AgLaw Centre's key role in Climate Change Summit

February 22, 2007

A research centre at the University of New England will play a prominent role in the NSW Premier's Climate Change Research Summit in Sydney tomorrow [Friday 23 February].

The full-day meeting on "Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation" at the NSW Trade and Investment Centre will include a session on primary industries. Professor Paul Martin, the Director of UNE's Australian Research Centre for Agriculture and Law (AgLaw Centre), will chair that session, and present an overview of scientific, environmental, legal and social issues that need to be addressed if primary industries are to cope more effectively with climate-change priorities. He will then introduce three speakers from the NSW Department of Primary Industries.

Addressing an audience of leaders in government and industry from throughout the State, Professor Martin will argue that, for both environmental and social reasons, the government regulations designed to minimise the environmental impact of agriculture need to be drastically reduced in number, and made fairer and more behaviourally effective. Speaking on the eve of his presentation, he asked: "How can we be innovative and effective with 250 State and national resource laws?" "Under these conditions," he said, "it's simply beyond the capacity of most people to understand their obligations and to comply adequately. Complexity also adds an enormous burden to coordination and implementation by government."

The AgLaw Centre is the first research organisation in Australia devoted to the interaction of the law with rural science and industry. In explaining the Centre's role in environmental protection, Professor Martin said: "You cannot achieve the necessary technical changes without major changes to policy and regulation. We need to integrate science and policy across entire industries." (Professor Martin is a member of the Premier's E10 Taskforce, which is examining a proposal to introduce the mandatory use of ethanol in petrol.)

He said there was a need to reintroduce the politically contentious word "conservation" into the debate about preparations for climate change. "We need to talk about conservation, not avoid it," he said. "But we need to talk about (and implement) it in a way that's fair to everyone – including farmers."

In this context, he spoke about what he called "middle-class shelters": the virtual immunity of city-dwellers from many environmental controls and costs. "People in Sydney are not required to measure or plan their environmental impact as many rural people are," he said – "for example, in biodiversity loss or the emission and retention of carbon."

The NSW Greenhouse Office is convening the meeting. Tim Flannery, the prominent scientist, conservationist and author – and 2007 Australian of the Year – will present the keynote address. Other speakers will include Professor Brendan Mackey, Director of the WildCountry Research and Policy Hub at the Australian National University (ANU), and Professor Tony McMichael from ANU's National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at February 22, 2007 05:27 PM