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Amid powerful calls for action on global biodiversity loss, doctors urge protection of takayna/Tarkine rainforest

As a global summit on biodiversity opens in Montreal, in the two related articles below we report on powerful calls for governments to stop the destruction of nature, while doctors in lutruwita/Tasmania urge the Federal Government to protect globally significant takayna/Tarkine rainforest.


Melissa Sweet writes:

Humanity, with our “bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth”, has become “a weapon of mass extinction”, the head of the United Nations has warned.

In a powerful speech opening a global summit on biodiversity, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said multinational corporations “are filling their bank accounts while emptying our world of its natural gifts” and that “ecosystems have become playthings of profit”.

He called for COP15 delegates to produce a Global Biodiversity Framework that “beats back the biodiversity apocalypse by urgently tackling its drivers – land and sea-use change, over exploitation of species, climate change, pollution and invasive non-native species”.

Such a framework should address the root causes of the destruction of nature, he said, nominating these as harmful subsidies, misdirected investment, unsustainable food systems, and wider patterns of consumption and production.

Rather than waging war on nature, humanity needed to declare peace, and he said this requires governments to take three concrete actions:

First, governments must develop bold national action plans across all ministries, from finance and food, to energy and infrastructure. These should re-purpose subsidies and tax breaks away from nature-destroying activities towards green solutions like renewable energy, plastic reduction, nature-friendly food production and sustainable resource extraction. They should recognise and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, who have always been the most effective guardians of biodiversity. As well, National Biodiversity Finance Plans should help close the finance gap.

Second, the private sector must recognise that profit and protection must go hand-in-hand. That means the food and agricultural industry moving towards sustainable production and natural means of pollination, pest control and fertilisation. It means the timber, chemicals, building and construction industries taking their impacts on nature into account in their business plans. It means the biotech, pharmaceutical and other industries that use biodiversity sharing the benefits fairly and equitably. It means tough regulatory frameworks and disclosure measures that end greenwashing, and hold the private sector accountable for their actions across every link of their supply chains. And it means challenging the relentless concentration of wealth and power by few that is working against nature and the real interests of the majority. Businesses and investors must be allies of nature, not enemies.

Third, developed countries must provide bold financial support for the countries of the Global South as custodians of our world’s natural wealth.
We need a mechanism that can ensure developing countries have more direct, simpler, and faster access to much-needed financing. We know all too well the bureaucratic hurdles that exist today. International financial institutions and multilateral development banks must align their portfolios with the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. As a global community, we need to stand with all countries as they protect and restore their ecosystems following decades and centuries of degradation and loss.

Guterres said Nature is humanity’s best friend. “Without nature, we have nothing. Without nature, we are nothing. Nature is our life-support system. It is the source and sustainer of the air we breathe, the food we eat, the energy we use, the jobs and economic activity we count on, the species that enrich human life, and the landscapes and waterscapes we call home.”

The UN News reports that the conference is expected to lead to the adoption of a new Global Biodiversity Framework, and it is hoped this framework will have a more lasting impact than the previous version: at COP10, in 2010, governments agreed to strive for ambitious targets by 2020, including halving natural habitat loss, and implementing plans for sustainable consumption and production.

However, a UN report showed that not a single target had been fully met. Meanwhile, the planet is experiencing its largest loss of life since the dinosaur era ended: one million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction.

According to a report in The Guardian, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is launching a Biodiversity Council, a scientist-led thinktank based at the University of Melbourne.Meanwhile in the article below, four doctors based in lutruwita/Tasmania call for Plibersek to protect globally significant takayna/Tarkine rainforest in the state’s north-west (read more about campaigns to protect these area here).


Lydia Birch, Darren Briggs, Elizabeth Haworth and Felicity Rea write:

As doctors in Tasmania, we urge the Minister to take immediate action to stop the construction of a tailings dam in takayna for a range of health reasons. In the medical profession, we are critically aware of evidence linking climate change to a significant decline in human health.

It makes no sense to destroy hundreds of hectares of pristine carbon-absorbing native forest for a polluting dam when the single most effective climate action Tasmania should take now is to cease native forest logging.

We were among 250 doctors and medical students who in 2020 signed an open letter to the Tasmanian Premier calling for an end to native forest logging based on health concerns. This position aligns with our Hippocratic Oath, our most profound undertaking as medical professionals:  “first, do no harm”.

Since our letter, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared a ‘Code Red for humanity’, indicating we are at a crossroads. We still have time to act, but only just.

What instead do we see?  Nonsensical governmental inaction at state and federal levels, inaction that escalates threats to human health in Tasmania and beyond.

And what a natural environment is takanya! The region meets seven of 10 possible criteria that would make it eligible for World Heritage-listing. The vast cool temperate rainforest is one of the most carbon-dense forests known to humanity – and the value of that cannot be overstated at this moment in history. In what kind of world does a government endorse the destruction of an estimated 350 football pitches of wilderness in a climate emergency for a company’s short term profit?

Globally climate change is already responsible for countless deaths from a variety of causes, and what we are beginning to see is just the melting tip of an iceberg. Climate change’s higher temperatures, more extreme weather events and increasing frequency and severity of bushfires present obvious direct risks to human life.

But with each event comes a wave of indirect negative impacts. Bushfires, for example, exacerbate many diseases including asthma, emphysema, heart attacks and strokes, along with severe psychological distress. The hidden death toll from the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 stands at more than 400, mostly from the effects of smoke inhalation.  Increasing rates of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in young people – who DO understand the urgent need for climate action – can be partly attributed to their despair at inadequate response by Governments to the crisis.

Our concerns over climate change are shared by many of our representative organisations including the Australian Medical Association and Doctors for the Environment.

Minister, please say no to the dam to protect our forests and their important carbon stores as a public health priority for our future.

• Signatories: Dr Lydia Birch (Emergency Registrar); Dr Darren Briggs (General Practitioner), Dr Elizabeth Haworth (Public Health Physician); Dr Felicity Rea (General Practitioner).

Dr Darren Briggs, pictured in the takayna/Tarkine rainforest. Photo supplied.

For more information on COP15

All sessions will be streamed live at cbd.int/live and see the main schedule.

The Conversation: COP15: three visions for protecting nature on the table at the UN biodiversity conference

Reuters Explainer: COP15: Why the world needs a new deal to protect nature

Follow #COP15 on social media.


See Croakey’s archive of articles on the environmental determinants of health

 

 

 

Comments 3

  1. Andrew says:

    The claims made in this article about Tarkine are misleading and some are simply untrue. The area set aside for the proposed MMG tailings storage Facility is not hundreds of hectares of pristine native forest as claimed. Any review of publicly available harvest records shows that timber harvesting occurred in the area as recently as 2009. Claiming the area has world heritage values is also a long stretch considering that the area was previously not considered to be of enough significance to be listed on the former register of National Estate. A review of the RNE spatial layer shows that the MMG lease is well clear of any area with national estate values.

    Claiming that the area is wilderness is also a furphy. According to the national wilderness inventory index, the wilderness quality of the proposed site is no different from the bush 1km west of the Cascade brewery in Hobart. All core wilderness in the NW of Tasmania was mapped many, many years ago for the Australian Heritage Commission. In a 1980’s UTAS report to the commission on wilderness, the accompanying maps show core wilderness areas such as Savage River, clearly delineated with protective buffer zones around them. These identified high-quality wilderness areas were nowhere near the proposed MMG site then and to my knowledge havent moved in the ensuing years. In fact, all of these key wilderness areas have been protected in the State’s reserve system for many decades.

    The original area of the Tarkine when first discussed was substantially smaller than what it has been expanded to by enviro groups today. In 2004, it was listed by the Federal and State governments as an area of 332,000ha, yet now seems to have grown to nearly 500,000ha! No wonder it is still listed by the nomenclature board as an unbounded locality.

    The MMG proposed TSF was also an area very specifically chosen for sustainable old-growth rainforest timber harvesting by the Australian Conservation Foundation, The Wilderness Society and Environment Tasmania under the Tasmanian forest agreement.

    Maybe Doctors should stick to Doctoring, or at least get the facts right when discussing such an issue.

  2. Felicity Rea says:

    Doctors have both the right and responsibility to speak out on issues relevant to human health. The IPCC reports have demonstrated with high confidence, a direct link between deforestation and the increasing effects of climate change on both physical and mental health.

    We do not argue about the size of the Tarkine under threat, having already confirmed that the proposed tailings dam in the MMG site is within the Tarkine boundaries as defined in the Australian Heritage Database. We support the preservation of the Tarkine, no matter how Denman classifies its components.

    There is no case for sacrificing native forest, known to be an important carbon sink, when plantation forests in Tasmania can provide all the timber we need.

    Climate change is the biggest threat to health this century.

    Action on climate change is everybody’s business. Doctors will continue to speak out to highlight how ecosystem degradation including deforestation contributes to climate change and its well documented effects on human health.

    (References available on request.)

    Lydia Birch
    Darren Briggs
    Elizabeth Haworth
    Felicity Rea

    • Andrew says:

      A couple of points here.

      Firstly, native forest harvesting is not deforestation, despite environmental groups’ attempts to portray it as such in Australia. The definition of deforestation is “the permanent conversion of forest to another land use or significant long-term reduction of tree canopy cover. This includes conversion of natural forest to tree plantations, agriculture, pasture, water reservoirs, and urban areas; but excludes logging areas where the forest is managed to regenerate naturally or with the aid of silvicultural measures.” This definition is internationally accepted and widely used by bodies such as the UN and the WWF. Even the Guardian both in Australia and the UK makes this distinction. You can’t just make up your own definition of deforestation to suit an agenda.

      Secondly, if native forest harvesting in Tasmania was deforestation, then how could previously harvested and regenerated areas of native forest have been assessed by UNESCO as being of such high-quality forest that they were of outstanding universal value to the world and included in the 2013 World Heritage extension? Quite simply they could not have been and these areas would have been rejected.

      The harvesting of timber in Tasmania provides a range of products from fibre, engineered wood, and solid timber products, all that sequester carbon as well as provide a pivotal role in displacing higher embodied energy building products such as steel, concrete, and aluminium. Take a look at the excellent work conducted by UTAS CSAW in this arena. The substitution of less sustainable products with wood and fibre products is happening throughout the world and an increasingly rapid pace, yet in Australia, we see complete opposition to native forest harvesting by green groups who would rather stick to their money-making opposition than join the rest of the world with progress on this issue.

      This substitution of timber and wood products has had and continues to have a far greater positive impact on climate and public health than ideological, unscientific opposition to sustainable forest harvesting.

      The claim that Tasmania can provide all the timber we need from plantations is completely false. You say that you have references to support this claim, and I would certainly welcome what information you have on this.

      The small amount of public and private plantations in Tasmania includes significant proportions of plantations grown purely for fibre and not solid timber products. Despite the small amount of solid timber produced in Tasmania, we still import a significant amount of hardwood to meet society’s needs. However, a significant amount of imported timber comes from areas such as West Papua. In fact, one well know hardware chain sells Merbau – nicely greenwashed under the FSC label, despite it (a)coming from old-growth tropical rainforests, (b) coming from critically endangered animal habitats such as the (biak spotted cuscus) (c) coming from concessions with ongoing worker deaths during harvesting operations, and (d) despite Merbau being listed as vulnerable by the IUCN which, as I am sure you are aware, means that it is at high risk of extinction in the wild. This is how perverse the anti-native forest approach is here in Australia.

      Finally, would it be possible for a statement of disclosure from the authors? Are any of the authors members of or affiliated with the key environmental organisations calling for an end to native forest harvesting or reservation of the Tarkine?

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