Extract from The Guardian
No consequences for the company if its mine causes greater environmental damage to threatened habitats than expected, says study
Australia’s environmental laws are too weak, a new report argues, citing the Carmichael coalmine as an example. Even what the environment minister has described as the “strictest” environmental conditions on the development allow the destruction of endangered species habitats, the degradation of ecologically and culturally significant water bodies, as well as the production of fossil fuels for burning, it says.
When the federal environment minister gave the most recent approval for Adani’s huge coalmine in 2014, he said it was done on the basis of “36 of the strictest conditions in Australian history”.
Taking those conditions as the “high-water mark” for environmental protections offered by current laws, a report by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Environmental Defenders Office of Australia examined whether they protected the environment in the way they were intended to.
Two key focuses of the conditions imposed on the project by the then-environment minister, Greg Hunt, were the protection of the critically endangered black-throated finch, and the protection of Doongmabulla Springs in the arid Queensland outback.
Because the Adani mine will bulldoze the best remaining habitat for the black throated finch, Hunt imposed conditions on the approval, saying that Adani must “offset” that loss.
Experts have complained already that the argument that offsets – which involve the protection of other remaining habitats – could help the birds were “an absolute logical fallacy” since if those other habitats were adequate, the birds would already be there.
But the new report points out that the offsets don’t even need to be created before Adani bulldozes the existing habitat.
And moreover, the report found there were no consequences if the mine had a destructive impact on the birds.
“Perhaps most extraordinarily, should the impact on the finch from the mine be greater than expected, Adani is not required to take further action or make good the unexpected harm,” the report said.
ACF’s chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, said: “Adani is permitted to bulldoze an area that is home to the largest surviving population of the endangered black-throated finch on the condition that the company provides alternative habitat for the species at another location, yet Adani is not required to protect this alternative habitat before destroying the finch’s current habitat.”
Other conditions are intended to help protect the Doongmabulla Springs complex, which is significant to the local Aboriginal people and important water resource for the unique ecology in the arid region.
The minister said Adani must conduct research to establish what disturbances would cause the springs to dry up. But the results of that research did not need to be completed before mining began.
“The damage could be done before the results of any studies are known. Once a spring goes dry, it cannot be restored,” the report said.
The report also examined how the existing environmental laws manage to protect world heritage areas – specifically the Great Barrier Reef.
It said the mine would cause 4.7bn tonnes of carbon dioxide to be added to the atmosphere, mostly through the burning of the coal it produces, which would accelerate global warming, which is the greatest risk to the future of the Great Barrier Reef.
But last week, a federal court ruling on a case brought by ACF against the environment minister found he did not need to consider the effects of burning the coal dug out of the mine.
The report said this revealed a failure in the strength of the law. “For a law that sets out to protect Australia’s environment, the failure to protect our most treasured ecosystem from its greatest threat is alarming,” it said.
“Far from being the strictest in Australian history, these conditions have so many gaps you could drive a mining truck through them – which is exactly what Adani intends to do,” said O’Shanassy.
The groups are calling for a new generation of environmental laws that protect critical habitats for threatened species, that halt projects until information about the scale of the impacts is known, and that explicitly deal with impacts on the climate.
They have also called for laws that allow environmental approvals to be challenged in court on their merits. Currently, they can only be challenged by claiming the minister didn’t follow the correct legal processes.
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