Destruction of Northern Australia's tropical savannas – considered one of the last untouched regions in the world – is increasing at a rapid rate and new draft guidelines aimed at minimising greenhouse gas emissions from land clearing are "taking us in the opposite direction", environmentalists say.
Until now, there were few laws regulating the emissions associated with land clearing in the NT, but a new proposal from the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority could change that.
The proposal has not been adopted yet, but it would mean land clearing actions would need to be referred to the NT EPA if emissions exceeded 500,000 tonnes from a single clearing action.
That's equivalent to more than 100,000 cars on the road a year.
Environment Minister Lauren Moss said emissions relating to land clearing in the NT had decreased over the past five years, and represented just 2 per cent of the NT's emissions in 2020.
However, Laura Dreyfus, a lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia, disagreed with that view, saying greenhouse gas emissions were in fact being made worse.
"What's really worrying about these guidelines is that they're saying they're only going to do an assessment of a land clearing application when the projected emissions are pretty enormous," she said.
"It's also a lot bigger than other thresholds in other jurisdictions. So for example, in Western Australia, the EPA has said that where land clearing projects are going to result in 100,000 tonnes or more emissions, they'll assess it."
Edwin Edlund, a spokesman for the Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security, said the EPA had been consulting on the "draft technical guidance" that would establish how emissions would be assessed under the Environment Protection Act.
He highlighted that cleared land had made way for ecologically sustainable development in the NT, including agriculture and infrastructure for population centres, roads and essential services.
"In developing the draft guidance, the NT EPA considered the NT government's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Management for New and Expanding Large Emitters policy, which was released in September 2021," he said.
'No oversight'
Kirsty Howey from the Environment Centre NT said the guidelines would jeopardise the Northern Territory's 2050 net zero target.
"We're talking about thousands of hectares at a time, effectively being cleared, with no oversight," she said.
"It's taking us in the opposite direction to where we should be going."
Last week, the State of the Environment Report found Australia's environment was in a "poor and deteriorating state", governments were not doing enough to address the crisis, and nor were they doing enough to enforce environmental laws.
This week, the federal government introduced a bill on its first full sitting day that would legislate a requirement for Australia to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.
Land clearing up 300pc
In 2019, the Northern Territory's total emissions amounted to 20.7 million tonnes — an increase of 46.5 per cent from 2005 emission levels, largely due to the growth in mining and exports. In that same year, the government said land clearing made up approximately 8 per cent of the total.
The increase is often attributed to the extraction of fossil fuels driven by the oil and gas industry, but Ms Howey said the NT's "exponential" rates of land clearing could not be overlooked.
"In the last four years the area of land cleared has increased by 300 per cent," she said.
"In 2021, approvals were given for land clearing which would generate 2.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. That's around 12 per cent of the NT's entire annual emissions."
Protecting native species
Charles Darwin University environment professor Sam Banks said that even though land clearing hadn't been done on a large scale compared to other parts of the country, he agreed the rate was ramping up and was likely to do so to a much larger extent in the near future.
"We're definitely at the stage where there is a need for some serious strategic planning around land clearing to ensure that it is done in a way that doesn't compromise our ability to halt or reverse the decline of our native species and prevent further extinctions," he said.
"To give them credit, we work with NTG Flora and Fauna Division scientists a lot and they are well aware of these issues and the challenges of having to plan for conservation by reacting to a series of individual land clearing proposals.
"The collective research challenge for us is to put ourselves in a position where we can map what kind of landscapes we need across the territory for an environmental future where our native species can recover and persist for the long term."
Evidence of 'ecosystem collapse'
Euan Ritchie, a professor in wildlife ecology and conservation at Deakin University, backed calls for stronger laws aimed at protecting biodiversity.
"Northern Australia's tropical savannas are vast, and considered the least modified in the world … and there is evidence of ecosystem collapse," he said.
"There is clearly always going to be a need for sustainable development and food production, but this must be done in a way that is sensitive to environmental and cultural values and doesn't further compound key threats such as climate change and habitat destruction and modification."
Polly Hemming, an adviser in the Climate and Energy Program at the Australia Institute, said the policy stuck her as being a political decision rather than one based on science.
She also questioned how the government could appropriately assess the climate impact of projects before the Northern Territory's net zero framework was fully complete.
"The NT has a patchwork of policies to deal with environmental impact, but as far as I can see there's no cumulative impact assessment being done," she said.
"I can only think that this is a decision designed to appease pastoralists. It's physically hard to clear land in a lot of the NT, so proponents would want it to be worth their while."
Environment Minister Lauren Moss said the government was developing an emissions reduction strategy to outline how it aimed to achieve its net-zero-by-2050 emissions target. This will include emissions related to land use change.
Pulling the trigger for stronger regulations
While Ms Dreyfus welcomed the EPA's steps in setting guidelines, she said they could be stronger.
"Instead of having guidelines, they could use or declare what's called a trigger," she said.
"The reason that would be useful is that guidelines are just guidelines, they're not enforceable.
"There's little recourse if someone chooses not to follow the guideline.
"But if the Northern Territory declared a referral trigger, so that's something that they can do under the Environmental Protection Act … then that would be a much stronger rule that would be enforceable and would likely really lead to more reduction in emissions."
