last year.
Six of the past eight record-breaking hot summers have occurred in years of 'El Niño' conditions, but last year's summer occurred in neutral, slightly 'La Niña' conditions, which normally lead to cooler, wetter weather, says Lewis.
"This study really does show that the human influences - the global warming - made a very crucial difference to the extreme temperatures of 2013," she concludes.
Australia’s Renewable Energy Target looks likely to be weakened or even axed, with the Prime Minister saying the scheme needs to be reviewed because it is causing “pretty significant price pressure”.
Cooling towers at Yallourn, one of Victoria’s major brown coal power generators. Photo: Flickr/ccdoh1
But does $15 a year sound like a “pretty significant” cost to you?
According to the last national review of the Renewable Energy Target, $15 a year from now to 2031 is all that an average Australian household would save if we scrapped our national scheme to drive extra investment in renewable power.
That review - by the independent Climate Change Authority, with economic modelling by global consultants Sinclair Knight Merz - was completed just over a year ago, in December 2012.
So just what is the Renewable Energy Target? And what does it really cost an average Australian household - not just now, but in the future - according to the reviews and reports done on it before?
What are we aiming for?
The Renewable Energy Target (RET) is designed to encourage additional investment in renewable energy generation. It does this by requiring wholesale electricity consumers (mainly big power retailers) to purchase a certain percentage of renewable energy, which increases each year. This incurs a cost to retailers - companies like AGL and Origin - which is passed on to consumers through electricity bills.
The current scheme is a more ambitious version of the scheme first set up by the Howard government in 2001. In 2009, the target was increased five-fold (under the Rudd government, with Coalition support) to mandate that 45,000 gigawatt hours of Australia’s electricity generation must come from renewable resources by 2020. At the time the RET was legislated, this was projected to be the equivalent of 20% of total energy supplied in 2020.
It wasn’t controversial at the time; in fact, then opposition MP Greg Hunt wrote an article that year, questioning why it was taking so long to introduce.
What does the renewable target cost you?
Currently, around 3-4% of your bill can be attributed to the Renewable Energy Target. For a typical residential consumer, that works out to be about $50-$70 per year, out of an average bill of about $1800-$2200. So in that sense, the Prime Minister is right about there being some additional cost.
But let’s put that in perspective. As the graph below shows, the main reason for “pretty significant price pressure” on retail power prices is increasing network costs. According to the Australian Energy Market Commission, these have and will continue to dominate electricity price increases.
You have to look hard to even see the costs associated with renewable energy.
Components of residential electricity tariffs. The Renewable Energy Target scheme costs are shown in yellow (SRES: Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme) and red (LRET: Large-scale Renewable Energy Target). Data from the Australian Energy Market Commision
Increased competition, lower costs
When you consider the way renewables interact with the wholesale electricity market, the overall cost is even less.
Adding more renewable energy into the mix of our electricity supplies actually has the effect of lowering wholesale electricity prices. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but it is simply the laws of supply and demand at work.
If you increase supply and competition in a market, prices can be expected to fall. In the case of renewables, it is exacerbated by the low marginal cost of generation, and is known as the “merit order effect”.
The merit order effect is often overlooked in discussions of renewable energy costs. If lower wholesale prices were passed through to consumers, the overall cost of the Renewable Energy Target scheme would be even lower.
In fact, some energy users may be effectively overcompensated, and benefiting from this effect. Trade exposed industries (such as aluminium smelting) are exempt from paying 90% of the Renewable Energy Target costs, but may benefit from lower wholesale prices.
Why not tinker with the target?
In the few years since the Renewable Energy Target was set, demand for electricity has dropped, meaning the amount of power we’re likely to consume in 2020 has been revised significantly downwards. Under current arrangements, that means that the RET scheme would end up providing more than 20% of total power demand in 2020 - probably more like 26%.
One option being pushed by Origin Energy is for a “25% by 2025” target. That might sound like an increase - but actually that would mean less renewable energy in 2025 than Australia is currently on track to build by 2020.
On the weekend, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann was asked if the government planned to scrap or weaken the RET on Sky News. Senator Cormann said the government was looking for “sensible adjustments” to bring down power prices, since that would boost our international competitiveness while “helping families with cost of living pressures”.
So let’s say Australia adjusted its current target to make sure we don’t build any more than 20% renewable energy by 2020. How much would it help families with cost of living pressures?
The previous review for the federal government looked at just that option. And including the impacts on the wholesale market, the saving for an average Australian consumer was estimated to be between $0 and $10 per year.
Going further, and scrapping the Renewable Energy Target entirely, would save just $15 per year.
With such a relatively small impact on retail prices, why all the fuss about needing to change the target?
The existing fossil fuel electricity generators have been hit hard by the impact renewables has had on the market: not only are they being displaced by renewables and selling less energy, they are receiving a lower wholesale price.
In the past, the demands of the existing power industry to protect their own interests have easily won out against the emerging renewable industry. For instance, a 2011 Victorian Auditor-General’s Report noted that a state renewable energy scheme was weakened:
primarily to alleviate the concerns of brown coal generators that the 10 per cent target would deliver too much renewable energy generation too quickly, which would reduce wholesale electricity prices and adversely affect existing generators.
Will that happen all over again, this time at a national level?
Palau's President Tommy Remengesau Jr. has declared the Pacific nation will become a marine sanctuary, where no commercial fishing will take place.
Palau beaches. Palau's president says ecotourism will be developed as an alternative to commercial fishing income. Photo: Jackson Henry, Reuters
Mr Remengesau has told a UN oceans conference Palau's 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone will be a "100 per cent marine sanctuary", and commercial operations will be banned within the Pacific nation's territorial waters.
"We have no choice - the ocean is our way of life," he said.
"It's our livelihood, it's our culture, it's our economy - I always say the economy is our environment and the environment is our economy."
"You may ask why, why are you doing this? It makes every sense for our sustainability as a people, as an island nation, and as a community."
Palau currently has commercial fishing contracts with Japan, Taiwan and several private companies, which will be allowed to expire.
Mr Remengesau says locals and tourists will continue to be able to fish, but no commercial scale operations will take place.
"I may not be the best fisherman, but I am a fisherman," he said.
"I can tell you that in just my generation I've seen stocks of fish dwindle down, I've seen the sizes of fish taken become more smaller.
"This is something that is far more than the economical loss of revenues for companies or other countries - you're talking about a livelihood that's really going to be decimated if we don't take the responsible action."
The marine sanctuary follows the declaration of a shark sanctuary in Palau in 2009.
Shark sanctuaries have since been declared in several other countries, including the Maldives, Honduras, Marshall Islands and French Polynesia.
Mr Remengesau says a dead shark is worth several hundred dollars, but a live shark is worth $1.9 million in tourism during its life span.
He says his country will promote scuba diving, snorkelling and eco-tourism as an alternative income to commercial fishing.
"We're not just closing our waters and throwing away the key," he said.
"We're closing our waters because we will do our part of making sure that there's healthy stocks of fish in Palau that can migrate to other places, and that there are other options to grow the economy.
"These are important ways to make a living and at the same time preserve the pristine environment that we have been blessed with in Palau."
Enforcement of the commercial fishing ban is expected to be a challenge, as the country only has one patrol boat to cover its economic zone which is roughly the size of France.
Last year it trialled unmanned drones, and is also looking for other technology partners to help enforce the ban.
Sustainable Development Goal
Palau is also urging the United Nations to adopt a new Sustainable Development Goal to protect the world's oceans.
Stuart Beck, Ambassador of the Republic of Palau for Oceans and Seas, says the proposal for a 'stand alone' goal has three parts.
"One: healthy oceans - let's clean up the plastic gyre, let stop dumping garbage," he said.
"Two: restoration of our fish stocks - we can actually achieve that in our lifetime if we're smart about it.
"Three: bring some equity to the current resources being taken from these oceans by others."
It doesn't matter where you live around the world; we are all connected somehow and are impacted by what we do to the oceans
Tommy Remengesau Jr, President of Palau
Mr Remengesau says the health of oceans affects countries in a variety of ways, from rising sea levels, to ocean acidification and unpredictable weather.
"It doesn't matter where you live around the world; we are all connected somehow and are impacted by what we do to the oceans and the health of the oceans and the seas.
"And so it is important that the United Nations in the next Millennium Development Goals, really put a stand alone policy on this."
Deputy Secretary-General with the UN, Jan Elliason, has paid tribute to the Pacific and other island countries for raising awareness of the issue.
"They have an acute sense of the dangers of climate change and the level of sea rise - becoming an existential threat for them," he said.
"They are a bit like the canaries in the coal mine, the canaries that warn us that now the oxygen is [running] out...they're the first ones to leave.
The chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority says cuts to river services are being considered due to funding cuts by state governments.
Craig Knowles at the Goolwa barrages on the Murray. Services along the river facing cuts. Photo: ABC News
In an interview with 730SA, Craig Knowles says a funding cut by New South Wales is "terribly disappointing" and he argues it will affect how the Authority manages joint assets along the Murray.
Mr Knowles says the Authority is drawing up a list of river services that could be reduced, while giving priority to issues of human safety, protection of property and dam safety.
Services such as salt interceptor schemes, native fish strategies and opening times for locks and weirs are facing cutbacks.
"There is an inevitability that things like wage packets, jobs in local towns, opportunities for leisure and recreation will be impacted," Mr Knowles said.
Most Australians overestimate how much they are doing for the environment compared to others, and are more concerned about water shortages, pollution and household waste than climate change, a new CSIRO survey reveals.
More than half of Australians say they recycle for mostly environmental reasons. Photo: Shutterstock/spwidoff
Taken over a period of July to August last year, it is the latest in a series of annual national surveys on Australians' attitudes to climate change involving more than 5000 people from across urban, regional, and rural Australia. (You can read about past survey results here and here.)
More than 70% of people said they thought climate change was an important issue, which has remained consistently the case since we first asked this question in 2010.
However, compared to many other issues including health, costs of living and other environmental issues such as drought, we found that climate change was considered to be much less of a concern.
Biased towards ourselves
The way we perceive ourselves and others can influence how we respond to contested issues, including climate change. However, these perceptions are subject to cognitive biases or distortions as we attempt to make sense of the world around us.
One of the questions we asked people in this latest survey was what they were doing in their everyday lives to respond to climate change, and why.
For example, did they always recycle their household waste, had they installed solar panels, or had they changed their diet? The results are shown below.
What environmental actions people said they were doing in their everyday lives. Image: CSIRO
When we added up all the actions people said yes to (regardless of why they were doing them), we found a normal distribution of responses: a few people did not much of anything; quite a lot of people did a moderate amount; and a few people did a great deal.
We then asked our respondents this question: “How much do you think you do compared to the average Australian: a lot less, a little less, about the same, a bit more, or a lot more?” Here’s what they said.
How much environmental action the survey respondents thought they took, compared with an average Australian. Image: CSIRO
So how good were our 5000 respondents at guessing how they compared with others? To find out, we cross-referenced what people said they did with their estimates of how they compared with an average Australian.
Just under one-quarter (21.5%) got it about right: regardless of how many actions they performed, their assessment of where they stood in relation to other people was fairly accurate.
The same amount (21.5%) were what we might call “self-deprecating”: they undervalued their comparative performance.
But more than half our participants (57.1%) were “self-enhancing”: they tended to overestimate how much environmental action they were compared to others.
Research tells us that it’s not just the environment where we tend to think we’re better than others.
The “better than average effect” describes our predisposition to think of ourselves as exceptional, especially among our peers. The effect reflects our tendency to think of ourselves as more virtuous and moral, more compassionate and understanding and (ironically) as less biased than other people.
In a famous example, when people were asked to assess their own driving ability relative to peers, more than three-quarters of people considered themselves to be safer than the average driver.
How important is climate change?
When we asked people how important climate change was, just over 70% of people rated it as “somewhat”, “very”, or “extremely” important. That importance rating has remained unchanged when we first asked this back in 2010.
But this year we also asked people to rank the importance of climate change relative to a list of 16 general concerns in society, including health, the cost of living, and the economy. When framed in these relative terms, climate change was ranked as the third least important issue.
How people ranked a list of general and environmental concerns. CSIRO
How people ranked a list of general and environmental concerns. CSIRO
Similar to previous years, we found the majority of respondents (81%) think the Earth’s climate is changing, and people are more likely to think that human activity is the cause (47%) as opposed to natural variations in temperature (39%). When we look at repeat respondents (those people who participated in more than one of our surveys), we find no significant changes since 2010, although there was a very slight increase in the small proportion of people who say they “don’t know”.
Other changes have been slight, but noteworthy. There has been an increase in the levels of responsibility individuals feel to respond to climate change. People have also become more trusting about information from environmental and government scientists.
Zoe Leviston does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
Biodiversity and sustainability along the Macintyre River in Inverell will be helped along with a dose of funding.
Macintyre River, Inverell, NSW. Photo: Cgoodwin, Wikimedia Commons
Inverell Shire Council has secured a grant for $13,625 to eradicate weeds from the river’s banks. The project will focus on woody weeds along an 800 metre stretch between Clive Street and the Tingha Bridge.
Removing weeds will make room for native vegetation, and improve fish habitat by providing shade, cover, water temperature regulation and a food source for native fish.
The funding comes from the NSW Department of Primary Industries, out of $570,000 awarded to recreational angling clubs, community groups, landholders and local councils for 30 fish habitat projects.
Minister for Agriculture Katrina Hodgkinson said projects cover many popular coastal and inland fishing spots in NSW, with nearly $1.1 million committed as in-kind support from the successful applicants.
“These grants are funded through the Recreational Fishing Trusts,” Ms Hodgkinson said.
“The program was highly competitive with 71 applications submitted and there was strong support by local recreational anglers for the applications.”
Weed control activities along the Macintyre River will be completed during 2014 and will include initial weed control and follow up spot spraying activities on any re-growth.
Inverell council general manager Paul Henry said the project is one of many identified when completing the council’s river plan. A river planner targeted 15 trouble spots.
Mr Henry said local community groups have expressed interest in addressing specific issues along the river.
“The Inverell Rotary Club put their hand up to look at the area near John Northey look-out/Kurrajong Park. They looked at repairing that area and planting out the areas with native plants to try to rejuvenate (it) and create a link all along the river for birds and animal habitat.”
He said the grant money will tackle invasive introduced weeds along the high bank level. Once cleared, replanting may begin.
Phil Sutton is the environment compliance co-ordinator for council and indicated the project has other benefits besides environmental restoration.
He said the project would help to increase public awareness about the weeds control and prevention.
“It’s an effort to provide a flow-on benefit to landholders and communities further down the river. Obviously if you don’t treat (weeds) now, they go further down the river.”
Contract sprayers will be engaged to treat the weeds and Phil said it will be a 12 month project with wildlife sustainability in mind.
“What the area will be treated with is a weed-control agent that is a bioactive control, which doesn't affect the riparian area; it doesn't affect the water or the frogs or anything like that.”
How do we get the most out of our marine reserves? The government is in the process of reviewing Australia’s network of marine protected areas. The review focuses on zones that exclude recreational fishers, and whether those fishers can be allowed back in.
While we don’t know much about oceans off north west Australia, we know they’re important. Photo: Australian Institute of Marine Science
However, fishing isn’t the only threat to marine life: oil and gas developments also influence offshore waters. Separating marine protected areas and regions with oil and gas potential leads to an unrepresentative reserve system. But working with oil and gas companies could work out both for industry and our ocean.
Like oil and water
Striking the balance between biodiversity conservation and industry is never easy. It is particularly difficult in regions that support both important biodiversity values and industry assets such as oil and gas resources and important commercial and recreational fisheries.
While the current management review will focus on fishing, a very different challenge exists in Australia’s northwest marine region. Here, some of the world’s most pristine and biologically diverse marine ecosystems overlay internationally significant oil and gas reserves.
Australia’s gas production has almost doubled since the turn of the century and is expected to quadruple by 2035. In a time of transition, following a decade-long mining boom, the government is seeking to maximise access to the nation’s oil and gas resources. With the majority (92%) of Australia’s conventional gas resources located in Australia’s northwest, finding the right balance between biodiversity conservation and industry interests is difficult and potentially expensive.
In fact, disasters have happened. In 2009, this region experienced the worst offshore oil spill in Australia’s history. The blowout from PTTEP’s Montara wellhead, located 250km off the Kimberley coast, resulted in 10 weeks of continuous release of oil and gas into the Timor Sea.
In total, the oil spill was estimated to cover an area of 90,000 square kilometres. Ongoing aerial spraying with dispersants was the primary early response to the spill with tens of thousands of litres of chemical dispersants sprayed into Australian waters.
We learned two very important lessons from the spill. First, the threat of an oil spill was realised and one of our most pristine and ecologically diverse marine environments was put at risk of irreversible damage.
Second, it highlighted what we don’t know. We lack the ecological data for the region to be able to identify and manage the impacts of an oil spill.
The proposed strict no-take marine reserves for Australia’s northwest leave many ecological communities unprotected. Image: Cordelia Moore
Protecting hidden reefs and biodiversity hotspots
After the spill, scientists hurried to start filling the gaps in what we know. While we lacked pre-existing ecological data, there was little evidence of a substantial impact from the oil spill. To improve this process in the future we now have some baseline monitoring sites in place. In addition, we have a new regulator focused on the implementation of more stringent oil spill response plans and risk management procedures and individual companies have had to upgraded their response and management plans.
One important discovery was the rich coral reef communities of the submerged banks and shoals. These abrupt geological features pepper the continental shelf and shelf edge. However, as these underwater mounds plateau beneath the sea surface they have previously gone unnoticed, hidden beneath the waves.
Intensive post-spill surveys revealed the shoals to support fish diversity greater that that seen on similar features within the Great Barrier Reef. They are also positioned to act as important stepping stones for biological connectivity across Australia’s north west and may serve as an important refuge for species vulnerable to climate change.
However, the current national marine reserves system offers almost no protection for these areas (less than 2% fall within the no take marine reserves).
“World’s largest marine park network”
The previous government aimed to create the “world’s largest marine park network”. With the current network falling just shy of 30% of Australia’s territorial waters, they came very close.
Although, as Bob Pressey detailed in his article on Australia’s marine protected areas, size isn’t everything.
Last month I lead a workshop at the University of Western Australia to assess the marine park network to the north west of Australia (north of Broome). The workshop included universities, government and industry.
During the workshop we assessed just how representative the marine parks of this region actually are. With little data available on biodiversity, we used the proxy of undersea geomorphology.
What we found is that of 19 different ecological communities, only four are adequately represented, two are over-represented, seven are under-represented and six aren’t represented at all.
Because we don’t exactly know what’s under the sea, we use geomorphology as a proxy. Image: Cordelia Moore
The most vulnerable section of our marine region is the continental shelf (less than 200m depth), where threats to biodiversity are concentrated. Despite this, the majority (75%) of the proposed no take areas focuses on the abyssal plain 3000-6000 metres below the surface.
Why? Protecting biodiversity to the north west of Australia comes with substantial opportunity costs to the oil and gas industry and commercial fishers. As a result, the proposed marine reserves of Australia’s north west have weighed heavily in favour of industry.
A way forward
With a reserve system already struggling to be representative, there are very real concerns associated with making any changes outside a robust conservation planning process. Currently the federal government proposes to maintain the outer boundaries of the marine parks network, while changing zoning within the reserves to allow recreational and commercial fishers access. But without closing alternative areas, this will only compromise our limited ability to manage threatening processes and conserve biodiversity.
Examining a small fraction of the problem will only ever provide a small fraction of the solution.
At the workshop in WA, we tried to come up with a better solution. We looked at a way to maximise representativeness, while minimising costs to user groups using an advanced systematic conservation planning approach.
Preliminary analyses demonstrated that entirely excluding whole regions prospective for oil and gas reserves makes a system of marine protected areas unrepresentative while including these regions makes a reserve system very expensive.
One cost-effective solution could be found for this region by bringing industry users into the management process and agreeing that prospective areas for oil and gas extraction are not incompatible with marine biodiversity conservation. Oil and gas developments often have stringent biodiversity protection targets and with people present on most sites all the time, enforcement of adjacent no take areas is potentially far cheaper.
The possibility for the oil and gas industry to be actively engaged in the protection of marine biodiversity may be a way of offering presently unrepresented marine ecosystems some level of protection too. In general the industry’s infrastructure footprint is quite small. Major oil spills from exploration and production activities world-wide are relatively rare with just one occurring on the west coast of Australia. While the risk is low, the consequences can be high. Therefore implementing multiple protected areas is one way of ‘hedging our bets’.
In a region highly valuable to industry the costs of biodiversity protection will be high if we continue to see oil and gas interests as incompatible with conservation. But leaving these unique ecosystems without management and protection may cost us even more in the long term.
Hugh Possingham receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The National Environmental Research program and several NGOs. He is affiliated with The Wentworth Group, Trees For Life SA, BirdLife Australia and WWF Australia.
Cordelia Moore and Euan Harvey do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.
Marine protected areas aren’t doing their job. Photo: Charlievdb/Flickr
Marine protected areas have been created across the globe to stem the loss of biodiversity in our oceans. But are they working? Now, thanks to a six-year survey involving over one hundred divers, we know that the global system of marine protected areas still has much to achieve.
Problems out of sight
The marine environment lies out of sight and is expensive to survey, so its true condition is very poorly known. What we do know is that multiple threats — most notably introduced pests, climate change, fishing and pollution — are pervasive.
We also know that conditions are deteriorating. Numbers of many Australian marine species have collapsed since European settlement. Some species haven’t been seen for decades, such as the smooth handfish, which was once sufficiently abundant to be collected by early French naturalists visiting Australia but hasn’t been seen anywhere for more than 200 years.
If this were a mammal, bird, reptile, frog or plant, it would be listed under Commonwealth and state threatened species acts as extinct. As a marine fish, it has not been considered for any list.
We also know that marine species that build habitat for other species are declining. Coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef has been reduced by about 25% between 1986 and 2004. Global seagrass and mangrove cover have declined by 30% over the past century, with losses accelerating. And oyster reefs have largely disappeared worldwide, as have giant kelp forest ecosystems on the Tasmanian east coast.
Fishery catch statistics also show major population declines in commercially important species such as scallops, rock lobsters, barracouta, trumpeter, abalone, warehou, gemfish and sharks.
These snapshots all consistently indicate major detrimental change in our oceans.
Surveying the threats
Twenty years ago, in a bid to understand the magnitude of this change, I and my Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies colleague Neville Barrett began regularly surveying rocky reef communities in collaboration with management agencies across southern Australia. These surveys were focused inside and outside marine protected areas, to disentangle effects of fishing from broader environmental changes.
We found that each marine protected area was different. Recovery within protected areas depended on a variety of local factors, including protected area size and age, how much fishing had occurred prior to regulation, the type of regulations, and whether they were enforced.
To separate these individual factors properly required investigation of tens to hundreds of protected areas, many more than we could logistically cover with our limited scientific resources.
Coral reefs are the most diverse ecosystems in the ocean. Photo: Wilson Loo Kok Wee/Flickr
Enlisting citizen divers
This led to the idea of enlisting support from the recreational diving community, and our new study was born.
With pilot funding from the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities program, and on-ground direction from colleague Rick Stuart-Smith, we sought help from experienced recreational divers across Australia who are passionate about marine conservation.
More than 100 divers agreed to donate their time, learning scientific underwater survey techniques, using their weekends and holidays to collect new data, and spending long hours afterwards identifying species and entering data onto computer spreadsheets.
To facilitate this program, an independent organisation called Reef Life Survey was established. It aimed to train and support member divers during field surveys, and to distribute information collected to improve knowledge and management of marine species. An incredible amount has been achieved over the past six years through the generous efforts of Reef Life Survey divers.
Most importantly, we have established a quantitative baseline describing the current state of inshore biodiversity around Australia. Numbers of more than 2500 species of fish, seaweeds and invertebrates (such as lobsters, abalone, sea urchins and corals) at more than 1500 sites have been documented.
This is the largest marine ecological baseline for any continent worldwide. It provides an invaluable reference that can be referred to through the future for tracking impacts of climate change, pollution, introduced species, and fishing.
The Reef Life Survey baseline has also now extended globally through collaboration with scientists in 18 countries, and with additional survey data collected by trained volunteer divers during their overseas holidays.
Clownfish and anemone. Photo: Paul from www.Castaways.com.au/Flickr
Parks on paper, not in the ocean
Still the question remains: how effective are marine protected areas at conserving marine life?
We recently analysed data from 40 countries to understand better the underlying factors that make marine protected areas effective as conservation tools, with results published in the journal Nature today.
We found no difference between fish communities present in most of 87 marine protected areas studied worldwide, when compared with communities in fished areas with similar environmental conditions.
Many protected areas thus seem to be “paper parks” — lines on the map that fail to achieve desired conservation outcomes.
However, some protected areas are extremely effective, with massive numbers of large fish and extremely high conservation value. These effective protected areas are typified by the same recurring features: no fishing, well enforced, more than 10 years old, relatively large in area, and isolated from fished areas by habitat boundaries (deep water or sand).
Protected areas with these characteristics, such as Middleton Reef off northeastern New South Wales, had on average twice as many species of large fish per transect, eight times more large fish, and 20 times more sharks than fished areas.
Getting marine parks right
Management agencies around the world clearly need to focus on creating more of these effective protected areas. At the same time they need to alter the design and management of the many existing protected areas that aren’t working. The few conservation gems are presently hidden amongst protected areas that are ineffective because of inadequate regulations or poor enforcement.
We also need to improve broad-scale environmental management more generally, considering how fast our oceans are deteriorating outside of protected areas.
Fishing is one of the last direct connections between humanity and the natural world. As a fisher who supports fishing, I see no incongruity in advocating that 20% of the marine environment be placed in effective no-take protected areas. Leaving 80% open to fishing hardly qualifies as threatening fishers’ interests.
Among other benefits, including acting as irreplaceable scientific reference areas, protected areas provide some insurance for future generations against ecosystem collapse.
I have little doubt that 50 years from now fishers will regret the slow pace of developing effective marine protected areas. They will also bemoan consequences of blanket opposition against any protected areas by some politicians and industry lobbyists, and an over-reliance of fisheries managers on computer models that attempt to maximise economic returns with little margin for error in an era of change when model variables increasingly fall outside known bounds.
Graham Edgar has received funds from Commonwealth and State agencies for research activities associated with marine conservation. He fishes, and many years ago worked commercially as a deckhand for an abalone diver. His University of Tasmania job is part-time, and diving surveys for the global study described here were undertaken in his spare time as a volunteer for the Reef Life Survey Foundation. He is also a director of an environmental consulting company, Aquenal Pty Ltd.
If you haven’t heard about the growing campaign for fossil fuel divestment, and what it means for both your retirement funds and for the global economy, it’s time to pay attention - because now even the World Bank is on board.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim warns investors not to ignore climate risks. Photo: EPA/Chris Kleponis
divest and tax that which we don’t want, the carbon that threatens development gains over the last 20 years… Governments must put a price on pollution… through either taxes or market-based instruments.
Dr Kim also argued that taking climate change risks seriously is something all prudent investors - especially those in business - should be doing by now:
So-called ‘long-term investors’ must recognise their fiduciary responsibility to future pension holders who will be affected by decisions made today. Corporate leaders should not wait to act until market signals are right and national investment policies are in place.
Coal in the firing line
The World Bank has made a start in practising what it preaches.
Last year the World Bank announced it would not fund any new coal power plants “except in exceptional circumstances”. However, the World Bank is still drawing strong criticism for its ongoing support for a coal plant in India.
Similar restrictions on new coal generation investments have now been announced by US, Scandinavian, European and UK development banks.
On Friday last week, 17 US philanthropic groups with combined assets of about US$1.8 billion promised to sell their investments in fossil fuel companies and instead put their money into clean-energy technology.
“The magnitude of the climate crisis requires that we no longer conduct business as usual,” the Wallace Global Fund’s executive director Ellen Dorsey told reporters. “If we own fossil fuels, we own climate change.”
The fund’s chief executive Yngve Slyngstad told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday last week that, by the end of 2013, coal companies represented just 0.08% or US$405.57 million of the fund’s $US817 billion portfolio.
An opposition-led majority of Norway’s parliament are now pushing to ban the fund from coal completely - though the government does not back the proposal.
The London-based World Coal Association has been concerned enough about the coal divestment proposal to put out media releases criticising the move and urging the Norwegian government to talk to industry.
Calculating climate risk
Speaking at Davos, Dr Kim also highlighted the need for a new line of policy reform: forcing companies and financial institutions to disclose their climate risk, including the emissions linked to their businesses, and their exposure to climate-related impacts.
Currently there is a wide range of different carbon risk frameworks, which are mostly voluntary and sometimes incompatible.
The United Nations' Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative is developing an emissions guidance for investors. However, this work has been relatively marginal in the bigger picture of mainstream economic and climate policy, hardly registering as an issue at most recent UN climate talks.
Instead, the main pressure on investors to reduce the world’s reliance on high-emissions fossil fuels is coming from the community.
Community pressure
Fossil fuel divestment campaigners are now directly lobbying universities, religious groups, local governments and foundations to show moral leadership on climate change by selling all stock in coal, gas and oil producers. There are now hundreds of these local campaigns across the US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, which have attracted a growing list of commitments from universities, churches and even cities.
Late last year, an Oxford University study compared the fossil fuel divestment campaign with past campaigns against investments in tobacco, apartheid in South Africa, armaments, gambling and pornography. It concluded that the new fossil fuel campaign “has achieved a lot in the relatively short time”.
Coal was found to be the fossil fuel most at risk from the campaign, with some investors like US$74 billion Scandinavian asset manager Storebrand excluding more coal companies from its stocks. The study found that while the divestment push was likely to have only a small impact on fossil fuel companies' share prices, the reputational damage could prove far more costly:
The outcome of the stigmatisation process, which the fossil fuel divestment campaign has now triggered, poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies and the vast energy value chain.
Thinking a generation ahead
Even if not all investors and retirement funds choose to act on moral terms, surely they can respond to financial risk.
One major difficulty is aligning the long-term investment interests of asset owners - the funds, and ultimately those investing in the funds - with short-term incentives, in particular of their fund managers.
A 2012 World Economic Forum report suggests a range of measures that would help in the case of climate and other long-term policy goals that require redirection of large amounts of capital.
For example, tax incentives promoting long-term share ownership and new governance arrangements could favour longer term decision horizons. While work continues on disclosure frameworks, much greater work is needed on incentives extending the investment horizons of public funds.
But there are at least growing signs of change. As World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said at Davos:
It’s simple self-interest. Every company, investor, and bank that screens new and existing investments for climate risk is simply being pragmatic.
Tom Swann is a student in the Master of Climate Change program at ANU, spokesperson for the Fossil Free ANU campaign and research assistant at the Australia Institute.
Richard Denniss is the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a Canberra based think tank.
