9.1 Introduction
Like other World Heritage–listed sites, superlatives feature prominently in official descriptions of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (“Reef”). The “outstanding universal values” of this, the world’s “most extensive coral reef ecosystem,” include both natural beauty, as “the most spectacular maritime scenery in the world” and “amazing” biodiversity as “one of the richest and most complex natural ecosystems on earth.”Footnote 1 The Reef is also a vital part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ culture and heritage, with some seventy Traditional Owner groups having cultural authority in the Reef area.Footnote 2
Since its World Heritage listing in 1981,Footnote 3 however, the Reef has experienced “a historical sequence of compounding pressures that are steadily escalating,” involving polluted agricultural runoff, coastal development, the effects of climate change, and fishing.Footnote 4 Indeed, the Reef has become a flash point for the effects of climate change nationally and internationally. These cumulative impacts have triggered significant evolution in the Reef’s “globally iconic governance regime,”Footnote 5 administered jointly by Australia’s national government (the “Commonwealth”) and the adjoining state of Queensland (see Figure 1.2).
The Reef offers a critical case study of the problems and potential of key legal mechanisms for dealing with cumulative impacts. The problems are profound. The Reef is highly vulnerable to climate change.Footnote 6 Long-established legal silos divide the regulation of adverse effects along jurisdictional lines, and between impact types, such as water quality and climate change, and make it hard to see the big picture. But there is also potential: As World Heritage, the Reef has high political salience and the highest level of legal protection for ecosystems in Australia. Reef governance has produced a central strategic environmental assessment (SEA) – often argued to be the most appropriate way to assess and manage cumulative impacts.Footnote 7 It seems like one of the likeliest places to find successful regulation of cumulative impacts, at least for problems at this scale.
A decade on from the SEA, this chapter evaluates its legacy of influence on the regulatory landscape of mechanisms for undertaking two key functions that are critical to regulating cumulative environmental problems: producing information about cumulative impacts on the Reef and advancing regulatory intervention to address those impacts. These are two of the four key interlinking functions of the CIRCle Framework of functions that this book argues benefit from being based on formal rules to help address cumulative environmental problems.Footnote 8 This chapter shows how the SEA, an information tool, paved the way for regulatory interventions that are unlikely to have happened without it. Because there are so many diverse types of activities and impacts on the Reef, this chapter focuses on an important subset. It contrasts mechanisms that apply in relation to sediment pollution and climate change as contributed by two major sectors, cattle grazing and coal mining. This reveals the influence of the SEA on individual regulatory tool bundles that apply to these impacts. In addition, it shows the potential of the Reef SEA to integrate regulatory mechanisms between different types of impacts, and between the siloed cumulative environmental problems of climate change and the broader range of impacts to the Reef.
These forms of influence – integrating information and regulatory intervention, changing regulatory tool bundles, and forming links across regulatory silos – go beyond the common perception that SEA has a technical-informative role in assessing the impacts of a program at a point in time, often disconnected from decision-making.Footnote 9 Rather, this kind of influence aligns with a view of SEA as providing a strategic framework that influences decision-making broadly, even beyond the land use, development, and spatial planning contexts typically discussed in the international literature.Footnote 10
Section 9.2 provides context, describing how coal mines and cattle grazing contribute to water and greenhouse pollution that impacts the Reef, and the challenges that arise in managing these cumulative impacts. Section 9.3 gives an overview of the regulatory landscape around the Reef SEA, and the scope of the SEA. Sections 9.4 and 9.5 analyze its influence on legal mechanisms dealing with the cumulative impacts of coal mining and cattle grazing from the perspective of information and intervention, respectively.
9.2 Context and Challenges
9.2.1 Key Threats to the Reef: Climate Change and Water Pollution
As I write, the Reef is undergoing its fifth mass coral bleaching event in a decade – an effect of stress caused by a marine heat wave.Footnote 11 The damage accumulates with harms from diverse other causes, from invasive species to water pollution to cyclones.Footnote 12 The health of the Reef has been a prominent issue in Australia, due at least in part to its implications for the Reef’s significant tourism industry.Footnote 13
Climate change and fine sediment in catchment runoff (“sediment pollution”) feature among the highest risk threats among the cumulative pressures on the Reef.Footnote 14 Climate change impacts are diverse: altered ocean currents affect the transport of coral eggs, more frequent and intense cyclones physically damage coral, ocean acidification compromises coral skeleton building, and higher sea temperatures cause heat stress and reduce available oxygen.Footnote 15 These effects are felt worldwide: Even if ambitious global targets of 1.5°C of global mean warming are met, over 90 percent of coral reefs are likely to be lost, increasing to 99.7 percent at 2.0°C.Footnote 16
Sediment pollution reduces available light and affects how corals grow and reproduce, making it more difficult for them to recover from disturbances, and even smothering Reef organisms entirely.Footnote 17 Waterborne sediment increases turbidity, which also increases ocean temperatures and reduces oxygen levels for Reef organisms.Footnote 18
These pressures have similarities and differences in the challenges they pose to regulating them as cumulative threats. They are similar in that legacies of greenhouse gases and sediment both continue to cause adverse effects for years after their emission.Footnote 19 This means that the benefits of contemporary interventions may take many years to be seen and addressing cumulative impacts means repairing historical damage. A key difference between these pressures is that while greenhouse gases emitted globally cause climate change that affects the Reef, sediment pollution is entirely sourced within Queensland’s territory – from the thirty-five major river basins, together larger than the size of Japan,Footnote 20 which discharge to the Reef.
Making the cumulative problem even more difficult, the pressures of climate change and sediment pollution interact. Climate change increases the likelihood of more intense rainfall events that cause soil erosion and sedimentation, making water quality management more challenging.Footnote 21 They also act together to exacerbate other effects: crown of thorns starfish, an invasive coral-eating species that also damages the Reef, benefits from turbid water and higher sea temperatures.Footnote 22
9.2.2 Coal and Cattle
Cattle grazing and coal mining each emit greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change and increase sediment in catchment runoff, which both affect the Reef. Both industries have characteristics that produce political, social, and economic challenges to intervention and concerns about regulatory burdens. Other agricultural enterprises, especially sugarcane growing, also contribute to water pollution via pesticides and nutrientsFootnote 23 though those are not discussed further here.
As one of the world’s largest exporters of coal,Footnote 24 Australian coal mines, most of which are in Queensland, contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions.Footnote 25 They emit greenhouse pollution directly when the coal is mined, and indirectly, when it is burnt in Australia or overseas.Footnote 26 Mines contribute sediment-laden runoff to the Reef through earthworks and construction activities and rock blasting that result in dust deposition,Footnote 27 as well as a small amount of point-source pollution.Footnote 28 Multinational companies own most Queensland coal mines,Footnote 29 and have recently earned “extraordinary revenue” due to high coal prices.Footnote 30 Coal mining also contributes significantly to state revenue and rural employment, which produces polarized political views about it in Australia.Footnote 31
Australia is also among the world’s largest beef exporters,Footnote 32 and cattle and calves are Queensland’s largest agricultural export.Footnote 33 Queensland has Australia’s largest cattle herd, with family-run operations dominating the industry.Footnote 34 Cattle grazing in northern Australia is large scale, with an average property size of 24,000 ha, and some properties over 1 million ha, but around half of grazing operations are not financially sustainable.Footnote 35 Sediment pollution of the Reef, which has more than quintupled since the 1850s, is driven largely by soil erosion associated with clearing native vegetation to establish pasture for grazing, and overgrazing.Footnote 36 Queensland has the highest rate of land clearing in Australia, and as of 2023, its rate of deforestation is significant worldwide.Footnote 37 Gully, streambank, and other forms of erosion caused by past land management practices continue to contribute sediment to the Reef.Footnote 38 Cattle also contribute directly to greenhouse gas emissions through enteric fermentation and manure, and indirectly through other land management practices associated with cattle grazing, including savanna burning.Footnote 39
Climate change and sediment pollution are an important subset of the pressures and impacts that accumulate to affect the Reef (Figure 9.1). Both cattle grazing and coal mining impact the Reef in other ways, and other activities and factors contribute to sediment pollution and climate change.Footnote 40
Figure 9.1 Qualitative model of cumulative impacts on coral, as assessed by the Reef SEA, omitting greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change
Figure 9.1Long description
The activities of fishing, shipping and boating, ports run-off, industrial run-off, urban run-off, agricultural run-off, dredging, reclamation, and coastal structures impact the freshwater, groundings, toxins, nutrients, turbidity and sedimentation, and structural damage and erosion. Climate change impacts ocean acidification, ocean warming, and storms affecting the predatory fish, herbivory fish, crown-of-thorns starfish, macroalgae, fish and invertebrates, bleaching, and crustose coralline algae and coral recruit ultimately impacting the coral cover.
9.2.3 Challenges: Information, Intervention, and Intersecting Problems
Coal mines and cattle grazing, and their impacts, highlight the importance and challenges associated with two functions of regulation under the CIRCle Framework advanced by this book:Footnote 41 collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data and information about conditions of the Reef and threats to it; and intervening to change behavior to reduce cumulative harm. As shown by Chapters 5 and 6, respectively, diverse regulatory mechanisms can support these functions.
The large size of the Reef and its catchments, the dispersed nature of farming activities, and the difficulty of accessing parts of the Reef and its catchments and identifying species pose challenges in collecting data about its condition and relevant impacts.Footnote 42 It is also difficult to monitor sediment and greenhouse gas emissions and their effects, because they are diffuse (widely dispersed in space, rather than “point” sources) and because of legacy effects of past decades’ and centuries’ activities. So it is to gather information about regulatory interventions, compliance, and even government policies and programs in a complex regulatory landscape. Bringing all this information together when different laws address these issues is the overarching challenge. Section 9.4 takes up these information-related challenges.
Regulatory intervention is challenging when contributors to a cumulative environmental problem are politically or economically weighty, such as cattle grazing and coal mining, and known for a “culture of independence” and resentment of government restrictions.Footnote 43 In contrast to coal mining companies, graziers have more diverse financial positions and willingness to change practices.Footnote 44 This spotlights potential debates about approaches and strategies for intervention that reduce regulatory burden and increase social and political palatability, but that tend to reduce the reliability with which interventions pursue their objectives,Footnote 45 such as regulatory incentives (“carrots”) and offset strategies. As discussed in Section 9.5, both carrots and offsets appear in the regulatory landscape for the Reef. The diversity among graziers also raises questions about the fairness of the burdens imposed on different contributors across types of cumulative impact.Footnote 46
A larger intervention-related challenge emerges in the intersection of two cumulative environmental problems. On one hand lies the aggregation of multiple types of impacts, including sediment pollution and climate change, on the Reef; and on the other hand is the cumulative impact of multiple types of activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. This raises the challenge of dealing with greenhouse-polluting activities at the intersection of these problems: How might regulatory actors intervene in relation to activities undertaken in Queensland that produce greenhouse gases in the context of cumulative impacts on the Reef, given that others outside the jurisdiction and outside its control also contribute to this problem? Section 9.4 takes up these intervention-related challenges.
By contrast, the other two functions of regulation under the CIRCle Framework – conceptualization and coordination – are relatively less problematic in the Reef context, though not entirely straightforward. Conceptualizing the Reef as a matter of concern for regulatory purposes is largely settled due to its World Heritage listing, though some aspects are still variably implemented and contested.Footnote 47 Significant initiatives have developed a long-term vision for the Reef, expressing desired future conditions – a key component of conceptualization.Footnote 48 Similarly, while regulating pressures on the Reef is a multilevel governmental exercise, as discussed in Section 9.3, responsibilities and formal coordination structures are well studiedFootnote 49 and well established, the product of a tumultuous history of federal-state conflict over the Reef.Footnote 50 Indeed, current approaches to regulating cumulative impacts on the Reef evolved significantly as a result of international action that coalesced in a multilevel (state/national) SEA, discussed next.
9.3 Overview of the Regulatory Landscape and the Reef SEA
This section sets the scene for analyzing regulatory functions related to information and intervention and how the SEA influenced them. It explains how Australia distributes regulatory responsibility for environmental matters between states and the Commonwealth (Section 9.3.1), how international attention drove the Reef SEA that was developed cooperativelyFootnote 51 between both levels (Section 9.3.2), and how the Reef SEA was scoped (Section 9.3.3).
9.3.1 Setting the Scene: Regulatory Responsibilities and International Influence
As a constitutional and practical matter, cumulative impacts on the Reef have long been managed by different levels of government, with overarching coordination. Australian states are primarily responsible for environmental matters, including pollution and land use planning; the federal Parliament may legislate to implement international treaties signed by the government.Footnote 52 These include the Climate Change ConventionFootnote 53 and the World Heritage Convention,Footnote 54 which provides for listing and protecting areas that are “the priceless and irreplaceable assets, not only of each nation, but of humanity as a whole.”Footnote 55 This international link grants the Commonwealth Parliament powers to regulate activities on the Reef itself (e.g., fishing, tourism), projects that may affect it, and climate change, while Queensland regulates land use and pollution produced in the Reef’s catchments. The Commonwealth and Queensland governments coordinate under an intergovernmental agreement that expressly recognizes that climate change and catchment-sourced water pollution harm the Reef.Footnote 56
In 2009, an international information mechanism jolted this system of shared responsibility, ultimately producing a key overarching legal mechanism for managing cumulative effects: the Reef SEA. The World Heritage Committee learned that – contrary to international guidelinesFootnote 57 – Australia had failed to notify it that a large liquefied natural gas plant was being constructed on Curtis Island, inside the Reef World Heritage area.Footnote 58 This triggered formal discussions and a “reactive monitoring mission,” both of which emphasized threats from diffuse water quality impacts, climate change, and cumulative impacts. The Committee urged Australia to undertake a strategic assessment of the Reef to formulate a long-term sustainability planFootnote 59 and a framework for assessing development proposals in a way that considered cumulative impacts.Footnote 60
The Committee backed these exhortations with indications it might list the Reef as “World Heritage in danger,” a threat that continues even now.Footnote 61 Since such a listing would undermine tourism and damage Australia’s international reputation, the threat worked to focus bureaucratic minds on the problem. Scholars consider that the SEA would likely never have happened without the Committee’s request.Footnote 62 The Committee’s involvement made mandating agricultural pollution interventions “politically palatable,”Footnote 63 illustrating how involving more regulatory actors can change feasible interventions to address cumulative impacts.Footnote 64 The resulting assessment (2014) and its associated plans and policies (2015–2018) (together, the “Reef SEA”) became the overarching mechanism for dealing with cumulative impacts on the Reef.
9.3.2 Framework for the Reef SEA
The Reef SEA was undertaken under discretionary provisions of Australia’s national environmental legislationFootnote 65 that are used relatively rarely. These provisions are often criticized as too narrow, or merely a vehicle for bulk approval of projects.Footnote 66 Usefully, though, they can offer a two-part structure that directly links assessment (information) and regulatory intervention. The first component, a “strategic assessment report,” is an information-focused assessment of environmental matters and the effectiveness of management arrangements. The second component is a “program report” that proposes improved management arrangements, possibly including mechanisms for information and intervention. The Commonwealth Environment Minister considers the program report for endorsement, which indicates that it adequately addresses impacts on relevant nationally protected matters (here, World Heritage values).Footnote 67 This raises the expectation that the formal commitments in the program, for example, information and intervention initiatives, are needed to address impacts on federally protected matters. While the program may not directly legally bind governments, arrangements that deviate significantly from it would raise the possibility of contravening federal legal protections.
While the Reef SEA is also not directly legally binding on coal or cattle proponents, it raised the potential to influence their activities in two ways: first, by connecting information about their impacts to existing laws that apply to their activities, changing how these laws are implemented; and, second, by triggering the formulation and adaptation of new and existing regulatory interventions, respectively, diversifying the regulatory mix. The degree to which the Reef SEA regime fulfilled this theoretical potential was influenced significantly by how it was scoped, discussed next.
9.3.3 Scope of the Reef SEA
The scope of a SEA in terms of sectors, space, and time, critically affects its analysis of cumulative impacts.Footnote 68 In this case, narrow and ambiguous language hampered the Reef SEA’s potential comprehensively to gather information and influence regulatory interventions in relation to climate change and water pollution. This ultimately constrained its ability to connect the intersecting cumulative environmental problems of impacts on the Reef and climate change generally.
Without legislative criteria for adequacy, or detailed guidance from the World Heritage Committee,Footnote 69 formal terms of reference set the scope of the Reef SEA. Reflecting jurisdictional responsibilities, the Reef SEA was split in two. A Commonwealth agency, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (“Reef Authority”), was to assess marine areas, with discretion to include other places if the Reef was “affected by actions in those places.”Footnote 70 The Reef Authority was to assess (among other things) Reef conditions, cumulative impacts and “the likely impacts of climate change,” and the effectiveness of management arrangements, including to “adapt to reasonable climate change scenarios.”Footnote 71 But it was only to cover “management arrangements within the Authority’s jurisdiction” and work jointly with Queensland in relation to water quality.Footnote 72 Queensland, on the other hand, was to assess “threats from both within and outside the strategic assessment area”Footnote 73 and the effectiveness of its management, planning and development framework in a 5-km wide, 2,300-km-long coastal strip, and catchment areas “to the extent that water quality management arrangements apply.”Footnote 74
The SEA terms of reference included catchment-sourced water pollution and adapting to climate change, but excluded climate mitigation. The Queensland government, which grants coal mining leases and associated environmental approvals,Footnote 75 assessed the impacts of mining that “directly affect the GBR coastal zone,” including water quality impacts, but considered that “climate change cannot be addressed by the Program due to its global nature.”Footnote 76 Commonwealth-level climate change regulators were not involved in the Reef SEA and the Reef Authority emphasized its lack of relevant “jurisdictional responsibility,” and only briefly noted its potential role in advising other agencies about climate change mitigation.Footnote 77 Omitting climate mitigation caused public concern, especially given Queensland’s fossil fuel sector.Footnote 78 Nevertheless, the impacts of climate change on the Reef were seen solely as a matter of adaptation.
9.4 Regulatory Mechanisms for Information and the Reef SEA
The mere fact that the Reef SEA provides information about the Reef’s condition and threats does not break new ground. Rather, its function as an information mechanism is important because, together, the strategic assessment reports and program reports formalize nonstatutory information initiatives and expand them. Crucially, for cumulative environmental problems, they also bring information together and link it to intervention, incorporating design features that address challenges related to cost, sustainability, and legitimacy. These are key challenges for cumulative environmental problems generally.Footnote 79 After briefly reviewing historical arrangements for information about water quality and climate change, this section analyzes, in turn, how the strategic assessment reports and the program reports played an important information function in the context of impacts on the Reef as a cumulative environmental problem.
Key design features of regulatory mechanisms for information to address cumulative environmental problems include providing for gathering and sharing data and information from multiple government and nongovernment actors in a way that: comprehensively deals with conditions of the matter of concern (here, the Reef) over time and all important activities and impacts that contribute to the cumulative environmental problem; is high quality; is easily shareable and interoperable; and manages cost.
9.4.1 A History of Regulating for Information
Regulatory mechanisms for scientific expertise and information have long been central to Reef governance, beginning with the first Marine Park statute (1975) and intergovernmental agreement (1979),Footnote 80 the current version of which commits to coordinated monitoring of impacts on the Reef.Footnote 81 Since 2007, the Reef Authority has been required by statute to produce a five-yearly Reef “Outlook Report” that assesses the health and resilience of the Reef, risks to it, and measures to protect and manage it.Footnote 82 It expressly addresses indicators of water pollution and climate change threats.Footnote 83
Numerous less formal, nonstatutory information programs have also arisen over time. Notably, since 2009, a nonstatutory annual Reef Report Card has tracked progress to water quality targets using a “Paddock to Reef” monitoring program.Footnote 84 The program assesses the adoption and effectiveness of management interventions, and both catchment and marine conditions.Footnote 85 It both monitors and models pollution, since rivers have high flow variability and up to fifty-year time lags separate catchment interventions and monitorable changes to pollution.Footnote 86
9.4.2 The Reef SEA: Entrenching, Expanding, and Integrating Information Initiatives
In line with their terms of reference, the strategic assessment reports used these existing and other sources to gather and assess information about the impacts on the Reef of climate change,Footnote 87 catchment-sourced sediment pollution,Footnote 88 other impacts, and cumulative impacts.Footnote 89 The cumulative impact assessment produced “cumulative exposure” maps showing how different areas of the Reef are exposed to multiple water quality impacts (sediment and other pollutants) and multiple key impacts (e.g., elevated temperatures, freshwater inflow, etc).Footnote 90 These are conceptually similar to California’s cumulative environmental justice maps, discussed in the previous case study. These maps aggregate multiple sources of demographic and environmental risk experienced by human populations, and are used in California to prioritize some regulatory interventions.Footnote 91 The strategic assessment reports also noted key knowledge gaps regarding cumulative impact assessment, including relationships between the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchments and coastal zone.Footnote 92
The endorsed program reports committed to ongoing information initiatives and linked them to planning future management. This provided for enduring influence in relation to information, thus addressing a frequent criticism of SEA as often limited to a “point in time” assessment.Footnote 93 The endorsed programs entrench and expand existing water quality monitoring through an expanded Paddock to Reef program intended to inform adaptive management of water quality interventions,Footnote 94 and introduce regular reporting of climate change indicators.Footnote 95
The program reports also commit to a new integrated platform that reflects a cumulative impacts mindset of aggregating interoperable information.Footnote 96 A consolidated “Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program” (RIMReP) aims to integrate Reef-related monitoring undertaken by governments and other organizations,Footnote 97 including data on catchments, water quality, and climate indicators.Footnote 98 The RIMReP aims to provide interoperable data to guide management actions, including to understand the cumulative impact of pressures and interventions.Footnote 99
RIMReP generally aligns well with a cumulative impact approach, but an important omission relating to activity-level information about impacts mars its comprehensiveness. There is no apparent link to government- or proponent-sourced data on the project-level (as opposed to catchment-level) impacts of regulated activities, for example, from environmental impact statements and compliance programs. This mirrors long-running criticism that Australia’s national environmental law does not support aggregating environmental data produced by project proponents.Footnote 100 A Cumulative Impacts Policy linked to the SEA simply advises decision-makers to hold information about “current and reasonably foreseeable projects” to “allow stakeholders to accurately assess other sources.”Footnote 101 Relatedly, Reef information programs apparently do not integrate data on compliance and enforcement of relevant activities, which might have been linked to a requirement to adapt interventions or their implementation. These are striking omissions given a history of concern about widespread noncompliance and minimal enforcement of agricultural water quality requirements,Footnote 102 and about the transparency of compliance and monitoring data for mining projects.Footnote 103
Information aspects of the SEA also demonstrate design features that address challenges related to cost and legitimacy of information.Footnote 104 Information initiatives manage the costs of monitoring in a large and challenging environment by including technologically driven approaches such as remotely sensed data.Footnote 105 RIMReP both manages cost and buttresses its legitimacy by including data from nongovernment sources, including the preexisting citizen science “Eye on the Reef” programs for assessing Reef conditions.Footnote 106 Formally requiring an independent review of the Reef SEAFootnote 107 also supports legitimacy, and mirrors statutory requirements of the Outlook reportFootnote 108 and previous use of independent scientific “consensus statements” on water pollution, which have driven new interventions.Footnote 109 Independent reviewers complimented the reports’ technical accuracy, but criticized proposed management of water quality and climate change issues as unlikely to be effective.Footnote 110
Without more, gathering and sharing data and information about cumulative impacts simply shines a brighter light on decline: It is the regulatory links between information and intervention that enable information to influence cumulative impacts. The Reef SEA shows several types of these regulatory links in a way that seems relatively uncommon. The Reef SEA itself was spurred by an international regulatory mechanism for informing the World Heritage Committee about a major project on the Reef.Footnote 111 The endorsed program committed to an overarching “outcomes-based framework”Footnote 112 – the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan (“Reef 2050 Plan”) – for improving the Reef to meet targets that would be “monitored, reported and adapted over time,” fed by the program’s information initiatives and revised every five years. The Reef 2050 Plan planned to deliver these targets in part by influencing other laws and management arrangements, facilitated by a policy to guide decision-makers on how to consider the Plan in “relevant decision making”, and an initiative to collect information about intervention using a register of management plans.Footnote 113 As already discussed, though, information from project-level assessments and compliance and enforcement were blind spots. Now, a decade on from these commitments and aspirations, we can assess how these pathways for informing intervention have turned information into regulatory action.
9.5 Regulatory Mechanisms for Intervention and the Reef SEA
This section analyzes how the Reef SEA influenced rules for interventions to address cumulative impacts on the Reef of greenhouse and sediment pollution from coal mining and cattle grazing. It shows that the Reef SEA increased the comprehensiveness of the overall regulatory regime – an important regulatory design feature for cumulative environmental problems.Footnote 114 It influenced and adapted existing water quality interventions and also drove the introduction of new interventions related to water quality. The Reef SEA also enhanced the diversity of regulatory approaches and strategies used in interventions (see text box).Footnote 115 Greenhouse gas emissions, though, lay beyond its reach. Australian climate law has advanced significantly since the Reef SEA, but it remains disconnected from the Reef context, with just a hint that this may change. This shows the barriers to SEA connecting decision-making across regulatory silos, and between intersecting local and global cumulative environmental problems,Footnote 116 especially in an unfavorable political context.
Key design features of regulatory mechanisms for intervention to address cumulative environmental problems include connecting decision-making about impacts that accumulate, intervening comprehensively across impact types and activities, intervening adaptively, and using diverse regulatory approaches and strategies. Regarding regulatory approaches, sticks refer to mandates about the carrying out of an activity that causes harm; carrots influence an activity through incentives and disincentives that apply to an activity in the absence of a mandate (e.g., a monetary incentive or tax); sermons influence the activity using information; and state rescue involves the state directly addressing harm rather than trying to change the behavior of contributors to the harm. Regarding regulatory strategies, harm reducing means changing an activity so that it causes less harm; harm offsetting means undertaking a second beneficial activity to counteract the negative effects of a first activity; restoring means undertaking a beneficial activity to counteract legacy harms that may have been caused by others; and coping refers to facilitating the matter of concern (here, the Reef) adapting to impacts so that harm decreases, even if impacts do not.
Table 9.1 summarizes the influences of the Reef SEA on national- and state-level regulatory interventions dealing with coal mining and cattle grazing, and the regulatory approaches and strategies of those interventions. Sections 9.5.1 to 9.5.3 and the notes to the table discuss these in more detail. Table 9.1 shows only formal rulesFootnote 117 that expressly relate to water pollution or greenhouse gas emissions (either on their own terms or as explained through formal policy documents). An intervention is classified as applying to coal mining or cattle grazing based on the language of the rule, and, where necessary, evidence about whether the rule applies in practice to that activity. “Not routinely used” indicates an intervention that is not routinely applied to coal mining or cattle grazing, but in theory could be to some degree. Shaded rows show how the Reef SEA produces and influences relevant mechanisms for regulatory intervention, with darker shading indicating the strongest influence, where the SEA provided for creating a mechanism that is new or substantially modified (see Key). Regulatory mechanisms are arranged according to their focus using the broad categories introduced in Chapter 3, as mainly directed to: protecting the matter of concern (the Reef, (a)); a specific type of environmental impact, (b); or specific types of activities, (c).Footnote 118
Table 9.1 Major Australian federal (A) and Queensland (Q) regulatory interventions to address Reef-impacting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and water-borne sediment pollution (H2O) from coal mines and cattle grazing, showing influences of the Reef SEA
| Australia/Queensland | Legal mechanism (mechanism contained in a law or a document or plan for which a law provides) | Regulatory approach | Regulatory strategy | GHG | H2O | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stick | Carrot | Sermon | State rescue | Harm-reducing | Harm-offsetting | Restoring | Coping | Coal | Cattle | Coal | Cattle | ||
| (a) Mechanisms focused on the Reef as the matter of concern | |||||||||||||
| A | SEA, including endorsed programi | Not specified | Not specified | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| EIA, approvals for actionsii | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||
| Marine Park pollution regulationiii | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | ||||||||||
| A & Q | Reef catchment restorationiv | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Extension and education for land managersv | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Voluntary Reef Credit Schemevi | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Q | Human rights to life, culture, property, etcvii | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | |||||||||
| (b) Mechanisms focused on a specific impact (H2O or GHG emissions) | |||||||||||||
| A | GHG reporting mandateviii | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Emissions reduction transparency initiativeix | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | ||||||||||
| Cap on GHG emissionsx | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Carbon credit schemexi | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Clean energy loans and grantsxii | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Q | Minimum land management standardsxiii | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Point source pollution approvalsxiv | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| General environmental dutyxv | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | ||||||||||
| Vegetation clearing restrictions, approvalsxvi | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Australia/Queensland | Legal mechanism (mechanism contained in a law or a document or plan for which a law provides) | Regulatory approach | Regulatory strategy | GHG | H2O | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stick | Carrot | Sermon | State rescue | Harm-reducing | Harm-offsetting | Restoring | Coping | Coal | Cattle | Coal | Cattle | ||
| (c) Mechanisms focused on specific activities | |||||||||||||
| A | Regional development loans and grantsxvii | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | |||||||||
| Q | EIA for “coordinated projects”xviii | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
| Land development assessment, approvalsxix | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | ||||||||||
| Mining lease conditionsxx | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | ||||||||||
| Pastoral lease conditions relating to conserving soilxxi | ✓ | ✓ | Not routinely used | ||||||||||
| NB: EIA, environmental impact assessment; SEA, strategic environmental assessment. | |||||||||||||
| Key | Mechanism proposed by Reef SEA - either new or substantially modified | Existing mechanism directly influenced by Reef SEA | Mechanism under law influenced by Reef 2050 Cumulative Impacts Management Policy | ||||||||||
References and provisions re regulatory strategies and approaches and GHG/H2O focus
i SEA, including endorsed program (applies to “matters of national environmental significance”): EPBC Act (Australia) s 146 (noting that provisions for approving actions taken in accordance with the endorsed program in ss 146A–146M, a regulatory stick, were not used in the case of the Reef SEA)
ii EIA, approvals for actions (requires assessment and approval with binding conditions, i.e., harm-reducing regulatory stick, for any action likely to have a significant impact on a “matter of national environmental significance”, but with no legal requirement to consider greenhouse gas emissions): EPBC Act (Australia) pts 7–9; Department of the Environment (Australia), Significant Impact Guidelines 1.1: Matters of National Environmental Significance (2013) www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/nes-guidelines_1.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/P4NR-YHXE; Department of the Environment (Australia), Significant Impact Guidelines 1.3: Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Developments – Impacts on Water Resources (2022) www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/significant-impact-guidelines-1-3.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/WUQ3-3KDZ; Department of Sustainability Environment Water Population and Communities (Australia), Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 Environmental Offsets Policy (2012) 9 (offsets applying via approval conditions, noting that “other compensatory measures” could include regulatory coping initiatives) www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/offsets-policy_2.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/EE73-7RZP; Wendy Craik, Independent Review of Interactions between the EPBC Act and the Agriculture Sector: Independent Report Prepared for the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy (Aither 2018) www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/review-interactions-epbc-act-agriculture-final-report.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/4TNX-8V3C; Department of the Environment (Australia), EPBC Act Referral Guidelines for the Outstanding Universal Value of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (2014) www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/referral-guidelines-great-barrier-reef_0.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/Y5EV-9MH7.
iii Marine Park pollution regulation: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 (Australia) s 66(2)(e) (“regulating or prohibiting acts [whether in the Marine Park or elsewhere] that may pollute water in a manner harmful to animals and plants in the Marine Park”)
iv Reef catchment restoration: Reef 2050 WQIP, 34, 36 (targeted catchment repair projects through incentives to landholders e.g., riparian revegetation, gully repair, streambank stabilization; carbon sequestration noted as an additional benefit, but this is noted only tangentially); not categorized as a state rescue approach since it lacks a clear focus on public land
v Extension and education for land managers: Reef 2050 WQIP, 31 (“Deliver extension and education targeted at adoption of improved practices … through the Reef Water Quality Program and Reef Trust projects, e.g., BMP extension and education, Project Pioneer – Innovation in Grazing Management, and Reef Alliance – Growing a Great Barrier Reef”); Project Pioneer, www.projectpioneer.com.au (n.d.).
vi Voluntary Reef Credit Scheme: Reef 2050 WQIP, 30, 44, EcoMarkets Australia, Reef Credit Guide V. 2.1 (2024) https://eco-markets.org.au/rules-and-requirements, archived at https://perma.cc/5ZUL-FXK7. NB: both harm-offsetting and restoring projects seem theoretically permissible under this incentive scheme.
vii Human rights to life, culture, property, etc: Human Rights Act 2019 (Queensland) ss 8, 13, 15(2), 16, 24(2), 25(a), 26(2), 28, 58 (prohibition on unjustifiably limiting human rights, assumed generally to be harm-reducing); Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd (No 6) [2022] QLC 21, [1297]–[1694].
viii GHG reporting mandate: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (Australia) s 7 and pts 3, 3H, National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (Measurement) Determination 2008 (Australia) ch 3 (applies GHG reporting requirements to companies that exceed scope 1 or 2 GHG emissions thresholds, with presumed harm-reducing strategy through public pressure; agricultural activities excluded because reporting requirements only apply where the Minister has determined approved measurement approaches: methods apply to coal mine emissions, but not agriculture)
ix Corporate emissions reduction transparency initiative: Clean Energy Regulator (Australia), “Corporate Emissions Reduction Transparency (CERT) Report Guidelines FY2022–23 and CY2023, Version 1.2” (2024) https://cer.gov.au/markets/reports-and-data/corporate-emissions-reduction-transparency-report/participating-corporate, archived at https://perma.cc/8HNN-L7QA (opt-in standardized reporting scheme for broad climate-related commitments that covers entities that are covered by the statutory GHG reporting mandate, with presumed harm-reducing strategy through public pressure; formal guidelines apply to participants). As at July 2024, no coal mining or pastoral grazing companies had submitted a relevant report under this initiative: Clean Energy Regulator (Australia), “Corporate Emissions Reduction Transparency Report 2023,” https://cer.gov.au/markets/reports-and-data/corporate-emissions-reduction-transparency-report/corporate-emissions-0, archived at https://perma.cc/RW3N-UM5J.
x Cap on GHG emissions: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (Australia) pt 3H; National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (Safeguard Mechanism) Rule 2015 (Australia) (requiring covered facilities to either reduce their emissions to meet a declining baseline or surrender credits to offset excess emissions). Some coal mines, but apparently no cattle grazing operations are presently covered: Clean Energy Regulator, “2022–23 Safeguard Facility Data” (2024) https://cer.gov.au/document/safeguard-facilities-data-2022-23-excel (listing data for 2022–2023), last accessed March 22, 2025, archived at https://perma.cc/5LD4-3J5Q.
xi Carbon credit scheme: Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 (Australia); provides market incentives to engage in approved credit generation methods, including some that expressly target both the cattle and coal sectors, including flaring or converting methane from underground coal mines, managing beef cattle using specified practices and reducing methane by feeding nitrate to cattle (some now closed to new projects): Clean Energy Regulator (Australia), “ACCU Scheme Methods” (n.d.), https://cer.gov.au/schemes/australian-carbon-credit-unit-scheme/accu-scheme-methods, last accessed March 22, 2025, archived at https://perma.cc/M99E-GER6, Clean Energy Regulator (Australia), “Closed Methods” (n.d.), https://cer.gov.au/schemes/australian-carbon-credit-unit-scheme/accu-scheme-methods/closed-methods, last accessed March 22, 2025, archived at https://perma.cc/9ZAZ-TPWW.
xii Clean energy loans and grants: Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act 2012 (Australia) ss 58, 60; Clean Energy Finance Corporation (Australia), “Investment Priorities” (n.d.) www.cefc.com.au/about-us/who-we-are/investment-priorities/, last accessed March 22, 2025, archived at https://perma.cc/N4G6-FXHF (prioritizes investing in agricultural “natural capital” and carbon sequestration and technology to encourage emissions reductions, i.e. incentives to reduce harm or restore); Clean Energy Finance Corporation (Australia), “New Capital, New Ambition: Annual Report 2022–2023” (2024) 37, www.cefc.com.au/media/l4igzbpf/cefc_ar23_web_sml.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/M4LR-JDQ2 (projects include “sustainable grazing” to generate carbon credits). No coal mine-related projects were noted in the 2022–2023 annual report, nor in the 2021–2022 annual report.
xiii Minimum land management standards: Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Queensland) (“EP Act”) ss 18(a), 79(1) (cattle grazing in a Reef catchment is an agricultural “environmentally relevant activity” or “ERA”), 81 (binding agricultural ERA standards, i.e. regulatory stick), 426(2)(a) (environmental authority not required for agricultural ERA that is not a prescribed ERA); Agricultural ERA Standard for Beef Cattle Grazing, v2 (2022) www.des.qld.gov.au/policies?a=272936:policy_registry/pr-es-grazing.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/8KEP-YV76, e.g., maintain land in good condition (SC1), implement measures to improve condition of land in poor condition (SC2), i.e. harm reducing and restoring.
xiv Point source pollution approvals (“environmental authorities”): EP Act ss 18 (resource activity is an ERA), 77 (environmental protection policy for reduced contaminant loads to Reef), 88 (Reef water quality offsets under Environmental Offsets Act 2014 (Queensland)), 107 (mining activity is a resource activity), 209 (offset conditions), 426(1) (requirement for environmental authority for ERA), Environmental Protection Regulation 2019 (Queensland) (“EP Regulation”) s 41AA(3) (prohibition on approving release of sediment to Reef without offset); Department of Environment and Science (Queensland), Point Source Water Quality Offsets Policy (2019) https://environment.des.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/97845/point-source-wq-offsets-policy-2019.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/RXR7-JQNL; Department of Environment and Science (Queensland), Guideline: Model Mining Conditions Version 6.03 ESR/2016/1936 (2024) 16–30 (re water releases) www.des.qld.gov.au/policies?a=272936:policy_registry/rs-gl-model-mining-conditions.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/D4SD-BQE7. NB: an environmental authority is not required for cattle grazing, because it is an agricultural ERA that is not a prescribed ERA (EP Act ss 19, 79(1)(a), 106, 426(2)(a), EP Regulation s 19(1), Sch. 2).
xv General environmental duty: EP Act s 319
xvi Vegetation clearing approvals: Vegetation clearing is classified as a kind of “development”: Planning Act 2016 (Queensland) Sch 2 “development,” “operational work.” Clearing for extractive activities like mining will usually be exempt from a requirement for a permit under this regime: Planning Act 2016 (Queensland) s 107(c); Planning Regulation 2017 (Queensland) Sch 10 ss 4(1), 5; Sch 21 s 1(6). Clearing of regrowth vegetation on grazing land within 50 m of a watercourse located in specified Reef catchments (termed “category R areas”) will usually be prohibited, as it is deemed not for a “relevant purpose”: Vegetation Management Act 1999 (Queensland) ss 22A(2B)(b) (relevant purpose re grazing land and category R area), 22ANA (category R area). Note that offsets may be required for vegetation clearing under the Environmental Offsets Act 2014 (Queensland) Sch 1, but this relates to the biodiversity of the cleared vegetation, rather than carbon- or water quality-related aspects: Department of Environment and Science, Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.16 (State of Queensland 2024) www.des.qld.gov.au/policies?a=272936:policy_registry/envoff-offsets-policy.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/TV3G-M8QJ.
xvii Regional development loans and grants, providing incentives, potentially indirectly targeted at harm reduction: Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Act 2016 (Australia) (financial assistance for economic development); Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, Public Benefit Guideline (2024) 7 (investment mandate requires considering positive and negative environmental impacts in these general terms) www.naif.gov.au/media/4lmhutf1/public-benefit-guideline-update-march-24.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/66P9-7JPF; Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, “Our Projects” (n.d.) www.naif.gov.au/our-projects, last accessed March 22, 2025 (projects include a coal mine, but no clear grazing project to date); Regional Investment Corporation Act 2018 (Cth) s 8(1)(a) (farm business loans); Regional Investment Corporation (Australia), Annual Report 2022/23 (2023) 11 www.ric.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022-23%20Annual%20Report_Regional%20Investment%20Corporation%20cl.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/F9GL-CK27 (developing environment, social and governance framework).
xviii Project EIA for “coordinated projects”: State Development and Public Works Organisation Act 1971 (Queensland) Pts 4, 4A (declaration of coordinated project; considerations relevant to declaration; assessment; power of Coordinator-General to impose harm-reducing and offset conditions, and including, under s 54U(2)(b) re repairing or mitigating damage to the environment, whether or not the damage has been or will be caused by the project, but only if the proponent consents); Department of State Development Tourism and Innovation (Queensland), “Preparing an Environmental Impact Statement: Guideline for Proponents” (2024) 19–21, 27–28 (re water and climate, but with no direct link to the Reef) www.statedevelopment.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0034/86884/c9a552d64dbc27e6ff2d8f9cfb489fdfe467b066.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/364C-33CS. NB: coal mines are regularly declared to be “coordinated projects,” but it appears this has never occurred for a grazing development: Coordinator-General (Queensland), “Completed Projects” (n.d.) www.statedevelopment.qld.gov.au/coordinator-general/assessments-and-approvals/coordinated-projects/completed-projects, last accessed March 22, 2025.
xix Land development assessment, approvals and potential for harm-reducing conditions: Planning Act 2016 (Queensland) chapter 3, noting that mines are exempt from the application of planning legislation due to the operation of s 4A, Mineral Resources Act 1989 (Queensland); in rural zones under local government planning schemes, cattle grazing is usually categorized as “accepted development” for which development approval is not required: Planning Act 2016 (Queensland) s 44; e.g. Burdekin Shire Planning Scheme (2022) table 3.4.9 (“animal husbandry”).
xx Mining lease conditions: Mineral Resources Act 1989 (Queensland) s 276 (general conditions of mining lease with potential for harm-reducing conditions); neither the statute nor the guidelines for mining leases foresee any significant use of these conditions for environmental purposes: Department of Resources (Queensland), “Mining Lease Application Guide” (September 2024) www.resources.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/217893/mining-lease-guide.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/4TPY-9T49.
xxi Pastoral lease conditions: Land Act 1994 (Queensland) chapters 4 and 5 (binding conditions of leases relate to harm reduction including conserving soil and protecting riparian vegetation under s 199(2)(d)); appears to be rarely enforced, e.g., current “strategic compliance areas” for non-freehold tenure management do not refer to pastoral leases: Department of Resources (Queensland), “Strategic Compliance Focus Areas 2024–25,” www.nrmmrrd.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1893202/strategic-compliance-focus-areas-2024-25.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/P9WN-JK73.
Before examining these areas in detail, here are some preliminary observations. While this chapter cannot assess the likely effectiveness of this regulatory toolbox “on the ground,” nor the administrative gusto or resources applied to each mechanism, it is at least clear that the toolbox is diverse. It uses most categories of regulatory approaches and strategies discussed in Chapter 6. That diversity aligns with theoretical recommendations for dealing with diverse activities that contribute to cumulative environmental problems in a way that responds to the varying motivations and circumstances of the diverse contributors.Footnote 119 As might be expected, more burdensome “sticks” apply more commonly to coal mining than cattle grazing, to which regulatory carrots, and, to a lesser extent, sermons, apply. This reflects an implicit position that diverse activities require diverse approaches, particularly where some actors tend to be large, highly profitable, and traditionally regulated (coal miners), and others smaller, financially more precarious, and traditionally unregulated (cattle graziers). Concerns remain, however, at the financial impacts of water quality controls on graziers.Footnote 120 The policy mix also includes significant use of mechanisms that reduce regulatory burdens but also reduce reliability of outcomes (carrots and harm-offsetting).Footnote 121 The fainter traces of regulatory possibilities also emerge – those options for which laws already provide, but which do not routinely apply to the greenhouse gas or water pollution of coal mines or cattle grazing. Strikingly, all of the mechanisms noted as “not routinely used” involve regulatory sticks. This is a comparatively burdensome and politically difficult approach, the nonuse of these mechanisms bearing out these difficulties. Yet some of these mechanisms present particular promise for regulating cumulative risks, notably the general environmental duty discussed earlier in Chapter 6.Footnote 122
9.5.1 Influencing Regulatory Interventions in General
The SEA “workhorses” for influencing rules for intervention are the twenty-five-year endorsed programs, and the policies and plans to which they commit. These policies are framed as influencing regulatory interventions in general, since they are not limited to a particular type of environmental impact or activity.Footnote 123
The promisingly named Cumulative Impacts Management Policy requires policymakers to consider cumulative impacts when formulating plans and programs that influence relevant “drivers and pressures”Footnote 124 and project approvals under laws that are listed in the PolicyFootnote 125 (light shaded rows, Table 9.1). Its potential influence extends across diverse regulatory strategies for which those listed laws provide: harm-reducing, offsetting, and restoring. Restoring is important given the legacy impacts of sediment pollution.Footnote 126 The Policy’s link to project approvals is significant because a requirement to consider cumulative impacts would not otherwise generally apply: Unlike most national EIA legislation around the world,Footnote 127 neither Commonwealth nor Queensland environmental law expressly mandates considering a project’s cumulative impacts.Footnote 128
The Policy’s likely influence is weakened, though, by its ambiguous wording and the fact that it does not call out activities like coal mining and cattle grazing that contribute to recognized high-riskFootnote 129 “drivers” of major pressures on the Reef, such as climate change and water pollution. Decision-makers need not assess cumulative impacts “[w]here assessment and management of cumulative impacts is consistent with this policy and has been included in plans, governing arrangements or class assessments.”Footnote 130 It is unclear which plans and arrangements fulfill this criterion, and, therefore, when decision-makers must independently consider cumulative impacts: Each decision-maker must therefore determine whether the Policy requires them to do something extra. This introduces the potential that these connections are not made, and hampers accountability.
The Cumulative Impacts Policy recognizes that “new information, emerging issues and changing circumstances” require managing adaptively, including “if the condition of [Reef] values declines,”Footnote 131 but it provides no further detail, process, or principles for when or how to adapt. Intervening adaptively is vital for regulating cumulative impacts,Footnote 132 but requires further guidance given the uncertainties and time lags involved, for example, between land practice changes and observed reductions in sediment pollution.
9.5.2 Influencing Interventions Concerning Water Quality
The Reef SEA endorsed program led to significant changes in existing regulatory interventions and new regulatory interventions aimed at water quality (rows with shaded cells in last two columns, Table 9.1). The Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan sets multiscale targets for sediment load reduction,Footnote 133 and for land cover and management practices on grazing lands in “priority areas” to reduce sediment.Footnote 134 These targets influence how existing laws operate, such as point-source water pollution approvals for coal mines, which Queensland’s program report repeatedly insisted it would “rigorously condition.”Footnote 135
New interventions also pursue these water quality targets (Table 9.1, dark shaded rows). These new mechanisms include mandatory minimum land management standards for graziers, which apply requirements to maintain ground cover – Queensland’s first generally applicable regulatory stick applied to grazing practices.Footnote 136 A new A$3.7 billion (since inception) Commonwealth Reef TrustFootnote 137 delivers incentive-based (“carrot”) and information-based (“sermon”) interventions:Footnote 138 extension and education programs for land managers about best management practices;Footnote 139 funded catchment restoration activities such as revegetation and gully repair to control soil erosion;Footnote 140 and a government-supported, voluntary Reef Credit scheme to facilitate landholders selling water quality credits to government, industry, and nonprofit buyers.Footnote 141 These mechanisms focus on both harm-reducing and restoring strategies (Table 9.1), providing important incentives to address legacy harms that continue to cause impacts. The sheer number of available mechanisms – of which Table 9.1 presents a simplified view – itself presents an implementation challenge, however. That there are so many possible options for landholders itself creates complexity and cost, and is seen to require more extension work to explain.Footnote 142 Distrust of government and scientists further impedes take-up of these options.Footnote 143
These influences are significant from a cumulative impacts perspective. While similar voluntary initiatives existed previously, the Reef Trust provided a “large, overarching initiative” with robust reporting arrangements for increased accountability.Footnote 144 More generally, the Reef SEA has diversified the policy mix through the first generally applicable regulatory “stick” applied to graziers to reduce sediment pollution, potentially influencing contributors who were not responsive to incentives.
In a missed opportunity to adopt a stronger cumulative impacts mindset, though, the Plan’s spatial prioritization for implementing these initiatives is based on the ecosystem’s risk of exposure to pollutantsFootnote 145 rather than cumulative exposure to multiple stressors. An alternative would have been to investigate building on the SEA’s cumulative exposure mappingFootnote 146 to target water quality reduction efforts to areas suffering from greatest cumulative stress.
Given how deforestation for pasture contributes to sediment pollution,Footnote 147 Queensland’s vegetation clearing laws deserve special mention. Before the Reef SEA, a prohibition on clearing riparian vegetation in certain Reef catchments was introduced in 2009,Footnote 148 and has since been expanded more generally to Reef catchments.Footnote 149 Amid intense conflict with farmers, land clearing laws later alternated between phases of greater and lesser robustness.Footnote 150 The Reef SEA conspicuously made no clear commitments on this front, and its progeny, the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan, merely promised vaguely to strengthen and enforce the laws.Footnote 151 However, rates of land clearing – under both significant exemptions from regulation, and illegal land clearing – remain high, and the most significant concern related to sediment pollution of the Reef.Footnote 152
9.5.3 Influencing Interventions Concerning Climate Change
Given its scoping, it is unsurprising that the Reef SEA had little influence on climate-directed mechanisms (shaded rows in third and fourth columns from the right, Table 9.1). Its influence was circuitous at best, highlighting the importance of water quality on the basis that climate impacts require “building resilience,” for which water quality is “the most critical issue.”Footnote 153 The endorsed programs and policies did not directly contemplate new or existing measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and only briefly mention Australia’s international mitigation commitments.Footnote 154 An implementation policy for Queensland’s EIA laws (which are expressed to be subject to the Cumulative Impacts Management Policy) only briefly mentions considering climate.Footnote 155 The Commonwealth EIA law contains no requirement for a decision-maker to consider greenhouse gas emissions, which has spurred several unsuccessful lawsuits using the Reef to argue for an implicit requirement to consider climate.Footnote 156 This is a significant gap in comprehensiveness of the Reef SEA’s coverage of important impact types (a key regulatory design feature for cumulative environmental problems), especially for a jurisdiction that prominently produces and exports emissions-intensive products.
Although the Reef Authority’s strategic assessment report committed to continue implementing its climate adaptation plan,Footnote 157 by 2019, staffing changes had removed its climate unit and the plan was defunded.Footnote 158 According to independent reviewers, this shifted the Reef Authority from “being a ‘consequence maker’ advocating for effective climate mitigation to being a ‘consequence taker’ responding to climate change impacts with actions to improve Reef resilience as part of an adaptation strategy.”Footnote 159
This situation is now changing. The Reef Trust now invests significantly in a Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program – said to be “the world’s largest effort to help an ecosystem survive climate change”Footnote 160 – which is cofunded by nongovernment organizations. Its research and development programs investigate Reef cooling through marine cloud brightening and climate-resilient coral larvae seeding (a coping intervention strategy) and restoring carbon-storing coastal and marine ecosystems (a restoring intervention strategy).Footnote 161 Implementing the strategy, however, would require regulatory reform.Footnote 162 Despite this shift in attention, these changes are disconnected from interventions related to water quality, raising the question of how interventions dealing with climate change, and the Reef, respectively, might better connect decision-making, and deal with the most threatened areas in terms of cumulative stress.
9.5.4 Connecting across Problems and Impacts: Possibilities and Prospects
The earlier analysis shows that the Reef SEA did not effectively connect decision-making across the regulatory silos that correspond to two separately conceived cumulative environmental problems: first climate change, focusing on the climate in general as the matter of concern; and second, conceiving of the Reef as the matter of concern, affected by both climate change and other impacts such as water pollution. The Reef SEA worked like a camera taking a zoomed-in photo of the Reef while missing the larger panorama of activities contributing to climate change that threatens the Reef. An alternative approach would connect decision-making across Australia’s regulatory silos for climate mitigation and Reef impacts.
The most obvious and ambitious way to connect decision-making about protecting the climate and protecting the Reef would be to design climate-protecting interventions in a way that considers the Reef’s climate-related vulnerability. Assessment and approval requirements for coal mines could follow an emerging approach to recognize all downstream emissions in the EIA context,Footnote 163 and compare these emissions to a cumulative threshold of global emissions informed by the Reef’s vulnerability to determine the project’s significance. Such an approach would implement that urged in multiple largely unsuccessful lawsuits under Australia’s environmental laws.Footnote 164
A less ambitious form of regulatory link-making between climate change and water pollution impacts on the Reef could recognize the nontarget effects of offset and credit regimes. These regimes apply to both water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (Table 9.1(b)). Cattle graziers currently may generate carbon credits by sequestering carbon in soil, but this mechanism does not consider benefits for sediment pollution;Footnote 165 conversely, planned savanna burning that generates carbon credits does not consider impacts on sediment production.Footnote 166 Making these links would better harness synergies and avoid mutual undermining between interventions directed at overlapping problems.
A further alternative would be to better link interventions from an adaptation perspective. This could involve designing water quality interventions to prioritize areas of the Reef most at risk from climate change using cumulative exposure mapping, supported by further research on the interactions between these impacts, if necessary. Enforcement of interventions could equally be prioritized on this basis.
With wider terms of reference, the Reef SEA could also have generated insights from comparing across types of impacts and activities to reveal inconsistencies and gaps. Such insights could help assess issues of fairness, or inform revisions to interventions to increase comprehensiveness – a key design feature for regulating cumulative environmental problems. Unlike coal mines, cattle graziers need not report their greenhouse gas emissions nor comply with an emissions cap, but they benefit from being able to produce carbon credits and access grants for emissions-reducing activities in the same way as coal mines (Table 9.1(a) and (b)). Cattle graziers need no approval for activities that produce sediment in a diffuse way, while coal mines do in relation to point sources (Table 9.1(b)).
Similar comparisons could also reveal possibilities for change by identifying regulatory mechanisms that apply only in respect of one impact type, but theoretically might be suitable for another. Minimum land management standards and extension-based approaches to encourage good land management practices apply to cattle grazing to control sediment, but not yet to limit greenhouse gas emissions, which instead attracts carbon credits (Table 9.1(b)). Different forms of mandatory and voluntary disclosures (regulatory sermons) apply in the carbon context, but not yet in relation to water pollution. Carbon offset systems exist to soften burdens of regulatory sticks related to greenhouse gas emissions and mining point source pollution, but appear not to have been explored for grazing. Subsidized loans are available for greenhouse gas–reducing investments but not the equivalent for water pollution.
International concern about cumulative impacts on the Reef remains strong, and in 2022, UNESCO formally urged Australia to accelerate progress meeting water quality targets and revise the Reef 2050 Plan to incorporate greenhouse gas emissions mitigation.Footnote 167 Relevant regulatory revisions were yet to be made at the time of writing. However, after a change in national government, there are early signs of regulatory change to strengthen Reef-related intervention in relation to climate change mitigation. In the wake of major coral bleaching in early 2024, and in parallel with Australia’s formal response to UNESCO, the Reef Authority released a new climate plan. The plan continues an adaptation focus, but complements it with “new programs” for climate mitigation through influencing activities both within and outside its geographic jurisdiction.Footnote 168 These include advising government about climate change impacts on the Reef “and the need to urgently reduce CO2 emissions,”Footnote 169 encouraging “transformative actions,” “speak[ing] for the Reef and advocat[ing] for stronger global action” in international fora, and engaging with the Australian Government’s emission reduction strategies and carbon sequestration initiatives.Footnote 170 Just as notably, the Reef Authority committed to “use its statutory powers or other management tools” to reduce carbon emissions from Reef users such as tourism vesselsFootnote 171 – a symbolically important step.
These statements and commitments lie within the Reef Authority’s existing statutory advisory purposes and functions,Footnote 172 and they are objectively modest, but in the context of the Reef SEA and its previous approach, they are extraordinary. They propose to use information to make links across regulatory silos: feeding information about climate change impacts on the Reef into government structures that have the capacity to influence interventions for greenhouse gas mitigation. At the very least, the proposal to regulate tourism vessels draws attention to other, more substantial contributors to climate change, such as coal mining. Controls over coal mines lie within the jurisdictions of the Queensland and Commonwealth governments that might receive relevant advice from the Reef Authority, perhaps informed by the Cumulative Impacts Management Policy that would seem capable of applying to greenhouse gas emissions.
9.6 Conclusion
SEA has long been considered well-suited to dealing with cumulative impacts, enabling proactive, larger scale assessment of multiple sources of impact. Ideally, SEA connects information and regulatory by influencing decisions about individual projects, and perhaps land use plans. The Reef SEA suggests this view underestimates the power of SEA to influence cumulative impacts from the perspective of regulatory intervention and information. In fact, SEA can be structured not only to influence project approvals but also to entrench and expand ongoing monitoring programs (information), and influence other, impact-focused laws, and thereby rules that influence activities that are cumulatively significant but do not trigger EIA, like cattle grazing.
In relation to water quality, the Reef SEA influenced existing regulatory interventions that provide for reducing and offsetting harm and restoring, and facilitated new interventions that diversified the regulatory mix, important for cumulative environmental problems. However, the Reef SEA viewed climate change solely through the lens of adaptation, overlooking greenhouse pollution from the same activities as contribute to sediment pollution, where both impact types are “external” to the Reef, both involve legacy impacts, and both involve data challenges. This blinkered view largely persisted long after the SEA.
SEA offers great potential to connect interventions that deal with different impact types across cumulative environmental problems. The Reef SEA might have better connected water quality interventions and both climate adaptation and mitigation. SEA scoping likely played a key limiting role in relation to mitigation. The analysis here has suggested possibilities to better connect interventions with varying degrees of ambition. However, continued flows of information under international arrangements for protecting World Heritage are even now demonstrating the enduring and adapting characteristics of the Reef SEA and its policy progeny.
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