THE rate of land clearing is much higher than Australia's environmental accounting methods may suggest, a study by researchers at the University of Queensland shows. It says traditional bookkeeping methods are misleading because they usually record positive and negative environmental outcomes separately, and that lack of context means big net losses of forested land can be wrongly reported as a win for conservation.
Ben Cubby Environment Reporter
January 2, 2009
THE rate of land clearing is much higher than Australia's environmental accounting methods may suggest, a study by researchers at the University of Queensland shows.
It says traditional bookkeeping methods are misleading because they usually record positive and negative environmental outcomes separately, and that lack of context means big net losses of forested land can be wrongly reported as a win for conservation.
In other words, the creation of new national parks in one place is often cancelled out by increased logging or urban development somewhere else.
The study, to be published in the journal Science on Friday, revisits data from land clearing in Queensland and finds habitats being destroyed at a rate that is not sustainable, with implications for other states, including NSW.
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"In the corporate world such weak reporting would be considered bad practice," said one of the study's authors, Professor Hugh Possingham, director of the university's Federal Government-funded ecology centre.
The study suggests new methods of evaluating conservation gains and losses that would give a net balance sheet and a more realistic picture of environmental performance.
"Government 'state of the environment' reporting often defies the principles of honest reporting," the study says. "Given the increasing public awareness of conservation issues and the need for ongoing investment in environmental management, it is worrying that little attention has been given to rigorous reporting on conservation investments."
In NSW the environmental balance sheet has tilted slightly back in favour of conservation in recent years, as land clearing is wound back and more national parks are created.
The amount of land allocated to conservation and the amount used for growing crops is almost the same, the 2006 state of the environment report, the most recent available from the Department of Environment and Climate Change, showed.
About 7.8 per cent of NSW is now protected from development and about 7.9 per cent is used to grow crops. Grazing is the dominant form of land use, taking up almost 70 per cent of the state's area, and forestry covers about 3.6 per cent. Urban development occupies only 0.2 per cent of NSW and mining activities 0.1 per cent.
The state of the environment report covers changes in land use that have both a positive and negative effect on conservation but it notes that "quantifying land use, and particularly changes in land use, remains a challenge".
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