The Australian government recently promised and then shelved its key environmental protection commitments, including the establishment of an environmental protection agency with legal authority to prevent extractive projects from moving forward without strict oversight, and the development of a robust accounting of the nation’s ecological health via an environmental information authority. These programs were pledged as “nature positive” reforms by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek. At the COP16 U.N. biodiversity conference in Cali, Colombia, the Australian delegation pitched itself as the leader of such an agenda, encouraging other countries to follow suit. Plibersek’s Labor government then hosted the first Global Nature Positive Summit in October 2024, to great fanfare but with no substantial domestic legislation to curb environmental destruction since. No other nation has picked up the mantle to carry the agenda forward or host a subsequent conference, either, calling into question Australia’s leadership in this space. Joining the podcast to explain this situation is Adam Morton, the environment editor at The Guardian Australia. In this podcast conversation, Morton details what the Australian government promised, what it reneged on, the potential global influence of its backtracking, and why the nation’s environment will continue to degrade without intervention. “I think that the message internationally from this term in parliament has been that the resources sector is winning, and environmental protection is losing out. Now, that’s a very simple dichotomy, and it doesn’t have to be one or the other, but on every front at the moment, that’s how it feels in Australia.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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