National Forum

Local Government and Conservation on Private Land
Mike Berwick
Mayor, Douglas Shire Council (QLD)

This paper is about why local government participation and commitment is required to make conservation on private land work, in particular biodiversity conservation.

• What has been done so far,
• what next,
• who pays,
• what are the institutional arrangements and
• how do they fit into the emerging national picture of sustainable natural resource management.

63 per cent of the continent is under freehold, pastoral or mining tenure - the tenures with the least amount of protection.

The remainder, 37 per cent, is essentially the lands European settlers did not want for agricultural, pastoral, mining, residential, urban and industrial use and is under varying levels of conservation regime.

They're managed by state agencies, national parks, forest services and traditional owners.

Only 7 percent is dedicated to nature conservation.

The most disturbed landcovers are the best country - those that enjoy the highest rainfall, the richest soils and are the most productive.

Add to this the alarming prospect of advancing salinity, land degradation and urbanisation expected to gobble up one third of Australia's cropping land in the next 50 years.

This is set against the global loss of agricultural land and growing population. 50 years ago there was 3 or 4 ha of arable land per person on the planet, now we're down to 1/2 ha per person.

Where will we be in 50 years given the continuing loss of agricultural land and growing population and what kind of pressure will be put on our remaining productive land to feed both Australia and the world.

So back to this "off reserve" biodiversity - whose responsibility is it, how are we to sustain it while we make use of it on an increasingly intensive scale.

Biodiversity cannot be separated from all the other NRM issues - vegetation clearing, soil, water quality, salt, nutrients, waste, energy, pollution, fisheries, forestry, agriculture, overpopulation, urbanisation and so on.

Those are the processes threatening biodiversity and in turn biodiversity is a part of the solution to those issues.

63 per cent of the continent is under freehold, pastoral or mining tenure - the tenures with the least amount of protection.

Only 7 per cent is managed specifically for nature conservation

Currently the responsibility for NRM lies primarily with the landowner but is influenced by an ad hoc spread of commonwealth, state and local government policies and regulations - I'm being very general here.

Nature conservation acts are beginning to deal with threatened species outside reserves as well as inside

Environment protection acts and agencies are dealing with the brown issues - waste and pollution.

Departments of primary industries advocate whole of farm planning, conservation management of remnants, pest management etc.

Natural resource management agencies and acts are attempting to deal with demands for water.

Local governments are increasingly exercising 'discretionary'controls through land use planning, development control, vegetation conservation local laws, roadside and LG reserve management.

Landcare and catchment management groups have focused on sustainable resource management but are now paying some attention to biodiversity as well.

And now we have the Commonweralth's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act designed to address impacts of 'national significance'.

All these agency or government responsibilities have huge inadequacies. For example the EP&BC Act does not deal with the single biggest threat to biodiversity which is vegetation clearing. Nor does it deal with native forest logging or the accumulation of smaller impacts which together add up to much more than the occasional issue of 'national significance'.

I'm not arguing against the need for an act such as this and I recognize many of the benefits it does have such as third party standing.

In fact I would argue we need a similar national approach to NRM, but it needs to be comprehensive, not selective.

I hope I have made the point that biodiversity and the broader picture of NRM management in Australia is an ad hoc mix of uncoordinated, poorly resourced strategies and activities.

The issue I'm dealing with to-day is what role does local government play in this very complex array of problems?

Until recently I represented Local Government on the Biodiversity Advisory Council or BDAC.

That is a body appointed by the Commonwealth Minister for Environment to provide advice on the conservation of Australia's biological diversity.

One of BDAC's jobs was to monitor the implementation of the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity. This was a document signed by the Commonwealth and the states in 1996.

Typically local government wasn't asked to sign but was assigned a critical role.

And so with the help of BDAC and a lot of other people both inside and outside local government, some of them here to-day, I set about producing local government's own strategy.

Hence the creation National Local Government Biodiversity Strategy.

This document was adopted unanimously at the 1998 General Assembly.

It says local government will take on biodiversity conservation as a core function subject to adequate resourcing.

It proposes to achieve this principally by building expertise into councils.

Just like they have engineers, health and building surveyors, planners and accountants, so LGs need biodiversity/resource management expertise.

There are 640 local governments in Australia varying in size from the likes of Brisbane City with a budget twice the size of Tasmania to tiny organisations with a few hundred people on the role and barely enough rates to pay the shire clerk.

They have among them both the best and the worst practices.

Invariably those rural shires with a tiny rate base are huge in area and still have or did have, extraordinary biodiversity but little or no capacity to deal with the natural resource management issues.

While many of these rural and remote LGs have a wealth of biodiversity they are socially and economically very poor and have little or no incentive to spend scarce resources on environment related issues.

They may not see environment as important because they have plenty of it - for example Croydon Shire in Northern Central Qld is almost entirely forested with eucalypt woodland - a very beautiful region - but with only a few hundred people on the role and rates coming from a handful of cattle stations.

Or they may see the environment as important but feel unable to do much about it - salination is a good example of this.

For these reasons conservation/resource management has to be national in its approach and co-ordination but delivery has to be at a local and regional level involving local communities.

One thing I have learnt from my own council and from local government around the country is the huge influence it can have on the use, management and conservation of environment and natural resources.

Not only is local government capable of achieving sustainable use of the natural resources within its boundaries, and that's a bold statement, it can be very good at frustrating the conservation agenda if it's so inclined and that's an understatement.

So the message here is that local government, whether you like them or not are essential players in this game. The commonwealth and state governments as well as the conservation movement often forget this and always underestimate it.

I've also learnt that looking after the environment can be very profitable.

In the Douglas Shire 75 per cent of our economy is tourism, its entirely dependent on the natural environment and our problem now is trying to slow down tourism development so that we can retain those attributes that brought people there in the first place.

We're very focused on becoming sustainable in every respect - growth limits, biodiversity, waste management, climate protection, nutrient discharge, soil conservation, air and water pollution etc.

We haven't got there yet but I believe we can - it's a separate story on its own that I don't have time to address to-day.

While Commonwealth and state governments may have some good intentions about the conservation of Australia's biodiversity, it will need local government and regional conservation planning to make it happen on the ground.

This reinforces the need for national co-ordination and funding, but local or regional delivery

I make this point for a number of reasons:

• successful conservation planning and management requires a mix of education, incentives and regulatory controls all of which require local content;
• local or regional conservation planning must involve the community and enlist its support to make it happen. - local government has that kind of human contact;
• conservation planning will need to be tailor made to suit particular regions and communities.

Lets consider the powers, responsibilities and jurisdictions that lay with local government and the influence it can have on both private and public land

Although its jurisdictions vary considerably from state to state, local government is able control or heavily influence nearly all land uses except national parks and state forests by an array of statutory powers:

• strategic planning through land use zoning and statutory controls on all freehold land and locally managed public open space;
• development control of nearly all activities and works on freehold land and crown land (except national parks and state forests)
• local law powers over waste management, land clearing, drainage, filling, air and water pollution and sediment discharges;
• pest plant and animal control measures;
• a range of incentive programs (planning amendments, rate differentials, levies, rural fire management and developer contributions);
• management of local - open space to restore remnants and recreate habitat;
• administrative responsibility for state agency coordination through integrated planning, licensing and development concurrence;
• control and ownership of water infrastructure and management in some jurisdictions.
• stormwater management and control, drainage works and flood control
• the management of liquid and solid waste

And it can be a coordinator for local community groups and interests.
Commonwealth and States have to recognise local government's increasing commitment to conservation planning.

When intergovernmental (National Action Plan) and bilateral agreements (eg EPBC Act) are set up between Commonwealth and state governments, they need to include local government.

This will engender ownership, genuine partnership and commitment leading to long-term cultural and policy change.

Local Government spent $3.4 billion on environmental management and natural resource management in 1998-99 (2.1 billion on environmental management and 1.3 billion on management of natural assets).

Local government spent $106 million on biodiversity conservation (ABS 2000). Much of this expenditure is sourced from rate revenue.

The Commonwealth and states run the risks of ignoring the opportunity for further investment and better leveraging of its dollars by locking out local government.

Through this type of commitment you can see that involving local government in formal state/commonwealth agreements can commit local government to the core elements of sustainable NRM.

Unlike most issue specific, largely advisory regional organisations like Catchment Management Authorities, Regional Development Organisations and Regional Vegetation Committees, local government is elected, has a significant works budget, a jurisdiction, political mandate and a degree of permanence.

This permanence would result from NRM integration within local government corporate plans, local environment plans, policies and by-laws and importantly, political endorsement by local communities

Back to the Local Government Biodiversity Strategy - it's a document about partnership, about local government playing the role best suited to it, working with state agencies, sharing expertise and ensuring resources are distributed where they're needed.

So we now have three national documents dealing with biodiversity conservation - the NSCABD signed in 1996, the NLGBS and the new EPBC Act.

The Local Government Biodiversity Strategy breaks the issues up into 5 headings.

They are:

1. Awareness, Education and Training;
2. Resourcing;
3. Legislative Changes;
4. Regional Partnerships and planning;
5. Information and Monitoring;

At the end of the document is a list of the actions required to deal with each of those key issues, their timing, cost and who is responsible.

1. AWARENESS, TRAINING AND EDUCATION

This section recognises the generally poor understanding of the meaning and significance of biological diversity. Recent surveys (a couple of years old now) have shown about 10 per cent of the community has a good understanding of the term and 20 per cent a modest understanding. 80 per cent hasn't got a clue.

It talks about the range and availability of professional skills needed by LG and the need for education programs for staff, councillors and the community.

2. RESOURCING

The second section on resourcing is the one councils like to ensure is realistic and achievable.

There is among councils a great deal of resistance to state governments devolving powers and responsibilities to LG without the resources to do the job.

Local Government's share of taxation revenue has fallen from about .9 to about .65 percent of tax revenue over 15 years.

At the same time their responsibilities have increased from basic property services like roads, drains, water, garbage and sewerage to include land use planning and development control, community and economic development, waste and pollution control, biodiversity conservation, health and welfare and the list goes on.

Local government is therefore saying it will take the issue on but it needs serious resourcing and assistance.

While the Action Plan estimates costs and allocates responsibility for a variety of actions, it's difficult to do accurate estimates because there is no clear overview of who does what at a federal state and local level.

What is the collective effort in biodiversity conservation?

Unlike say the Commonwealth Department of Transport, which could say exactly how much is spent on roads by Commonwealth, state and local governments, no such overview exists when it comes to the collective effort directed at biodiversity conservation by the same three levels of government.

For example how many "co-ordinators" are there in Australia, bushcare, coastcare, rivercare, catchment, landcare etc. We probably need more of them but how is their activity co-ordinated and are scarce funds being efficiently used?

Until this information is known it will not be possible to identify the gaps or needs and how much it will cost to fill those gaps. This is another way of expressing my earlier assertion - "....that Biodiversity management in Australia is an ad hoc mix of unco-ordinated, poorly resourced strategies and activities."

One of our earliest actions therefore was therefore survey of local government "effort" in biodiversity conservation - this process has been funded jointly by EA and ALGA and I'll refer to that in a moment

The single most important part of this whole proposal is the need to provide human resources to local government in the form of an environment resource officer because so much can be achieved by local governments in their everyday decision making process if they are well informed and committed to sustainable NRM.

The important thing of course is what these people can do and achieve. This is spelt out in the document as follows in the form of a duty statement:

• Introduce technical skills and data into councils or regional organisations.
• Organise and manage vegetation/biodiversity audits.
• Design and implement education/information programs.
• Draft habitat conservation regulations.
• Consult with local communities.
• Review land use planning schemes and corporate plans to introduce biodiversity conservation into landuse management.
• Design and implement a monitoring program. This could integrate with any existing state or local government State of Environment Reporting that may exist.
• Establish administrative structures for ongoing biodiversity management.

With 640 councils in Australia, if each created a job as set out above, the total cost could be up to $160m over three years, whereas if it were created in say 150 regions it would be around $35m.

INFORMATION AND MONITORING talks about the need to share information and the importance of monitoring performance and adaptive management

The data sharing issue is a huge one, not just between local government, state agencies and the corporate world but with the community.

This conference has presented a variety of mechanisms to achieve conservation on private land and we need all of them, but what is the framework, what are the institutional arrangements.

Poor institutional arrangements, lack of co-ordination, unclear responsibilities, the ad hoc mix of policies, practices and funding are often the greatest obstacle to better outcomes.

The framework emerging is the regional plan for the sustainable use of our natural resources, a regional NRM plan.

One of the problems we have had in managing natural resources and in preparing regional plans is that there has been no overall legislative framework, no requirement for measurable targets, no definition of what those measurable targets should be.

In recent times regional plans have been driven by funding arrangements, NHT in particular, with some vague conditions about things like reversing the decline in native vegetation etc but unclear, unenforceable and under funded.

The Commonwealth has recognized the deficiencies of NHT, that it was not strategic, that it did not achieve institutional change, that it did not achieve a major change in the way we manage the landscape.

And so to Commonwealth's credit there has been a rethink about the way funds are handed out producing the concept of accredited regional plans with measurable targets and LG support that view.

There are many questions about how we establish targets, how we monitor them, what are the acceptable levels of loss or gain in environment or to use another piece of jargon what are the tradeoffs. In these areas there is a lot of knowledge and a lot of gaps, hence the need for continuing research.

I know the commonwealth has been thinking about regional bodies and institutional arrangements and believe it has not come to any clear conclusion or does not see itself having a role in defining such a structure.

The states all have different arrangements, different definitions of regions and in many if not all instances have no clear concept of an ideal regional structure.

The Victorian Catchment Management Authorities, with a catchment levy for revenue and statutory powers for enforcement, were a favorite of the Commonwealth a year ago

Since that time a Commonwealth joint party standing committee on environment and heritage has produced a report called "Co-ordinating Catchment Management"

It has recommended among other things a Commonwealth Statutory Catchment Management Authority with subordinate state legislation and a national environment levy to pay for it.

In my view this is a very interesting proposition with far reaching implications and consistent with the emerging local government position articulated through a number of resolutions at recent national conferences.

I like it, many of my colleagues do not.

There is some debate about the value of commonwealth legislation and revenue raising and I would very much like to hear the views of this forum on this subject.

Many people in local government are advocating a national environment levy and my council put forward a resolution at last year's national conference, which, although somewhat changed, was adopted unanimously.

Our argument for a national environment levy is that we need a transfer of revenue from the city and urban areas to rural Australia to support sustainable land use practices, rather than the unsustainable practices which subsidies have supported in the past.

The logic of this is that food, fibre and energy is largely produced in rural Australia and largely consumed and converted to waste and pollutants in urban Australia.

Compared with salaries, the commodities of food, fibre and energy have never been cheaper, driven down by supermarket chains, globalisation, deregulation, free trade and national competition policy.

None of these drivers have taken account of environmental and social issues.

A national environment levy is really a broadbased tax on food, fibre and energy and the only foreseeable way to raise sufficient money to redress the plunder of the rural landscape or put another way to fund the delivery of sustainable natural resource management in Australia.

Returning to the NLGBS

The NLGBS identified the immediate need for three things:

1. a series of workshops with local government to outline opportunities and listen to concerns, needs etc
2. high level meetings in each state with the relevant state agencies and local government associations to engender a co-operative approach
3. a survey of local government effort and need in the area of biodiversity conservation.

The workshops and high level meetings are ongoing but the survey is complete

The Survey.

This was a very large job done on a sparse budget in which over 400 of the 640 councils in Australia responded.

It was designed to assess the overall local government effort, commitment and needs.

About 60 people were involved in the survey, some of them here to-day, in face to face interviews ie about 10 councils per person.

They were asked about roles, policy, commitment and regulatory structures in the following areas:

• native vegetation
• threatened species
• fragile ecosystems
• local agenda 21 or ESD plans
• coastal protection
• salinity
• roadside vegetation
• wetlands

They were analysed by state and category and in terms of the key issues identified in the NLGBS

So we found out:

• what the priorities were for further resources
• how many councils were active in which areas
• how much resources they commited to various biodiversity related issues
• how the performance and commitment varied between urban, regional, agricultural, remote and indigenous
• The types of instruments used - levies, rebates, regulation, incentives etc
• Partnerships with each other and other structures (community groups, research organizations etc)

The document concluded with a number of recommendations.

I'll finish with an observation about WA

I heard Wally Cox in opening recognize that local government should not be left out of institutional arrangements.

That was great to hear - maybe some people in this audience would like to encourage this new approach in WA.