Regreening Australia

Australia21 will host a roundtable in February 2013 on the benefits and feasibility of a large national program to ‘regreen Australia’ through massive reforestation and revegetation.

The project will re-examine the issues raised in a 1989 CSIRO report - Regreening Australia: The environmental, economic and social benefits of reforestation  by Australia21 director Richard Eckersley - in the light of advances in knowledge about both the problems and the solutions. Key among these is the growing understanding of the impacts of climate change on Australian environments and the importance of land use and land cover in addressing climate change.

Initial feedback on the proposal from a range of scientific and policy experts has been positive. There was general agreement that, while there has been a substantial increase in funding for relevant environmental activities since 1989, these efforts still lack the necessary scale, integration and prioritisation to address the environmental challenges Australia faces. Participants in the roundtable will examine the following central question: ‘What are the benefits of large-scale reforestation and revegetation, and how can they best be achieved?’ 

Subsidiary questions include:

-   What is already being done, and is it enough?

-   What have we learned from past reforestation/revegetation programs?

-   What remains to be learned?

-   What are the best processes and mechanisms for assessing risks and achieving benefits?

-   Who are the key partners/stakeholders and what are their roles?

-   Are priorities at local, regional and national scales agreed and compatible?

-   What are the next steps?

A two-page summary of the 1989 report which provides background is available here.

Enough funding to kick start the project has been provided by Richard Eckersley, through a bequest from the estate of the late Jan Lee Martin, and the Natural Resources Conservation League of Victoria. Australia21 is seeking more funding to ensure the best possible outcome. If you would like to comment on this project or you would like to know more please contact us at office@australia21.org.au. Donations to support Regreening Australia can be made on line http://www.givenow.com.au/australia21.

Peter Hayes on the politics of environmental degradation in North Korea

Peter Hayes, Director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability (www.nautilus.org), has just published a paper on the state of the North Korean environment, a subject on which he first put pen to paper almost fifteen years ago.

Professor Hayes is a very experienced commentator on North Korean issues, with deep first-hand knowledge. In 1994, he led a UN mission charged with helping North Korea to compile its first greenhouse gas emissions inventory for its national report under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which North Korea had signed.

This latest paper is a timely reminder that North Korea is a real place, an important part of this planet that we all inhabit, that its problems have impacts beyond its borders, and the longer they are left unattended the harder they will be to fix. He reports that one of the most acute environmental problems in North Korea is deforestation, a problem with a long history. It has been compounded in recent times by poor land use decisions.

He concludes:

There are many other critical environmental issues in North Korea. The country, it turns out, is still producing globally significant amounts of persistent organic pollutants such as DDT (about 230 tonnes per year) and similar pesticides that accumulate in food chains and ecosystems thousands of miles downwind. Disposal of toxic wastes, work-place occupational health and safety, acid rain, greenhouse gas emissions and many other environmental issues must be solved in North Korea.

The results of these efforts will be a long term legacy that will be inherited by a future generation of Koreans. They will have to preserve what’s left of wild North Korea; conserve what’s in use; and restore what has been abused. The continued isolation of North Korea has led to a rapid degradation of the ecological assets that existed at the end of the Cold War, and it is certain that the fastest way to destroy what’s left of North Korea’s ecology would be war.

Many of these ecological issues are technical and apolitical, and even at the height of the political tensions due to the nuclear issue, North Korea’s leadership has kept them separate and accepted external engagement and assistance. Should a way forward emerge at the geopolitical level to resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, many environmental issues will become channels for cooperative engagement between North Korea and external agencies.

...

There is no shortage of options, and an infinity of needs. And ways exist to work around the barriers that divide North Korea from the rest of the world. There’s no time to wait, or these enduring legacies will become unbearable, and feed into a vortex of chaos and collapse in North Korea, with unimaginable consequences for humans and nature alike.

The full paper is available here.