If we intend to provide a better life, and a better world, for future generations, we can’t ignore the quality of the environment we leave them.
– John Kasich
The 2015 ACT State of the Environment Report includes recommendations to the ACT Government on the topics of climate change, human needs, air, land, water, biodiversity and heritage. The recommendations relate to the areas where our assessments of these topics show that management decisions are not always resulting in improvements to environmental outcomes.
The recommendations are therefore presented where opportunities exist for the ACT Government to make strategic and practical decisions to improve environmental outcomes. The recommendations are designed to focus effort where it is likely to have the greatest effect, by identifying opportunities to integrate multiple environmental outcomes into government policies and programs.
The recommendations chapter also discusses longer-term environmental challenges where no clear government response is identifiable, or where potential solutions are long term, complex, require significant investments or involve major behavioural change by the whole community. These issues have been raised to stimulate thought, discussion and debate in the hope this may result in innovative approaches being brought to light.
The 2015 recommendations are listed below. The full version of the report includes progress against recommendations made in the 2011 State of the Environment Report, and the reasoning behind the recommendations made in the 2015 report.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1
That the ACT Government ensures that the new Climate Change Adaptation Strategy is best practice, cross-sectoral and integrated into other key strategies, with effective monitoring, reporting and evaluation.
Recommendation 2
That the ACT Government implements the monitoring, reporting and evaluation commitments in the ACT Planning Strategy and the ACT Waste Management Strategy, and details those for the ACT Nature Conservation Strategy.
Recommendation 3
That the ACT Government considers integrated monitoring, reporting and evaluation of all the key strategies to guide achievement of improved sustainability outcomes for the ACT, including the ACT Planning Strategy, AP2, Transport for Canberra, the ACT Water Strategy, the ACT Nature Conservation Strategy and the ACT Waste Management Strategy.
Recommendation 4
That the ACT Government requires that the air quality impacts of future urban developments are explicitly considered – in particular, the impact of pollution from domestic wood heaters in greenfield developments.
Recommendation 5
That the ACT Government provides resources to fully implement priority actions in the ACT Nature Conservation Strategy, particularly actions aimed at developing foundation knowledge of landscape function and soils in the ACT.
Recommendation 6
That the ACT Government uses strategic environmental assessments as provided for in the Planning and Development Act 2007 to reduce and manage cumulative and cross-sectoral impacts on the environment, and take opportunities to improve sustainability outcomes.
Recommendation 7
That the ACT Government assess the consequences of, and understand the driving mechanisms behind, the poor condition of water resources as shown by the indicators for total nitrogen, turbidity, chlorophyll-a and ecological biodiversity, and assess the need for collecting more information for indicators with little available data.
Recommendation 8
That the ACT Government provides the necessary resources to complete the next phases of the Conservation Effectiveness Monitoring Program.
Recommendation 9
That the ACT Government formalise biodiversity conservation data collection and storage protocols and procedures, to integrate reports commissioned by different agencies with existing government data.
Recommendation 10
That the ACT Government and the ACT Heritage Council commence a program of audits to assess and monitor the condition of heritage places and objects on the ACT Heritage Register.