The Conversation

Ruling the roost: flying-foxes can suddenly arrive in huge numbers when the right trees bloom. Justin Welbergen, CC BY-NC-ND

The conflict between urbanites and wildlife recently developed a new battleground: the small coastal New South Wales town of Batemans Bay, where the exceptional flowering of spotted gums has attracted a huge influx of grey-headed flying-foxes from across Australia’s southeast.

In response to intense and highly publicised community concern, federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has announced he will seek an immediate National Interest Exemption to facilitate dispersal of these bats – a move that risks undermining legal protections afforded to this and other threatened species.

Similar conflicts are occurring elsewhere in NSW, such as the Hunter region, where some unscrupulous members of the public lit a fire in a flying-fox roost at Cessnock.

With the ongoing expansion of the human urban footprint, animals are increasingly confronted with urban environments. Human encroachment into natural habitats generally negatively affects biodiversity. However, urban landscapes can present wildlife with an irresistible lure of reliable food supplies and other resources. While urban wildlife can provide a range of benefits to health and wellbeing, it can also be cause for frustration and conflict.

Urban human-wildlife conflict is a growing area of management concern and scientific research. But the research suggests that the current strategies for addressing NSW’s conflicts between humans and flying-foxes might not have the intended results.

Flying-foxes increasingly find themselves in urban areas. Justin Welbergen Ruling the urban roost

Australian flying-foxes are becoming more urbanised, and the noise, smell and droppings from their roosts can have huge impacts on local residents.

A fundamental problem underlying current approaches to urban roosts is a lack of understanding of the extraordinary mobility of flying-foxes. They are some of the most mobile animals in Australia, with movements that range from foraging trips of up to 120 km in a single night to long-distance nomadism covering thousands of kilometres in a single year.

Nomadic movements of an adult female grey-headed flying-fox, tracked over a period of four years and currently at Batemans Bay. John Martin & Justin Welbergen, unpublished

While roosts can remain active for decades, they are more like backpacker hostels than stable households, housing a constantly changing clientele that comes to visit local attractions. Roosts are connected into large networks through which flying-foxes move in response to changes in local food resources.

This explains the sudden influx in places such as Batemans Bay where preferred food suddenly becomes abundant. But it also highlights the importance of a national approach to flying-fox management and conservation.

Intense local flowerings of Eucalypts, such as spotted gums, produce copious amounts of nectar and pollen, which attract large numbers of flying-foxes and other species for several weeks. When a relatively small local flying-fox population that is tolerated by its human neighbours suddenly increases tenfold, it can place severe pressure on the local community.

Despite their transient nature, these influxes are often wrongly interpreted as population explosions, leading to calls for culling. In comparison, more humane tactics – such as using loud noise or vegetation removal to disperse the flying-foxes – can seem like a more balanced response. But does dispersal actually work?

Council workers in Charters Towers, Queensland, using ‘foggers’ to disperse flying-foxes from a local roost. Australasian Bats Society Shifting the problem elsewhere

There is now ample evidence to show that dispersals are extremely costly and can exacerbate the very human-wildlife conflict that they aim to resolve.

Most dispersals result in the flying-foxes returning the original roost as soon as the dispersal program ends, because naïve new individuals continue to arrive from elsewhere. Overcoming this can take months or years of repeated daily dispersal.

Other dispersals result in flying-foxes establishing new roosts a few hundred metres away, typically within the same urban environment in locations that we cannot control. This risks shifting the problem to previously unaffected members of a community and to other communities nearby.

Former flying-fox roost at Boonah, Queensland, that contained thousands of flying-foxes before it was destroyed in June 2014. Justin Welbergen

While flying-foxes are often portrayed as noisy pests, they serve our economic interest by providing irreplaceable pollination and seed-dispersal services for free. What’s more, those same bats that annoy people during the day work tirelessly at night to maintain the health of our fragmented forests and natural ecosystems.

So it is in our national interest to manage conflict at urban roosts, by using approaches that balance community concerns with environmental considerations.

Flying-foxes perform irreplaceable ecological roles in our natural environment. Steve Parish

To be considered “successful”, a dispersal should permanently reduce conflict to a level that is acceptable to the community without causing significant harm to the animals. However, dispersals are currently implemented at the local council level with little or no monitoring of the impacts in or outside the immediately affected area. This makes it hard to assess whether they have been successful.

For example, it is not uncommon for flowering to cease and flying-fox numbers to decline naturally during the period of active dispersal. This gives the community a false sense that a permanent solution has been achieved, when in fact the issues will recur the next time the trees blossom. There is thus an urgent need for urban roosts to be managed with properly defined and applied criteria for success.

Evidence-based management

Unfortunately, lack of research effort directed at “ugly” and “less popular” Australian animals means that very few evidence-based management tools are available to deal with contentious roosts.

Research targeting a few key areas would greatly help efforts to improve urban roost management. For instance, we do not know how flying-foxes choose their roost sites, which leaves us unable to design “carrot solutions” by creating more attractive roost sites elsewhere.

Intensive tree-flowering events are relatively infrequent and hard to predict. This means that it is difficult to prepare communities for a sudden influx of flying-foxes.

Furthermore, the acceptability of various flying-fox management options differs between sections of the community, so it is difficult to find optimal solutions. Social scientists are currently trying to help identify priority areas that promote long-term viability of flying-foxes while also easing conflict with humans.

The extreme mobility of flying-foxes means that a uniform federal approach for management is needed. Justin Welbergen/WildPhotos.org

Local, state and federal governments continue to allocate considerable funds for dispersal responses, even though such actions are high-risk activities for local communities and are unlikely to provide long-term solutions. We argue strongly that targeted research is needed to better inform land managers and affected communities of flying-fox ecology and provide them with low-cost, low-risk, evidence-based tools for dealing with urban roosts.

Flying-foxes don’t care about legislative borders, and state-based responsibility for wildlife management leads to discontinuity in approaches between jurisdictions. While flying-foxes are being monitored at the national scale, this initiative needs to be combined with a uniform federal approach for managing flying-foxes in our human landscapes. Otherwise, conflicts such as those faced by the residents of Batemans Bay will continue unabated.

Justin Welbergen is President of the Australasian Bat Society, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to promote the conservation of bats, and receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Peggy Eby represents the scientific community on the NSW Flying-Fox Consultative Committee, a not-for-profit stakeholder group that assists government in developing strategies for conserving and managing flying-foxes in NSW. She works as an ecological consultant to government and industry.

Ancient air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice. The Ellsworth Mountains Project

The unfortunate manner in which the latest phase of restructuring of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has played out has raised questions about Australia’s scientific capability and our ability to meet international responsibilities.

Faced with a budget cut of A$115 million, some 275 staff have apparently been identified for redundancy (though the final number may be as high as 317). Many of them are scientists contributing to long-term sea, air and climate science programs. The restructure is geared towards focusing CSIRO’s attention on the question, as framed by chief executive Larry Marshall, of “how can we find solutions for the climate we will be living with?”

The problem is that the programs at threat form the backbone of national and international research efforts. Virtually all of them are critical for helping us mitigate and adapt to future climate.

In 1979, the great scientist Carl Sagan wrote:

We live in an extraordinary age. These are times of stunning changes in social organisation, economic wellbeing, moral and ethical precepts, philosophical and religious perspectives, and human self-knowledge … Had we been born fifty years later, the answers would, I think, already have been in.

Australian scientists do indeed live in extraordinary times, but not necessarily for the best of the reasons. We may be living through a remarkable period of discovery, but recent events are a timely reminder that we must all work harder to manage the precious resources available to science if we’re not to threaten decades of investment and hard work.

Global response

The cuts have been met with very public protests, including those by former US vice-president Al Gore and the World Climate Research Program.

The most public of all staff to be earmarked (so far) for redundancy is Dr John Church. He is arguably the world’s leading expert on global sea level rise, a role that is more important than ever for adapting to the effects of climate change. It’s a decision so extraordinary it was even reported in The New York Times.

The facilities at risk from CSIRO cuts are used by research teams around the world.

The threat to close the “Ice Lab” involves a facility unique in the world for analysing ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice, helping understand future climate-carbon feedbacks.

The Tasmanian Cape Grim atmospheric station is crucial for monitoring greenhouse gas levels in the southern hemisphere. Only last week it confirmed CO₂ concentrations now exceed 400 parts per million, likely the last location on the planet to do so.

And just last month, CSIRO staff (of which Dr Church was a senior author) led a Nature Climate Change article showing anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have dominated global sea level rise since 1970. This is crucial work for understanding the source(s) of sea level rise. Such work can inform major infrastructure projects such as Brisbane Airport’s new runway, which is being constructed four metres above minimum required standards to accommodate future coastal flooding.

A wider problem

The funding gap CSIRO faces is a story common to many in the scientific community. Some sectors in the 2016 budget continue to enjoy some funding increases, such as the A$200 million for Antarctic science and A$100 million for Geoscience Australia.

But others have experienced cuts, most notably the Australian Research Council. The ARC has received a further 10% cut on the back of a succession of cuts over recent years.

Putting aside the effect on staff morale and the observation that government science spending has a strong multiplier effect on economic growth, the shortfall of funding in some quarters has immediate implications for how we best co-ordinate our efforts as a community.

Targeted, industry-focused projects are an essential part of a thriving scientific culture in Australia. But the threatened erosion of public science and the loss of capacity in areas of expertise CSIRO has taken decades to build represent a loss to all.

While the recent focus has been on climate science, there are salutary lessons from events of recent months if we are to minimise the impact on this research field and others in the future.

Where to from here?

Like any sector, science needs stability. The cuts have to stop and ideally reverse. If we keep trimming budgets, there will come a point where whatever capacity we have will only be a token effort.

The recent announcement that a CSIRO climate change centre will be established with 40 staff in Hobart is most welcome, but details are sketchy. A major concern regarding all these decisions are how these cuts and developments align with the efforts of the rest of the community.

Reports that the Bureau of Meteorology and Australian Antarctic Division learnt of the proposed cuts in capacity only after the decisions had been made are remarkable if true.

If a realignment of priorities in an institution is to take place, we need to make sure that these decisions are made with wider consultation and as much lead-in time as possible so the scientific community can make the best of a bad situation.

Recently, the Australian Academy of Science announced a welcome, urgent review of national climate science capability. (If you’re part of the community, submissions must be made by June 5, so hurry.)

Announcing cuts that have implications for others without discussion doesn’t help science, it only stifles findings. I hope the CSIRO climate change science centre has been developed in consultation with others and the 40 staff identified are the number truly required.

We need to make sure everyone is talking to one another. Only last week, the CSIRO released its Australia 2030 report, modelling various scenarios for Australia’s future. One scenario is called “weathering the storm”, in which geopolitical instability increases, driven by climate change and regional conflicts.

Faced with this situation, CSIRO suggests that “the energy market relies on tried and tested energy sources such as coal rather than further developing the potential of renewables”.

To suggest under future climate change we should continue to exploit fossil fuels is a remarkable statement from a national scientific body.

We may be half-way to the great leaps in knowledge Sagan prophetically described by 2030, but our understanding of the planet and how we mitigate and adapt to change has to be better co-ordinated as a community. We need to do a lot better.

Chris Turney receives funding from the Australian Research Council and undertakes research with colleagues in CSIRO. He is co-ordinator of the international Earth's Past Future Program (http://earthspastfuture.com/) and a director of CarbonScape (http://carbonscape.com/).

CSIRO has the know-how to develop commercial-scale green energy, with a clear plan and enough money. CSIRO, CC BY

On Friday, the Coalition made a low-key announcement of its new Low Emissions Technology Roadmap. To be developed by the CSIRO, it will aim to “highlight areas of growth in Australia’s clean technology sector”.

Unveiled jointly by the industry and science minister, Christopher Pyne, the environment minister, Greg Hunt, and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, the plan asks the CSIRO to identify the most promising ways to reduce emissions and to come up with plans to accelerate the development and commercialisation of Australian technologies such as solar panel components.

With the election campaign in full swing and announcements coming thick and fast, some will obviously get more airtime than others. Still, it was surprising to see this one quietly released on a Friday afternoon, given the seniority of the ministers involved, not to mention the importance of both renewable energy and greenhouse emission reductions as issues in this election.

It’s also not immediately clear what is actually involved in developing a “technology roadmap” like this. It might conceivably follow a model previously developed at the US Sandia National Laboratories, which identified three key elements:

• preliminary activity, which involves defining the project’s precise scope

• developing the roadmap, by deciding which technologies to include and defining specific targets for their development

• follow-up, by working out how the plan is actually going to be implemented.

The announcement in itself has kick-started the first of these three stages. CSIRO has been given the lead for the second element. But it is the third stage – the actual implementation – where roadmaps typically lose their way. Many governments have set roadmaps in the past, only for successive ones to choose different objectives and therefore move down a different path.

The key for any roadmap to deliver its intended outcome is the successful implementation of its proposals. The policy and, crucially, the funding committed to the project will determine whether the ultimate objectives are met.

Pay to play

In the announcement’s press release, Pyne said the roadmap would “achieve a large-scale technology transformation”. But looking at the steps above, this will require policy and investment in those technologies that are to drive the transformation process.

While this announcement supports previous policy pledges, notably the A$1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund uneviled two months ago, will this be enough to drive the crucial third stage of the roadmap: developing commercial-scale clean energy generation to the level required to make serious inroads into emissions reduction?

In the past Australia has tended to adopt the cheapest available energy technologies, particularly given that much of the electricity sector is moving from public to private-sector ownership.

Will this change now? Frydenberg’s statement that “the Coalition is committed to a technology-neutral approach to energy policy” would suggest that it may not.

With the minimal growth in electricity demand over recent years, new generation on a large scale will need to be more economical than existing assets, or else policy measures should be put in place to make the new technologies competitive.

Part of the Coalition’s plan, as also stated by Frydenberg, is to ”help identify opportunities for Australian businesses to be involved in the global energy supply chain, with the potential of creating new industries that create new jobs and growth in Australia”. History has shown that while Australia has been a very innovative nation, much of the technology developed here tends to move offshore.

Pyne added that “by 2018 Australian solar technology will be embedded in over 60% of the world’s [photovoltaic] panels”. But how much of this global supply chain has created jobs and growth in Australia?

Hunt also stated that the roadmap will help Australia meet its greenhouse emissions target, which calls for a 26-28% reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. But 2030 is not that far away, and the process of drawing up roadmaps, developing technologies and then commercially deploying them takes time. Support for existing mature technologies, such as solar and wind energy, must be continued in the meantime.

While existing agencies such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation support these technologies, ongoing funding is a constant subject of debate within the government. These bodies will jointly administer the new Clean Energy Innovation Fund, but if this new roadmap is to be a success, ARENA’s funding must continue beyond its currently planned expiry date of 2022, and the CEFC needs a longer business plan than the current one which runs to 2019.

In the meantime, it pays to think carefully about the initial phase for the roadmap: defining its precise scope. According to the announcement, the areas to be considered include “renewable energy, smart grids, carbon capture and storage, electric vehicles and energy efficiency” – all areas in which CSIRO has existing research programs. As such, it is well placed to understand the challenges, the investment needed, and realistic time frames for implementation. All of these need to be identified and quantified precisely, given that the plan only spans a few years.

Introducing innovative technology into an existing sector, which is already working, will always draw resistance, particularly from the operators (as well as equipment manufacturers, maintenance companies and fuel suppliers) of existing generation assets. But, of course, decisions about electricity generation have much wider effects than just the provision of energy.

The need to reduce emissions affects every aspect of how we will live our lives in the future. No major political party disputes the need to move from existing technology to a clean energy future. But policy, with sufficient financial backing, needs to be put in place now and supported by successive governments to have any chance of hitting the deadlines we face.

Craig Froome does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The 2015-16 El Niño has likely reached its end. Tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures, trade winds, cloud and pressure patterns have all dropped back to near normal, although clearly the event’s impacts around the globe are still being felt.

Recent changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures have been comparable to the decline seen at the end of the 1998 El Niño, although temperatures remain warmer than at the end of the most recent El Niño in 2010. Models suggest that ocean cooling will continue, with little chance of a return to El Niño levels in the immediate future.

The 2015–16 El Niño will go down as one of the three strongest El Niño events since 1950. Every El Niño is different, but typically the stronger the event, the greater its global impact. The 2015–16 El Niño was no exception, with wide-ranging effects felt around the world.

El Niño also added to the globe’s warming trend, making 2015 the world’s hottest calendar year on record. Early indications are that 2016 could be hotter still.

So as El Niño fades, let’s take stock of its impacts worldwide.

Typical impacts of El Niño across the globe. Australian Bureau of Meteorology Australia

El Niño is often, but not always, associated with drought in Australia. But the drying influence of the 2015-16 El Niño was initially tempered somewhat by very warm temperatures in the Indian Ocean. From April to August, above-average rainfall fell over parts of inland Western Australia, New South Wales and eastern Victoria.

But by spring, the Indian Ocean was helping El Niño, resulting in Australia’s third-driest spring on record, limiting growth at the end of the cropping season. A record early heatwave in October further reduced crop production in the Murray–Darling Basin.

However, the lack of heavy rains in the north and west meant reduced downtime for mining.

The northern wet season produced a record-low three tropical cyclones in the Australian region. The previous record was five, which happened in 1987-88 and again in 2006-07 – both El Niño years.

Fewer clouds and less tropical rain contributed to the most severe coral bleaching event on record for the Great Barrier Reef.

The combination of heat and low rainfall brought a very early start to the fire season, with more than 70 fires burning in Victoria and around 55 fires in Tasmania during October. Dry conditions in Tasmania also resulted in hundreds of fires being started by dry lightning in mid-January 2016. The fires damaged large areas of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, including areas of rainforest and bogs, which may not have seen fire for centuries.

The Pacific region

In Papua New Guinea, drought and frost led to crop failures and food shortages. Staple sweet potato crops in the highlands were severely damaged by August frosts – the result of El Niño reducing night-time cloud cover – which also destroyed wild plants that are usually eaten as a backup source of food.

Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa and Tonga experienced worsening drought. Islands closer to the Equator such as Kiribati and Tuvalu had intense rain causing flooding, as well as higher sea levels due to warmer waters and weaker trade winds.

Asia

In the Philippines, drought was declared in 85% of provinces. Indonesia experienced its worst drought in 18 years. Forest fires caused poor air quality over vast neighbouring areas including Singapore, Malaysia, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines.

In the Mekong Basin, delayed monsoon rains reduced rice production, with significant reductions in Vietnam. In Thailand, severe water shortages led to water rationing and delayed rice planting. The Thai government lowered its forecast for rice exports by two million tonnes. This led to some African countries increasing their imports, fearing a price rise.

Palm oil prices rose as supplies became limited due to drought in Malaysia and Indonesia. In April 2016, a heatwave set national temperature records for Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Northern parts of China experienced drought in 2015. Heavy rainfall in southern China persisted through the second half of 2015, with flooding and landslides recorded along the Yangtze River Valley. China’s December-to-February rainfall was approximately 50% above normal. In May 2016, heavy rain caused flooding and landslides in China’s Guangdong province.

In India, below-average monsoon rains in June to September led to reduced rice, corn, cotton and sugar output in 2015. Below-average rainfall between October and December also affected India’s wheat harvest. Major water shortages emerged in some areas, including Mumbai – the result of two years of failed rains.

Indian Premier League cricket matches were relocated from Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur due to water restrictions. Record heat affected the north and west of the country in May, setting a new national record of 51℃ in Phalodi.

Conversely, some southern parts of India had exceptionally wet conditions, with record-breaking rains and widespread flooding in Chennai in November and December. The city received over 300mm of rainfall on December 1, 2015; the wettest day in more than a century.

South and Central America

Peru experienced widespread flooding and mudslides in early 2016, with heavy rain leaving more than 5,000 people homeless. In Ecuador, flooding and landslides damaged properties and affected shrimp production.

More than 150,000 people were evacuated from flooded areas in Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina in December 2015. Some experts have linked El Niño flooding to outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika virus.

In January 2016, Argentina experienced its worst locust plague since 1954, following heavy rains and warm temperatures. Heavy rains returned to Argentina and Paraguay in April 2016, causing large agricultural losses.

In contrast, Colombia experienced drought and forest fires, which caused severe damage to crops and pushed up food prices, leading to malnutrition in some areas. In November 2015, the United Nations warned that 2.3 million people would need food aid in Central America.

The Caribbean also experienced drought; Cuba had its most severe dry season in 115 years; Barbados, Dominica, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua, Barbuda and Saint Lucia experienced water shortages, with the latter declaring a national emergency. The Dominican Republic experienced serious agricultural losses.

Brazil had a particularly high number of forest fires during 2015, exacerbated by ongoing drought conditions in the Amazon region. Drought in Brazil and Colombia (and Indonesia) meant coffee prices soared as dry conditions affected all the major coffee-producing countries.

In contrast, excess rain in northeast Brazil flooded crops, leading to rises in the sugar price worldwide.

North America

In California, many hoped that El Niño would bring relief from five years of drought. But despite some regions getting heavy rain more typical of El Niño, leading to mudslides, El Niño failed to end the long-term dry.

In the southeast and south-central United States, rainfall was above normal. Major flooding occurred along the Mississippi River. Missouri received three times its normal rainfall during November and December 2015.

Warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures offshore meant warm water species such as sea snakes, red tuna crabs and hammerhead sharks were found on Californian beaches.

Africa

Drought meant that South African food production was around six million tonnes below normal levels — the lowest since 1995.

In Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique, maize prices were at least 50% higher than usual, with drought unlikely to break until rains in summer 2016–17. In the driest areas of Zimbabwe, more than 75% of crops were lost. In May 2016, Zimbabwean national parks put wildlife up for sale in a bid to save animals from drought.

The cost of chocolate hit a four-year high as a result of drought and lost production in the world’s major cocoa producer, Ivory Coast.

Drought also affected Ethiopia, Somalia, Swaziland, Zambia and parts of Madagascar, with more than 10 million Ethiopians in need of food aid.

In December 2015, Rift Valley fever was reported in East Africa. The disease is associated with heavy rainfall providing a fertile breeding ground for the mosquitoes that carry the virus.

In Tanzania, heavy rain destroyed crops and food reserves, while in Kenya heavy rains aggravated cholera outbreaks. In May 2016, landslides in Rwanda cost many lives and heavy rains damaged infrastructure and hundreds of homes.

For information on the current and forecast state of ENSO, keep an eye on the Bureau’s ENSO Wrap-Up.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Fixing water pollution on the Great Barrier Reef will take a huge effort. Reef image from www.shutterstock.com

Current measures are not enough to protect the Great Barrier Reef, according to experts in a government report released today.

After a year of careful analysis, the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce has delivered its final report to the Queensland environment minister, Steven Miles. This is part of efforts to resource the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan, which was designed to meet the challenges facing the reef.

The report is part of the response to the United Nations' concerns that the reef is in danger of irreparable damage – with declining water quality from farming and land-use change being a major driver. The reef narrowly missed being listed as “in danger” in 2015.

The Queensland government has committed A$90 million over the next four years specifically for water quality. The federal government has also committed funding, but it remains to be seen how much will be directed specifically to water quality concerns.

The report recommends the money should be directed at understanding and beginning to reverse the impact of sediment and nutrient from rivers flowing into the Great Barrier Reef.

By any degree, the taskforce has done well in terms of bringing together a wide range of opinions and perspectives on a potentially contentious issue — views that are unified around the report’s conclusions.

While the report is not about climate change, climate change is critically important to whether the plan will ultimately succeed or fail. Stronger storms, floods, droughts and underwater heatwaves will all make the task of solving the water quality issue even harder.

So there is an assumption that we will beat the climate change challenge through mechanisms such as the international commitments that Australia agreed to under the Paris Agreement in December 2015.

Starting to reverse the damage

The Great Barrier Reef and its river catchment are bigger than Italy. With problems going back over 100 years, A$90 million is not going to fix all of the problems, but it can start to significantly reverse the damage.

The Queensland government has committed to ambitious water quality targets adopted in the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan — for instance, reducing nitrogen runoff by 80% and sediment by 50% across the key catchments of the Wet Tropics and the Burdekin by 2025. As many have noted, these targets will not be achieved under current practice — even if farmers fully adopt best management practices — and the taskforce report agrees.

Angry voices on soapboxes won’t solve this monumental challenge. That will only come about through inclusive and considered processes — it needs a long-term, sustained and coordinated reef-wide strategy.

We must redefine how we manage — and therefore resource — the Great Barrier Reef system, from the ecosystems that thrive in it to the industries and communities that depend on it for the long term. That strategy should coordinate all existing but separate approaches.

We’ve been here before

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it — Australia has been here before with a complex environmental problem that crosses multiple borders. Particularly in the past 15 years, state and federal governments have attempted to undo a century of mismanagement in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Although water quantity is the issue in the basin, as opposed to water quality in the Great Barrier Reef, there are similarities.

The two systems are a similar size — the Murray-Darling Basin covers a million square kilometres, and the Great Barrier Reef half-a-million sq km. In both cases, productive industries such as farming cotton or cane closely interact with valuable ecological systems. Overall, they produce billions of dollars of annual revenue from food production, tourism and other industries.

In each case, international pressure (the RAMSAR convention on wetlands in the Murray-Darling, UNESCO for the reef) have played very significant roles in encouraging responsible actions from Australia.

Billions of dollars have been spent on the Murray-Darling — and similar investment is probably required for the Great Barrier Reef catchments. While action within the Murray-Darling system hasn’t been (and still isn’t) perfect, we can learn much from the experience.

Where to from here?

In our opinion, and drawing on the experiences in the Murray-Darling, the following principles should be core to any strategy for the reef.

First, recognise that a significant shift is required in how we manage and develop land next to the Great Barrier Reef. While this is politically, economically and socially difficult, the fallout will be greater if we don’t get this right.

Farmers must be enabled and supported to care for the land to deliver both economic outcomes and ecosystem services. They are the stewards of our natural capital as well as key contributors to our economy.

We’ll also need to take a small proportion of land out of production to form riparian strips, and incentives will need to be established to ensure the careful use of fertiliser, better use of cover crops, and the like. Again, these initiatives are occurring now, but we need to adopt a whole-of-system approach that corrals these actions into a coherent strategy.

The efficiencies introduced through the National Water Initiative and later the Murray-Darling Basin Plan did achieve such a shift there.

Second, acknowledge that nothing we do to address water quality issues makes sense if we don’t also address climate change as a major source of the problem. Any strategy to protect the reef has to include meaningful action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and vice versa. Solving the climate issue only to let the reef down on the water quality issue doesn’t make any sense either.

Third, full and enduring cooperation and coordination between the Commonwealth and Queensland governments are essential. Anything else risks duplication, redundancy, confusion and, more than likely, a monumental waste of money.

The political heat in the lead-up to the National Water Initiative, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the 2007 Water Act served only to diminish the opportunities for a lasting and meaningful solution to excessive water allocation in the basin.

Fourth, in support of the cooperative federalist approach, a statutory authority that oversees the implementation of the strategy — with appropriate financial incentives and regulatory powers — will be necessary. This authority would operate across Queensland river catchment and estuarine regions. We would argue that this should be a separate entity to GBRMPA, which already has its hands full managing the reef.

One of the successes from efforts in water reform was the National Water Commission, which played a crucial role in the implementation of the National Water Initiative. Its subsequent demise was regrettable.

Fifth, well-designed, market-based mechanisms work. Just as some efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are cheaper than others, we need to know which measures that reduce water quality are most cost-effective. If designed correctly, these mechanisms have the potential to drive innovation and game-changing ideas.

A water quality “trading scheme” should be explored. If done properly, such a market could prove to be enormously beneficial to farmers as well as the reef.

Finally, make sure the strategy has the resources to get the job done. While throwing money at the problem won’t solve it on its own (the billions spent in the Murray-Darling Basin proved that), the challenge will demand significant resources over the coming decade.

Such finance need not come from governments alone. If the principles above are implemented in a way that provides transparency and certainty to the market, then the private sector may be able to contribute.

These are the first steps of a journey that is critical for the long-term survival of the Great Barrier Reef. As the taskforce stresses, this is a journey that will require clever policy that adapts to a dynamic world.

The reforms to address the problems of the Murray-Darling Basin were triggered by the Millennium Drought. The recent coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef should inspire the same urgency.

And, if so, let’s hope that we are now truly on a pathway to a future for the Great Barrier Reef where its people, industries and ecosystems thrive into the future.

This article was co-authored by Robin Smale, director of Vivid Economics.

Karen Hussey receives funding from the Commonwealth Government and the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with WWF Australia and the TJ Ryan Foundation.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg undertakes research on coral reef ecosystems and their response to rapid environmental change, which is supported primarily by the Australian Research Council (Canberra), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Washington, D.C.), Catlin Group (London), and Great Barrier Reef Foundation (Brisbane). He is a member of the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce. He did not receive salary for writing this article.

Robin Smale is director of Vivid Economics. Vivid Economics is contracted to the Commonwealth Department of the Environment examining financing of conservation projects on the Great Barrier Reef, and has had previous contracts with Commonwealth Government and Government of New South Wales.

Australia is now pretty much the only major advanced economy where pollution levels are going up, not coming down. – Labor shadow minister for the environment, climate change and water, Mark Butler, speech to the National Press Club, May 18, 2016.

During a debate with environment minister Greg Hunt, Labor’s shadow environment minister Mark Butler said that Australia is “pretty much” the only major advanced economy where pollution levels are rising.

Is he right?

Checking the sources

When asked for data to support his assertion, a spokesperson for Butler referred The Conversation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN agency that oversees international climate negotiations. The spokesperson also referred us to the website of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which suggests that by pollution he meant “greenhouse gas emissions”. However, the spokesperson did not specify what data set the statement was based upon, nor what Butler defined as a “major advanced economy”.

The IMF defines a “major advanced economy” as the G7 nations (and Australia is not among its members). In this FactCheck, we aim to compare Australia’s emissions with a range of advanced economies including the G7 member countries, the EU bloc and a selection of others such as Iceland, Korea and New Zealand.

The Conversation also asked over what time period pollution levels were “going up” according to Butler, but didn’t hear back before deadline.

Nevertheless, there are some obvious data sets against which Butler’s statement can be tested.

How are Australia’s emissions trending?

Greenhouse gas emissions inventory data released in May by the Department of Environment show that Australia’s emissions (excluding land use, land use change and forestry or LULUCF) rose by 0.4% between December 2014 and December 2015. Emissions rose 1.1% if land-use and forestry emissions are included.

The report included the following graph:

National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (excluding Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry), annual, ‘unadjusted’ emissions, 2005 to 2015. Department of Environment

The graph shows that Australian emissions have essentially stagnated over the past decade. The data shows a slight decrease from 2012 to 2014 and then an increase from 2014 to 2015.

So Butler was right to suggest that Australia’s emissions are on the rise, based on the latest 12-month snapshot. But is Australia the only advanced economy where that’s happening?

How are other countries' emissions trending?

It turns out it’s not so easy to see if other advanced economies had an emissions rise between 2014 and 2015. There simply isn’t enough accurate global data available to do that comparison for such a recent and short time period.

To compare the most recent greenhouse gas emissions data (excluding land-use and forestry for which accounting rules vary) between countries, we used the PRIMAPHIST data set produced by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

This composite data set uses widely recognised data sources, including data from the UNFCCC and other UN agencies. It contains greenhouse gas data (aggregated in a standardised way) for all countries.

For developed countries, the data is extracted from national reports to the United Nations. For other countries, sources of data vary and more details are available here.

As we said, there’s not enough recent data available to see if Australia is the only country where emissions rose between 2014 and 2015. However, we can compare Australia’s emissions trends with other countries' emissions trends over a longer time interval – between 2000 and 2014 (the latest credible data available).

When we check what the PRIMAPHIST data shows about how Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions compare over that time frame with some of the other advanced economies (with the 28 European Union member states included as a bloc), here’s how it looks:

Don’t be deceived by what may appear to be a low level of Australian emissions (the blue line). It’s an illusion. In fact, Australia is among highest per capita emitters.

A more telling way to determine how greenhouse gas trends have changed over time is to look at emissions as a percentage of 2000 levels. Crunched this way, here’s how Australian emissions between 2000 and 2014 look when compared with a selection of advanced economies.

Australian emissions in 2014 were at 110.1% of the level they were in 2000. EU emissions in 2014 were at 82.43% of the level they were at in 2000. Calculations exclude emissions resulting from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) because there is no sufficiently reliable standardised accounting of LULUCF.

Our analysis of the PRIMAPHIST data shows that:

• Australia’s emissions rose fairly steadily until 2008 and have more or less stagnated since then.
• Overall emissions for the G7 economies (with the EU member states grouped together) have been decreasing, mostly since 2007, and in 2014 were 8.9% below 2000 levels.
• EU emissions show a strong decreasing trend.
• Emissions from Canada, Japan and the United States show large fluctuations since 2008.
• Australia’s emissions in 2014 were above those in 2000 – and this is unusual among advanced economies, but not unique.
• Emissions from Korea, Iceland and New Zealand were also higher in 2014 than they were in 2000.

What is most relevant, however, is what Australia’s emissions will do between now and 2030 and whether each nation is doing its fair share to limit global warming.

Verdict

Whether or not Butler was right really depends on what time frame you’re looking at.

Government data shows that from 2014 to 2015, Australia’s emissions increased but we can’t say for sure if Australia was “pretty much” the only major advanced economy that experienced a rise that year. There’s not sufficient reliable comparative data available for that year.

Zooming out to check longer-term trends, we know that Australia’s emissions in 2014 were above those in 2000. This is unusual among advanced economies – but Australia was not alone in this regard.

Comparing Australia’s emissions trend with the major advanced economies (the G7 countries with the EU bloc) between 2000 and 2014, Australia is the only one that had growing emissions over that time period. – Yann Robiou du Pont and Anita Talberg.

Review

The authors of this FactCheck are correct. Mark Butler’s statement is suitably vague, such that depending on the definition of “major economy” and the time frame that is examined, the claim is probably true. Plus, the caveat of “pretty much” gives the statement a bit of leeway. The lack of solid, comparable data from all developed countries as well as major developing countries for the most recent time period also makes the claim difficult to confirm with absolute certainty.

The fact that Australia’s emissions are increasing is worthy of mention in itself, especially in the light of the pledges made at the Paris CoP21 meeting. – Roger Dargaville

Have you ever seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.

Yann Robiou du Pont receives funding from the Melbourne International Engagement Award (MIEA) scholarship.

Anita Talberg receives an Australian Postgraduate Award PhD scholarship.

Roger Dargaville receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)

Airlines have saved energy by changing flight routes and modifying wings for better fuel use. Plane image from www.shutterstock.com

Companies could improve their profits by 2-10% each year by saving energy. That’s just one of the findings of ClimateWorks Australia’s Energy Productivity Index, a world-first attempt to assess companies' energy performance and help investors make better decisions.

Investors are increasingly engaging with companies to address the risks associated with climate change. Extreme weather events, carbon-intensive assets and greenhouse gas emissions are becoming part of a routine risk assessment on the impact of a company’s profitability.

While a company’s energy use can have a significant impact on its bottom line and environmental credentials, energy productivity and efficiency have traditionally been difficult for investors to assess. This is mainly due to a lack of tools to measure and assess energy use and poor levels of disclosure by companies.

My colleagues and I have developed a guide to help investors figure out how potential investments are performing. We assessed 70 companies across six industrial sectors: airlines, automobiles, paper, steel, chemicals and construction.

Saving energy …

Many industrial companies spend a huge part of their operating expenditure on energy – typically more than 15%.

Energy productivity generally refers to the amount of revenue per unit of energy, so improving energy productivity can greatly improve a business’s investment value.

We found that more than 70% of the companies analysed have significant room for improvement in their energy use. Even more startling is the wide variation between companies in the same sector.

In some sectors, the leaders are achieving energy productivity levels up to five times the levels of poorer performers.

For example, in the automobile sector, Toyota produces eight times more vehicles per gigajoule of energy used than the least productive company, Daimler.

… making money

We also found that improving energy efficiency (by using less energy) could significantly boost a company’s profit. Of all the sectors analysed, airline companies reported the largest savings.

United Continental reported annual savings of US$343 million in 2014. This was achieved through initiatives that reduce fuel use, such as improved flight planning, replacing old planes, washing engines and installing winglets.

And despite operating in an energy-intensive sector, steel company Arcelor Mittal achieved almost US$200 million in energy savings in 2014.

The analysis also shows that one-third of the companies analysed could boost their profit margins by more than 5% a year if they matched the performance of leaders in their sector.

Even accounting for upfront capital costs needed to achieve best practice, energy efficiency can still increase profits by 2-10% each year. Most energy initiatives could be paid off in less than three years.

Even a 2% improvement in profits for companies in the automobile sector would be equal to about US$100 million. To achieve an equivalent increase in profits from revenue growth, a company would need to sell an extra 90,000 cars each year.

Ranking companies

Several factors affect a company’s energy performance. We looked at three:

• Resilience to energy costs measured through how much a company spends on energy and its profitability. A company that spends less on energy and has greater profitability is more resilient to changes in energy prices.

• Energy productivity measured by a company’s current ability to generate revenue or increase its production per unit of energy used.

• Energy efficiency measured by a company’s efforts in identifying and implementing energy savings. We included the extra financial gain of a company matching the energy efficiency of leading performers.

While we were able to rank many companies, we found that many others are not disclosing sufficient data on energy use to be assessed. Of 181 companies that reported in the six sectors analysed, 73 had incomplete or insufficient data for benchmarking. Much improvement is needed on data availability and data quality.

The global goal

While improving energy performance may be great for the bottom line, there’s another big reason energy use is so important. According to the International Energy Agency, energy-efficiency gains could achieve about 40% of the emissions reductions required by 2050 to limit global warming to less than 2℃.

Engaging with companies in their portfolios to improve their energy productivity is a measurable and profitable way to reduce emissions and avoid dangerous climate change.

Improving energy productivity has benefits not just for those investors and companies directly involved, but for all of us.

Wei Sue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The dairy industry faces a number of welfare and environmental issues. Cow image from www.shutterstock.com

The Australian dairy farming industry is in a state of crisis. Cheap dairy products and fluctuations in both the domestic and global markets have taken a financial toll on farmers. Consumers have rallied to help struggling dairy producers.

But this is only half the problem. The true cost of dairy is also paid by dairy cows and the environment.

Welfare problems

Despite the idyllic image of outdoor farming, several industry practices negatively affect dairy cows. To meet production demands, dairy cows are subject to a continuous cycle of impregnation, induced calving and milking.

Tail-docking and horn removal are routinely performed without pain relief. Lameness is another major animal welfare problem, often the result of environmental pressures, such as tracks, herd size and handling. The average lifespan of a dairy cow is six to seven years, whereas generally cows can live for 20 to 25 years.

One of the most controversial issues is young “bobby” calves. A bobby calf is a newborn calf, less than 30 days old, who has been purposely separated from their mother. Immediately after separation, cow and calf call out and search for each other.

Most bobby calves are slaughtered within the first week of their life. Handling and transport pose added problems for young calves who have not developed herding behaviours, are vulnerable to stress, and are forced to go without their mother’s milk. Each year, 450,000 bobby calves are slaughtered.

Advocacy groups frequently uncover the routine abuse of bobby calves in Australian abattoirs and challenge the dairy industry to do something about it.

Yet aside from the wider ethical questions over the use and exploitation of animals, farmers are not legally doing anything wrong. This is because the treatment of animals operates in a legal context where animals are considered absolute property.

What’s more, farm animals are exempt from the provisions of anti-cruelty legislation. Codes of practice are practically useless, because they promote low welfare standards and are unenforceable.

The environmental impact

As well as systematic welfare problems, livestock farming is, both directly and indirectly, one of the most ecologically harmful human activities. The Australian livestock sector is worth A$17 billion and dairy cattle farming is a A$4.2 billion industry.

In Australia, livestock farming accounts for 10% to 16% of greenhouse gas emissions, with dairy farms contributing 19% of this, or 3% of total emissions. Methane emissions, from digestion and manure, and nitrous oxide from livestock are significant contributors. Globally, the livestock sector is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the world’s transport.

Livestock production accounts for 70% of all agricultural land, including the land used to grow crops to feed these animals. Animal agriculture is a key factor in land degradation, deforestation, water stress, pollution, and loss of biodiversity.

Livestock farming will also be affected by climate change, particularly changes in temperature and water. The quantity and quality of pasture and forage crops will also be affected. Diseases may increase due to fluctuating weather and climate.

Emissions can be reduced

Just as the energy sector is attempting to transition to low-carbon energy sources to tackle climate change, the agricultural sector needs to transition to an ethical and sustainable alternative.

From the current crisis, there are several opportunities for farmers to seize. Large transitions are possible in land use, production, output and profitability.

Places such as Gippsland in Victoria, which currently produces 19% of Australia’s dairy, have the opportunity for agricultural development based on apples and brassicas, such as broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, turnip and mustard. Some of these crops are already popular in the region. As a result of climate change and increasing temperatures, some areas will be more suitable than others.

While still in the stages of research, perennial grain crops – which store more carbon, maintain better soil and water quality, and manage nutrients better than annuals – have the potential to contribute to sustainable agriculture. New land uses could also include carbon plantings, biofuels and bioenergy crops. Investing into further research for alternatives to livestock farming is needed.

Some have argued that livestock emissions can be technically mitigated by modifying animal feed, better managing pastures, carbon sequestration and manure storage.

Welfare issues remain

But technical mitigation does not address the endemic animal welfare problems in the livestock industry.

Consumer demand is one of the most powerful strategies to combat animal welfare and environmental problems. Research shows that we must reduce food waste and losses in the supply chain and change our diets toward less resource-intensive diets, such as a plant-based diets. Doing so would cut emissions by two-thirds and save lives. It’s possible to eliminate animal suffering and reduce carbon emissions by reducing and replacing livestock production and consumption.

Alternatives to dairy milk include soy and almond milk. Soy milk is nutritionally comparable to dairy milk and has a significantly smaller environmental footprint.

Policy initiatives also need to address these issues. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s Livestock’s Long Shadow report recommends a policy approach that correctly prices natural resources to reflect the full environmental costs and to end damaging subsidies. In the interim, higher taxes on meat and other livestock products will be necessary to improve public health and combat climate change.

Denmark, for instance, is considering proposals raise the tax on meat, after its ethics council concluded that “climate change is an ethical problem”.

Governments everywhere need to have a transitional plan for livestock producers and workers – one that helps to cultivate the ethical and sustainable agricultural endeavours of the future.

Gonzalo N Villanueva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Technological advances have provided many benefits for environmental research. Sensors on southern elephant seals have been used to map the Southern Ocean, while tracking devices have given us a new view of mass animal migrations, from birds to zebras.

Miniaturisation of electronics and improvements in reliability and affordability mean that consumer drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs) are now improving scientific research in a host of areas. And they are growing more popular for wildlife management, as well as research.

Wildlife drones can be used in many different ways, from small multi-rotor units that can scare invasive birds away from crops, to fixed-wing aircraft that fly above rainforests to spot orangutan nests. UAVs have also been shown to provide more precise data than traditional ground-based techniques when it comes to monitoring seabird colonies.

Other industries, from mining to window-cleaning, are looking at using drone technology. Some forecasts predict that the global market for commercial applications of UAVs will be valued at more than US$127 billion. Given their usefulness in the biologist’s toolkit, the uptake of UAVs for environmental monitoring is likely to continue.

But this proliferation of drones raises questions about how best to regulate the use of these aircraft, and how to ensure that wildlife do not come to harm.

A UAV-mounted camera provides an aerial view of a Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) in North Sumatra. L. P. Koh Wildlife disturbance

Biologists carrying out field studies are typically interested in animals' natural state, or how their behaviour changes when conditions are altered. So it is important to know whether the UAVs disturb the animals and, if so, exactly how.

Of course, different species in different environments are likely to have very different responses to the presence of a UAV. This will also depend on the type of UAV and how it is used. Our current understanding of wildlife responses is limited.

A team of French and South African biologists observed the reaction of semi-captive and wild birds to UAVs. They found that the approach angle had a significant impact on the birds' reaction, but approach speed, UAV colour and flight repetition did not.

In polar regions, where UAVs may be particularly useful for sampling inaccessible areas, researchers found that Adélie penguins were more alert when a UAV was in range, particularly at low altitudes.

These studies, and similar observational studies on other animals besides birds, provide an initial understanding of wildlife behaviour. But the animals' behaviour is only one aspect of their response – we still need to know what happens to their physiology.

Cardiac bio-loggers fitted to a small number of free-roaming American black bears in northwestern Minnesota have shown that UAV flights increased the bears' heart rates by as much as 123 beats per minute. Even an individual in its winter hibernation den showed stress responses to a UAV flying above.

Interestingly, the bears rarely showed any behavioural response to the drones. This shows that just because animals do not appear visually disturbed, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not stressed.

A code of practice

We have developed a code of best practice, published today in the journal Current Biology, which seeks to mitigate or alleviate potential UAV disturbance to wildlife. It advocates the precautionary principle in lieu of sufficient evidence, encouraging researchers to recognise that wildlife responses are varied, can be hard to detect, and could have severe consequences.

Jarrod Hodgson launches a fixed-wing UAV on Macquarie Island. J. Hodgson

It also provides practical recommendations. The code encourages the use of equipment that minimises the stimulus to wildlife. Using minimum-disturbance flight practices (such as avoiding threatening approach trajectories or sporadic flight movements) is advised. The code also recognises the importance of following civil aviation rules and effective maintenance and training schedules, and using animal ethics processes to provide oversight to UAV experiments.

The code isn’t just food for thought for biologists. It is relevant to all UAV users and regulators, from commercial aerial videographers to hobbyists. Unintentionally or otherwise, such users may find themselves piloting drones close to wildlife.

Our code urges the UAV community to be responsible operators. It encourages awareness of the results of flying in different environments and the use of flight practices that result in minimum wildlife disturbance.

Low-impact conservation

As researchers continue to develop and refine UAV wildlife monitoring techniques, research that quantifies disturbance should be prioritised. This research will need to be multi-faceted, because responses could vary between species or individuals, as well as over time and in different environments. Greater knowledge could help us to draw up species-specific guidelines for drone use, to minimise disturbance on a case-by-case basis.

UAVs are a useful wildlife monitoring tool. We need to proactively develop and implement low-impact monitoring techniques. Doing so will expand our technological arsenal in the battle to manage Earth’s precious and increasingly threatened wildlife.

Lian Pin Koh receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jarrod Hodgson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

With a federal election looming, Australia’s top mandarins will once again be turning their minds to the incoming government briefs, the so-called blue book if the Coalition is returned and the red book if Labor is elected.

High on the agenda will be the organisation of the bureaucracy and it won’t get any trickier than climate change.

A question for an incoming government will be whether to re-establish a Department of Climate Change?

And if not, what should be done?

Pass the parcel

To state the obvious, the past decade of Australian climate politics has been anything but stable. Climate agencies have been established, abolished and merged at a rate reflecting the volatility of policy settings.

As prime minister, John Howard established Australia’s first standalone climate agency in 1998, the Australian Greenhouse Office. Six years later, it had been merged into the then Department of the Environment and Heritage.

As a statutory agency it was the first in the world dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it didn’t have a secretary to represent it at the highest levels of government.

This changed in 2007 with the election of the Labor government, which had campaigned on climate change. The new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, created the Department of Climate Change.

This was the first time that climate change was given its own secretary and its own minister in cabinet. Both were within the prime minister’s portfolio to underline the importance of climate change to the government.

Martin Parkinson, now the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, had the task of establishing the new department as its first secretary. It was to have a broad scope, with a remit not just for domestic climate policy, but also responsibility for international climate change negotiations. This had until that point resided in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). It was to be responsible for policy but not implementation.

The new department lasted only six years. In 2013, it was merged into the Department of Industry under then prime minister Julia Gillard, perhaps in the hope that it would be saved from the wrath of the Liberal opposition leader, Tony Abbott, whose likely victory had been based on abolishing Labor’s climate policies.

Abbott’s ascension to the prime minister’s office later that year coincided with another shift. History was repeated as climate change was sent to the Department of Environment, with the international negotiations returning to DFAT.

Do we need a climate department?

Little has changed since under Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership and, with this history, only a fool would predict what’s next. But with an election in the offing, there is every reason to believe more change is on its way.

There are three things to consider.

First, representation. Climate change is arguably the greatest economic and security threat that Australia faces. As a result, it demands proper representation within government.

That means that climate change needs to be represented by its own departmental secretary in the bureaucracy and its own minister in the cabinet. In practice this could mean either a separate department, or the explicit inclusion of climate change in the title of a department with additional responsibilities.

Second is the scope of the portfolio. At the domestic level, the causes of climate change – fuel combustion for energy, and land-use change – are associated with almost every domestic economic activity. This means that the climate portfolio must have a wide remit.

But a climate change department cannot be a department of everything. Where to draw the line?

Other countries (such as Denmark and the United Kingdom) have combined climate change and energy, but that implies that the land sector is of secondary importance. In Australia that would be a mistake because agriculture, for example, produces roughly 13% of our emissions and land use is hugely important in adapting to the changing climate.

At the international level, the fact that climate change is a global problem means there will always be a diplomatic dimension to the portfolio. DFAT’s prioritising of fossil fuel trade lost it the leadership of international climate change processes under Labor, but under Foreign Minister Julie Bishop DFAT has been more strategic.

The Paris climate summit last December represented a major shift towards integrating climate and development policies. Aid policies will play a critical role, so the case for continued DFAT leadership internationally is strong.

The third thing to consider is transparency. If Australia is to meet its emissions targets, which are likely to become more stringent over time, business is going to have to shoulder the burden of change. To be sure, an emissions trading scheme, or something like it such as a baseline and credit scheme, will require fundamental changes to the Australian economy.

Any climate change agency will need to be open and transparent in the way it consults and manages not only environment groups but business too. These will have to be brought on board if change is to proceed smoothly.

Doing what’s possible

On this basis, there are good reasons for the incoming government briefs to recommend the re-establishment of a department of climate change. This would satisfy the question of representation, especially if a well-respected senior public servant were appointed to the helm.

If it develops a transparent culture that is open to all stakeholders, Australia might just be able to establish a climate department for the long term.

What recommendations end up in the red or blue book we may never know. The choices of a new government may express simple political preference. Labor may be more inclined to bring climate change policy under one bureaucratic roof and the Coalition to maintain the status quo.

Regardless, history suggests we need top-down co-ordination to build coherent policy. If a department of climate change is too difficult, a standing committee of cabinet will be essential to avoid reliving past failures.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

AAP/Lukas Coch

Two weeks into a protracted election campaign, it is looking ever-more likely that climate change is to be placed way down the order of business – at least for the major parties.

The contest over climate change that characterised the previous three elections seems to have disappeared off the political radar despite the issue being more urgent than ever. Since the Paris climate summit, global average temperatures continue to break month-on-month records.

Just a few weeks after the summit, the North Pole was briefly not even able to reach freezing point – in the middle of winter. And just this month, Cape Grim surpassed a 400 ppm baseline minimum.

Then there is the truly frightening climate spiral developed by Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading. It shows what an El Niño amplified global temperature has climbed to. The spiral assumes a tight-knit but ever-expanding ball until April 2015, when the spiral line starts to separate dramatically from the ball. This year it careers dangerously close to the 1.5℃ threshold.

Climate spiral. Ed Hawkins The diminishing political and media spiral on climate

While global temperatures may be spiralling out of control, the opposite appears to be happening with the climate issue attention cycle in Australia.

Apparently, climate is less important than jobs and growth – or, in Labor’s case, health and schools.

A big part of this change in political climates is undoubtedly the Paris summit itself. The political triumphalism of the summit belies the scientific pessimism of so many climate scientists and activists.

Kevin Anderson from Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research even declared the summit to be “worse that Copenhagen”, in that it is based on out-of-date science, does not include aviation and shipping, and includes negative emissions in its scenarios for achieving abatement.

On the other hand, after the collapse of talks at Copenhagen, some activists see no choice but to climb aboard with the Paris agreement, insofar as it at least signifies a mainstream seachange in action – even if the actual measures are inadequate. The INDCs that came out of the conference still put the world on a path to 3.5℃.

Yet so many politicians from around the globe have sought to convince their constituents that the climate problem is all but solved. The Coalition is banking on such a sell to the Australian electorate as it gambles with a climate attention minimisation strategy. Much of this sell has been left to the “best minister in the world” Greg Hunt, both before and after the Paris summit.

Hunt has already claimed success on meeting the 2020 target, and with strategies to meet the 2030 target.

Little of the Government’s progress in meeting the 2020 target is due to reducing emissions. Rather it has been the reduction in land-clearing, consumer-driven domestic solar, and the decline in manufacturing that have been decisive in meeting the 2020 targets.

The Guardian’s Lenore Taylor has pointed out that while the Coalition is bringing back the “carbon tax” scare campaign of 2013, its own scheme would have to draw on the “safeguard mechanism” component of Direct Action – which is itself a disguised ETS – to have any chance of meeting the targets.

Short of leaning on this mechanism, the only other option the Coalition has is to increase the taxpayer-funded emissions reduction fund to a level that would make a mockery of any claims to budget responsibility.

Add to this the fact that recent academic research on Direct Action has reaffirmed its status as a form of corporate welfare that is allocated to projects that would have happened anyway. And all this is in an Australia that has increased its already high emissions 3% since 2000.

Shifting voter attitudes on climate

But have Hunt’s strategies worked on the Australian electorate? Not according to a recent ReachTEL poll of 2,400 respondents on May 9, which revealed that 56% believed the government needed to do more to tackle global warming.

64% said they would be more likely to vote for a party that has a plan to source 100% of Australia’s electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and hydro in the next 20 years.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seems to have switched off his personal barometer on climate as an issue that is too politically fraught. In 2010, he said:

We know that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic … We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet and to the generations that will come after us.

But since then, Turnbull appears to have sacrificed his convictions to the climate-illiterate backbench of his party.

Labor has not done much better. While it has more ambitious 2030 abatement targets than the Coalition, it has been particularly silent in reminding voters of its climate policy alternative.

Labor and the Greens

Both major parties have opted to entrench their duopoly by not going after big targets on any of the issues that are usually recycled at election time.

Instead, much airtime has been spent in the opening weeks of the campaign attacking the Greens. Liberal ministers take every opportunity to pillory any alliance between the Greens and Labor. Last week, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told Fairfax Media:

We see them very much on a unity ticket. In our judgement, Labor and the Greens are now on an anti-business, anti-jobs, and anti-growth unity ticket.

In the same week, Turnbull labelled Labor’s proposal to double the intake of refugees as a “gesture to the Greens” on the back of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s attack on the Greens’ asylum-seeker policy.

But, curiously, Labor and the Greens are at war themselves, or at least they are desperately giving the appearance they are. According to Michael Cooney from the Labor thinktank the Chifley Research Centre and Ben Oquist from the Australia Institute, Labor and the Greens have attacked each other because nearly every inner-city seat the Greens have a chance of winning for the first time are Labor-held.

The Greens are also distancing themselves from Labor because they want to capture the anti-politics vote. This is best achieved by showing yourself to be radically different from the major parties.

Labor, on the other hand, is almost forced into attacking the Greens because of the long-run stigma that News Corp papers have attached to any such alliance. During the first days of the election campaign, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian were jumping in with stories that no major party would ever form government with the Greens.

In contrast to the 2013 election campaign, the Tele even had a pro-Labor story “Save Our Albo" over the Greens’ challenge to Anthony Albanese’s inner-city seat of Grayndler.

But nothing much has changed. Back in the 2010 federal election, the The Australian declared the pride with which it had smashed any alliance between the Greens and Labor, and that the Greens:

… should be destroyed at the ballot box.

In October the same year Rupert Murdoch referred to the “bloody Greens” as a party that would ruin Australia’s economic prosperity.

What is clear to the Coalition, Murdoch, and big business in Australia is that Labor and the Greens must be permanently isolated from each other in a sustained ideological crusade. Failing to achieve this would spell nothing short of game over for the Coalition.

The entire crusade, which is based on castigating the Greens as a loony left party that would bring down the Labor Party, requires so much journalistic theatre, compared to what could more easily be done with the Liberal-National Party marriage of convenience. One is a party of agrarian socialists, and the other a party serving mining capital and finance capital. But News Corp has been particularly disciplined at ignoring any of the tensions that these parties have had over the years.

Were Labor to form an alliance with the Greens it could take great leadership on climate. But there are a great many forces arraigned against them achieving a left-progressive coalition.

Whether the Labor Party has the courage to come out and challenge the Coalition to a contest over climate remains to be seen.

The Greens, for their part, are making many more inroads into this election than the last. They certainly have the strongest climate policy, with a renewable energy target of 90% by 2030. The ReachTEL poll referred to earlier shows the Greens have four times the primary vote than the National Party.

The Greens know that for under 30 voters they are already matching the primary vote of the major parties, and that a core platform of strong action against global warming is a big part of this support. Whether the major parties can ignore this support that springs from climate will be one of the biggest gambles of this election.

Coastal management in Australia is subject to competing interests and challenges. These range from land use and strategic planning issues to ecosystems preservation. Local councils are at the coalface as both key decision-makers and the first point of contact for communities.

Exacerbating these day-to-day challenges for councils are risks to property. A quantitative assessment undertaken by the then-Department of Climate Change in 2009 identified impacts of sea-level rise as a serious threat to property.

In New South Wales, under scenarios of a 1.1-metre sea-level rise, risks of damage or inundation to residential housing alone affected tens of thousands of properties, potentially costing millions of dollars. The NSW 2009 sea-level rise policy (now repealed) saw coastal councils considering this future risk when developing coastal zone management plans.

These metrics, while important, say little of the wide-ranging benefits of a freely accessible coast. Going to the beach is a fundamental part of Australian identity; it’s a “special place” for Australians.

Local councils are most exposed to the issues and challenges of a changing coastline in which there are many interests. Councils are often the first decision-makers for local development, asset management and land-use and strategic planning. Increased coastal erosion, storm events, more frequent and severe flooding impacts and higher tides can and will make these regular functions of councils more complicated.

In this context, the tabling of the NSW Coastal Management Bill on May 3 marks the formalisation of Stage 2 of the most significant law reform to coastal management since the 1970s. The NSW state government says that, by better integrating coastal management with land-use planning, the legislation offers:

… a modern, coherent coastal management framework that is responsive to current needs and future challenges.

Property rights hold sway

Despite a prominent focus on property values when it comes to coastal management issues, including climate adaptation, evidence is emerging that residents are attached to their property for more than financial reasons.

Private property interests often take priority as councils attempt to balance competing interests. An example of this is ongoing litigation over a sandbag wall on Belongil Beach in Byron Bay.

With coastal defences failing, some councils are moving to policies of ‘planned retreat’. Wikimedia Commons/Paul Sequeira, US EPA

After a series of severe coastal storms in the 1970s, Byron Shire Council adopted a policy of “planned retreat”. The location of this small northern NSW community on the most easterly point of Australia means it is already exposed to coastal hazards. These will become more frequent and more severe under future climate scenarios.

The planned retreat policy set requirements for the future relocation of private property. Local property owners, particularly those with beachfront property, have vehemently opposed the use of the policy to prevent coastal property protection.

In May 2009, a particularly severe coastal storm caused significant damage to private residential property and the beach. Beachfront property owners (the Vaughans) sought to reinstate council-approved sandbag protection works on their property. This sandbag wall had collapsed during the storm.

The Vaughans sued the council and the council sued the Vaughans. This particular matter settled in February 2010 and the failed sandbag wall has been reinstated.

More recently, council plans to install a permanent rock wall at the same location ran into fierce opposition from the community, for whom the public amenity of the beach is critical, and legal challenges.

This example highlights some critical aspects of coastal management:

• private property rights are deeply entrenched in Australian culture and legal systems

• climate adaptation is easier when it comes to future development

• recourse to litigation in protecting your property is much easier if you can afford it.

Climate adaptation planning, including planned retreat, can be more easily implemented for future development. There are excellent examples of local government in NSW providing landowners with a range of development options.

NSW reforms weigh future risks

Much of the coast of Australia, however, is already developed. The residential development includes affordable housing options. To balance competing interests along the coast, all members of coastal communities must be considered.

To this end, the NSW bill, if passed, would lead to a new Coastal Management Act, a new Coastal Management State Environmental Planning Policy and a coastal management manual. Together these advance a more forward-thinking coastal management response. This has a central focus on ecologically sustainable development that can better balance both the management of coastal hazards and the integrity of the coast.

Local councils will be responsible for implementing these new legal requirements. Under Part 3 of the Coastal Management Bill, councils will be required to monitor coastal hazards and to give effect to coastal management plans. It would appear this includes future sea-level rise.

As has been advocated in numerous policy reports, the councils can’t do this alone. They need assistance from the federal government as well as the state.

Tayanah O'Donnell undertakes research with the University of Canberra funded by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and the ACT Government. She also the principal of PlaceAdapt Consulting.

Kangaroos are much lighter on the land than sheep and cows. Kangaroo image from www.shutterstock.com

We may be what we eat, but our dietary choices also affect the health of the environment, and farmers' back pockets.

Energy and water use, native habitat cut down for crops and grazing, and emissions that exacerbate climate change, are just some of the profound effects agriculture has on Earth. And, there are more and more mouths to feed.

Perversely, both starvation and obesity are severe health issues across the world. With agriculture confronted by economic and environmental uncertainties, society faces enormous challenges.

But challenges also offer great opportunities. Drastically rethinking what we eat, and where and how food is produced, could help our health, the planet, and our farming businesses.

That means eating fewer sheep and cows, and more kangaroos, feral animals, and insects.

Unsustainable farming

Australia’s rangelands - the drier regions of the country predominantly used for livestock and grazing - cover about 80% of the country. They are often in poor condition and economically unviable. In part, this is due to the fact we still farm many animals, mostly in ways that are unsuited to the Australian climate and environment.

Hard-hoofed animals contribute to soil compaction and erosion, and have even been linked to the spread of the invasive cane toad. But the environmental impact of intensive stock farming extends much further.

Continuing to farm using a European-derived, intensive system is a recipe for land degradation and environmental collapse, especially with the compounding impacts of climate change (severe weather events, more frequent and intense droughts, and fires).

Starving stock in Julia Creek, Qld (1952). Queensland State Archives, Digital Image ID 4413

Past and current agricultural practices have also profoundly altered our environment. It may be impossible to restore these lands to their original condition, so we must learn to operate in the new environment we’ve created.

More broadly, many experts have identified our meat consumption and intensive farming as a significant driver of global problems.

Treading lightly

To address these issues, we need a cultural shift away from intensive agriculture. The days of riding and relying on the sheep’s back, cattle’s hoof, or the more recent, and increasingly popular, chicken’s wing, may need to pass.

Native wildlife and some feral animals tread more lightly on the environment than intensively produced livestock do, and thus provide more sustainable options for food production on Australia’s arid lands. Kangaroos and goats place one-third of the pressure on grazing lands compared with sheep.

We already eat some of these animals, but could arguably eat more of them, including feral goats, camels, deer, rabbits, pigs, and buffalo, as well as native emus and kangaroos.

Camels are already on the menu. Camel image from www.shutterstock.com

Yet more extreme proposals could include feral donkeys, cats, horses; and even cane toads. Horses are already consumed in Europe and cats in central Australia.

Eating more feral and native animals, and relying less on chicken, sheep, domestic pigs, and cattle would help meet ethical concerns too. Wild animals such as kangaroos are killed quickly, without the extended stress associated with industrialised farming, containment, and transportation to abattoirs.

And by harvesting sometimes overabundant wild native animals (such as kangaroos) and feral species, we may be able to reduce their impacts on ecosystems, which include overgrazing and damage to waterways.

An even greater leap would be to eat fewer four-limbed animals and more six-legged creatures. Insects are often high in protein and low in fat, and can be produced in large numbers, efficiently and quickly. They are already consumed in large numbers in some regions, including Asia.

Evidence that a market for such a food revolution exists is that shops are already popping up selling mealworm flour, ant seasoning salt, and cricket protein powder, among other delicacies.

A six-legged diet is even better. Insect image from www.shutterstock.com Boom and bust

Thanks to Australia’s variable climate, swinging between drought and flood, many farms are also tied to a boom-and-bust cycle of debt and credit.

As the climate becomes increasingly unpredictable, this economic strategy must be detrimental to the farmers, and is shown by many farm buy-backs or sell-offs.

It makes sense to use species that are naturally more resilient and able to respond to boom-and-bust cycles. Kangaroos and other species can forage on our ancient and typically nutrient-poor soils without the need for nutritional supplements (such as salt licks), and are physiologically more efficient at conserving water. This could lead to a more sustainable supply of food and income for farmers, without the dizzying economic highs but also without the inevitable prolonged and despairing lows.

Future-proofing

To be clear, we are not suggesting completely replacing livestock, but diversifying and tailoring enterprises to better suit Australia’s environment.

To support more diverse agricultural enterprises we will need to overcome many obstacles, such as licences to hunt, what we’re comfortable consuming, and land use regulation. But we shouldn’t shy away from these challenges. There are tremendous opportunities for rural, regional and Indigenous communities, and indeed cities too.

We need a more diverse mix of meat to adapt to the pressures of a growing population and climate change. Supermarket aisles that display beef, chicken, pork and lamb, alongside kangaroo, camel, deer, goat, and insects, could be just what the environmental, health and economic doctors ordered.

Euan Ritchie is affiliated with the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society.

Adam Munn has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and National Geographic Society. Adam Munn has been associated with projects recieving funding from Meat and Livestock Australia. Adam Munn is a member of the Australian Mammal Society and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry.

Green progress? The ANU needs to dig deeper on divestment. Nick-D/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The Paris climate agreement has been praised for sending a strong signal to the world that we are now serious about cutting greenhouse emissions.

Yet despite the diplomatic acclaim, the Paris deal doesn’t offer much in concrete terms. It is a simple global show-and-tell regime with no enforcement – if countries miss their targets they will receive little more than a talking-to.

For many, the deal’s saving grace is the message it sends to investors, businesses and the wider world outside diplomatic and political circles. The Economist has summed up this “investment signal” idea well:

Perhaps the most significant effect of the Paris agreement in the next few years will be the signal it sends to investors… [After Paris] the idea of investing in a coal mine will seem more risky.

The problem is that there is little to no empirical evidence to support this idea. Will hard-nosed financiers change their ways purely on the basis of long-term pledges that are not supported by short-term actions? Will they redirect vast sums of money because of faith in a loose international treaty? In all honesty, we don’t know.

There are clues, however, if we know where to look. If we want to see whether the investment signal from Paris is working, then universities will probably be – for want of a better phrase – the canary in the financial coalmine.

If Paris has truly signalled to the world that the age of fossil fuels is coming to a close, then it should put the movement to divest from fossil fuels on steroids.

And universities are better placed to divest than many other types of institution. It therefore follows that the success of Paris can be measured by whether it spurs universities to quit investing in fossil fuels.

Going fossil-free

Fossil fuel divestment is spreading across the world. According to the campaign group Fossil Free, at least 518 institutions, collectively worth US$3.4 trillion, are either fully or partially divesting.

The list includes groups such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, local governments such as the Australian Capital Territory and the cities of Oslo and Copenhagen, among many others.

Meanwhile universities, which currently make up 12% of this list, have become a particular target for the divestment movement. This is because they are forward-looking institutions with progressive, well-educated stakeholders. After all, it was university faculty members across the world who helped to set out the problem of climate change, and young students who will be among the generations most affected by its future impacts.

Just as universities were among the first movers against apartheid, they can set an example to others in the case of climate. Universities, many of which manage multi-billion-dollar endowments, have both the ability and responsibility to exercise financial power and act early on long-term moral problems.

If the Paris investment signal exists, then, we can expect universities to act well in advance of those with much greater inertia and vested interests in the status quo, such as profit-making corporations (which make up just 3% of Fossil Free’s divestment list).

Mixed results

So far the response from universities has been patchy, particularly in Australia. The Australian National University (ANU) provides an informative case study. It shows both the potential of divestment and the limits of the Paris market signal.

In 2014, ANU blacklisted seven resource companies (including two fossil fuel firms, Santos and Oil Search) on the basis of its “socially responsible investment” policy. This triggered a backlash from the likes of the then treasurer, Joe Hockey, and prime minister, Tony Abbott, as well as sustained criticism from the Australian Financial Review.

The outcry showed the power that universities can wield in the climate debate when they put their money where their mouth is. In this case it was a positive impact as it triggered a wider debate on climate policy and investments.

Last month, the ANU updated its policy, announcing a 39% reduction in the carbon intensity of its stock portfolio and pledging to divest from companies that draw more than 20% of their revenue from coal.

However, the policy allows for continued investment in diversified mining companies such as Woodside Petroleum, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. This potentially includes firms with significant fossil fuel holdings (BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance is the largest Australian coal producer, accounting for a quarter of Australian coal exports).

This is partial, not full, divestment – it’s a positive step, but far from the seismic investment shift needed to meet the Paris climate goals.

Importantly, the trigger for change has come from within, rather than from Paris. There has been overwhelming pressure from staff and students to divest fully. Yet the university has resisted these calls. Indeed, ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt last month tweeted that while the “future lies in being part of the transition to low emissions", fossils fuels are “good business for universities” for the time being at least.

There are several counterarguments to this , from the falling costs of renewable energy, to the improving performance of fossil-free investment funds, which often outstrip more conventional ones. But on a basic level it comes down to leadership.

The ANU has branded itself as a place of “thought leadership”. Its current actions show neither long-term thought nor leadership. True leadership would mean showing real belief in the implications of the Paris Agreement.

Widespread, full university divestment from fossil fuels would further pressure national governments to strengthen their commitments – which will be crucial if the Paris Agreement is to meet its goals.

In contrast, continued investment in fossil fuels weakens such pressure and bolsters a belief in the continued relevance of the fossil fuel industry in a post-Paris world.

Universities such as the ANU have not responded swiftly enough to Paris and the signalling of the end of the fossil fuel era. If thought leaders won’t do it, how can we ask the same of governments and banks?

Luke Kemp has received funding from both the Australian and German governments. As a staff member of the ANU he is an active participant of the 'Fossil Free ANU' campaign.

Rats are true natives of our cities. Rat image from www.shutterstock.com

Rats send shudders down many peoples' spines, and may in fact be Sir David Attenborough’s least favourite animal. But despite their poor reputation, rats are astonishingly successful.

Almost everywhere humans have built their cities, rats have set up their homes – to live with us and off us.

Know your rodents

In Australia we have two species of rat that can be considered truly commensal - a species that lives off the resources provided by us.

The black rat (Rattus rattus), or ship rat, is the species of rat that people will most often encounter in their houses in Australia. Then there is the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), also known as the Norway rat (although it doesn’t come from Norway). This is the species that is often kept as pets and used in lab research.

In the northern hemisphere, the much larger brown rats seem to outcompete black rats. But in Australia and New Zealand, black rats are more widespread and common than brown rats, for reasons we don’t fully understand.

Australia also has 60 species of native rodents, including eight species of native Rattus that evolved from from ancestors which arrived about a million years ago. Similar in size to black rats, these native rats have probably prevented the spread of black rats into natural areas, as has happened in New Zealand and Pacific islands which lack native rodents.

It can be hard to tell a black rat from a native bush rat (Rattus fuscipes), but black rats are more slender with longer tails, and bush rats are chubbier. It is easier to pick a brown rat, which is more than twice the size of a black rat.

Arrival

Black rats probably came to Australia with the First Fleet. There are skeletons of black rats in the gun barrels of sunken Dutch ships off Western Australia, but there is no evidence that their invasion of Australia began before the English landed in Sydney, when they literally jumped ship.

The first black rat specimens collected in Sydney were mistaken for native rats.

The Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney has the first recorded black rat specimens. These were initially thought to be a native species and given the name Hapalotis arboricola. In fact, there are loving descriptions of it climbing in local fig trees and entertaining the residents of Mosman. These rats were, however, black rats. They still climb fig trees in Mosman, and are still mistaken for native rodents.

The name black rat is a bit of a misnomer. We have trapped black rats from around Sydney Harbour in many colours, from light fawn, to chestnut brown with white patches, to light grey and sometimes dark grey, and only occasionally black. They can be very cute.

A very long engagement

Remains of black rats have been found in Indus civilisations from 4,000 years ago, and even earlier from Israel and the Middle East. They probably originated in India, and are likely to have adapted to human settlement many times in their history.

The black rat is now one of the most widely distributed animals in the world, perhaps only surpassed by humans and house mice. The live on every continent except Antarctica.

What brings them to our houses? The houses we live in provide rats with the secure, thermally stable homes they need to breed in. They eat a vast range of foods, and so can exploit our waste. The urban environments we have created are also relatively free of predators.

When conditions are ideal, black rats can reach very high numbers, giving birth to up to 12 young every five weeks or so. But the urban myths that there is one rat for every person, or that you are never less than six feet from a rat, have little support. In truth, we have no real idea of how many introduced rats there are in Australian cities.

Unwelcome housemates

Rats are often unwelcome housemates because of the diseases they spread in their urine and faeces, including leptospirosis (Weil’s disease), salmonella, and E. coli. They are also hosts of ticks that transmit bacterial infections and induce allergic reactions.

Black rats are important hosts of the parasites Toxoplasmosis gondii and rat lungworm - both of which can be fatal to native wildlife and humans. Rats are also famous for carrying the plague, which arrived in Australia in the early 1900s but fortunately died out. Australia remains plague-free.

Rat damage infrastructure when building their nests. They chew electrical cables, increasing the risk of house fires, although why they do this is not clear.

But they actually spend less time in our houses than many people think, more often making use of backyards. They seem especially to love aviaries and hen houses, which provides a ready source of spilled food and underground shelter.

Aliens, or just wild?

Just as native rats belong in natural environments, cities are rats' natural habitat. They may be introduced in Australia, but they have evolved in the urban habitats we have imported.

However, black rats can spill over from cities to remnant bushland, entering an environment that has not adapted to them. Here they have the potential to wreak all kinds of havoc.

Black rats are adept climbers and raid birds nests to prey on the eggs of small native birds, which may be one reason why these birds are uncommon in city parks. They also prey on other tree-dwelling wildlife such as small bats, skinks and spiders.

In contrast, native bush rats are clumsy climbers, and the type of lungworm carried by native rats doesn’t seem to have the same impact on wildlife and people.

Black rats are aided in this conquest by humans. Almost 70% of rats living in bushland next to houses have visited those houses sometime in the previous two weeks. This undoubtedly helps to increase rat populations beyond what the natural environmental alone could support. In contrast, native rats rarely visit houses.

So even though black rats are native to our cities, they can still be pests to humans and other wildlife. Killing rats with poison or traps is one option, but the best strategy is to reduce their access to food and shelter. Make sure your neighbours are doing the same, and aren’t providing a refuge for the rats jumping ship from your home.

This article is part of a series profiling our “hidden housemates”. Are you a researcher with an idea for a “hidden housemates” story? Get in touch.

Peter Banks receives funding from The Australian Research Council, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Mosman Council, Rentokil, Bayer, National Parks and Wildlife Service, NZ Ministry of Business, Transport for NSW, The Paddy Pallin Foundation, Manly Council, and The Australian Wildlife Conservancy

One week into the extended federal election campaign, climate has not featured prominently. While prime minister Malcolm Turnbull campaigns on “jobs and growth”, opposition leader Bill Shorten has emphasised education and employment conditions. Climate also warranted no mention in the government’s pre-election budget.

This week’s National Press Club debate between federal environment minister Greg Hunt and his shadow counterpart Mark Butler largely retrod party lines, and received limited coverage.

Yet 2016 could still be a climate election. Here’s why.

Points of difference

There are major climate policy differences between the Coalition government and Labor opposition.

The government has committed to a target of 26% to 28% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030 (relative to 2005), and remains committed to its incentive-only auction scheme for industry to reduce emissions.

By contrast, Labor has committed to a 45% reduction in emissions over the same period, with a 50% renewable energy target. It has also pledged to set up an emissions trading scheme that is more consistent with how other countries are approaching climate policy.

These are substantial differences, especially given criticisms that the government’s Direct Action model is expensive and inefficient and offers no guarantee of achieving its stated targets. So there are opportunities for climate to feature prominently as a point of policy difference.

Public opinion

Public opinion tends to move in favour of the opposition on climate policy. For the past several years, the Lowy Institute has polled Australians on climate policy, among other international issues. It has found, perhaps surprisingly, that Australians tend to be most supportive of strong action when the government of the day is perceived as inactive.

The high point for public support was 2006. Conversely, the low point for public support on strong climate action was 2012, as the Labor government under Julia Gillard introduced the carbon tax.

There is evidence now of a rebound in support for climate policy, with perceptions that the government is dragging its feet on climate change. This clearly creates incentives for Labor to campaign on climate.

Green pressure

The Greens loom as a threat to Labor if it doesn’t emphasise its commitment to climate action. The Greens surprised many by winning the lower house seat of Melbourne in 2010, and Adam Bandt has held it since.

Now the Greens have their sights set on other lower house seats, and perception that it is the party that takes climate action seriously will have damaging effects for Labor in electorates most vulnerable to Greens campaigning.

Political opponents of all stripes have a real opportunity to wedge the prime minister on climate change. It appears likely that prime minister Turnbull is playing a long game and hoping that an election victory will allow him to marginalise those parts of his government that still oppose climate action.

This view involves placing weight on the claims Turnbull made on losing the coalition leadership to Tony Abbott in 2009. Then, he declared that he did not want to lead a party not serious about climate action, and questioned any policy that claimed to be cost-neutral. These statements may come back to haunt him.

Finally, civil society groups are mobilising aggressively on climate change. Groups such as GetUp! will be out in force come election day and are promoting climate action, while environmental groups are pushing hard to ensure that climate change will not be forgotten in the election.

Building on devastating reports of coral bleaching and David Attenborough’s most recent television series, many are using the Great Barrier Reef as a symbol of the need to take climate action seriously.

Dangers of a climate election?

For some analysts, Australia’s 2007 contest could rightly be described as “the world’s first climate election”.

The then Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd rode a wave of support for strong climate action, and took office from a Coalition government perceived as weak on climate change.

In 2013, Coalition opposition leader Tony Abbott declared that the forthcoming election would be a “referendum on the carbon tax”, and in those terms he scored a resounding victory.

In both of these accounts, the role of climate policy in the election result is probably overstated. But it also helps to explain why leaders of both parties appear spooked by the idea of campaigning strongly on their climate policy. It may be easier for Labor to announce its climate position softly, and the government to run a scare campaign on economic costs of any stronger action than its own platform.

Indeed, for some advocates of climate action, a climate election may not be a good thing. The climate consensus that characterises the position of progressive countries has not been reflected in Australia. This undermines policy consistency, economic predictability for business, and public support for climate action.

But it is also the case that Australia’s most recent brief window of bipartisanship on climate policy in 2009 did not end well. The carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) was never enacted. And both the then prime minister Kevin Rudd and current prime minister Malcolm Turnbull lost their jobs, at least partly because of it.

We may well see climate feature prominently in the weeks to come. And while there may be some dangers, it’s hard to think of a climate policy situation in Australia that’s any more problematic than what has come before.

Matt McDonald has previously received funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.

Atmospheric scientists worldwide are seeking to save Australia’s involvement in a NASA-led global network of instruments that monitor microscopic particles called “aerosols”, which play an important role in cooling and warming the Earth’s climate.

When most people think of aerosols, their mind turns to fly spray or deodorant. But the term has a much broader meaning, covering any microscopic particle that can remain airborne for long periods. Think of household dust floating in a ray of sun through your window. It’s an aerosol. So is smoke, salt spray from the sea, ultrafine sand from beaches and deserts, ash from volcanoes, and the carbon soot emitted from car and truck exhaust pipes.

These aerosols sometimes give us blazing red sunsets. But they are also crucial in controlling the Earth’s climate, acting as both warming and cooling agents. Although, molecular gases like methane and carbon dioxide garner more attention for their strong warming effect.

A stark example of the role atmospheric aerosols can play is the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. The 20 million tonnes of aerosol ejected into the atmosphere by this eruption reduced average global temperatures by 0.5℃ for the following two years.

Crucial monitoring

An important tool in the study of atmospheric aerosols is an international monitoring network, led by NASA, called the Aerosol Robotic Network AERONET. It consists of more than 450 monitoring stations across seven continents, including several sites in Australia.

AERONET’s data help atmospheric scientists worldwide to understand how aerosols influence both the global climate, and the daily weather at local scales. The importance of aerosols in the weather is twofold. In addition to affecting atmospheric heat balance, aerosols are also responsible for seeding the formation of clouds.

CSIRO’s reported plans to withdraw from AERONET has dismayed atmospheric scientists, including NASA’s Brent Holben, lead scientist on the AERONET program. CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall has reportedly justified his planned changes to the agency’s climate science program on the need to divert resources towards a focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

A shift in focus towards action is certainly admirable. As any rational citizen knows, climate change is a clear and present danger to our future, and the need for compelling action towards mitigation and adaptation is urgent.

Government action on climate change is highly encouraged by atmospheric scientists. But it’s dangerous to develop climate policies without reference to reliable, up-to-date environmental data on global temperature, carbon dioxide levels and aerosols, just as it would be foolhardy to develop national economic policy without reliable economic data on national debt, government revenue and expenditure, and unemployment figures.

Whether it’s the economy or the climate, without an eye on the data, how can one be sure that policy is having the intended outcome?

Aerosol tracking is vital

Aerosol data of the kind that AERONET provides are vital to the climate change mitigation and adaptation goals upon which CSIRO is now focusing its efforts. Here are two clear reasons why.

A key strategy to reduce greenhouse emissions is the widespread uptake of renewable energy sources, particularly solar energy. Australia, the sunburnt country, has enough sunshine to power not just our own population, but with future storage technologies, enough to export for national profit.

Aerosols have a significant influence on how much sunlight makes it onto the surface of a solar panel. Aerosol particles scatter and absorb the Sun’s rays, and they also help to form clouds which can reduce solar panels' effectiveness. Thus having precise data on atmospheric aerosols in Australian skies is vital to maximising the output, efficiency and stability of our solar energy facilities.

The second reason involves adapting to climate change, rather than mitigating it. Australia’s agriculture industry is highly dependent on rainfall. Droughts and floods are highly damaging, and both are predicted to become more frequent and severe due to climate change.

Once again, aerosols' role in cloud formation is a crucial factor here. Aerosols also affect the properties of existing clouds, such as droplet size, which in turn has a significant impact on rainfall.

Adaptation to changing rainfall patterns and climatic events such as El Niño are vital to continued output and growth in Australian agriculture. Reliable aerosol data – obtained in Australia, by Australia, and specific to the Australian atmosphere – are vital to making informed decisions about how to protect agriculture in the future.

These two examples – one focused on energy and the other concerning agriculture – show how two of Australia’s key economic sectors each rely on atmospheric aerosol monitoring. CSIRO has for many years played a major role in providing these data, and NASA’s Brent Holben, lead scientist on the AERONET program, has rightly urged CSIRO not to stop now.

More broadly, it’s vital to realise that climate monitoring and modelling, and mitigation and adaptation go hand in hand. We can’t build proper policy for action without reliable data and forecast models. The government certainly knows this when it comes to the national economy; the same holds when it comes to climate policy.

This article was amended on May 20, 2016 to reflect the fact that the stated views about CSIRO’s involvement in AEROSPAN are those of Brent Holben, AERONET Lead Project Scientist, NASA, rather than of NASA as a whole.

Surya Karthik Mukkavilli receives funding for this PhD from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Postgraduate Award at UNSW, Australia. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be attributed to the official policy or position of any agency the author is associated with at present or in the past.

Merlinde Kay has received funding from ARENA.

The Great Barrier Reef's health has declined in recent years Reef image from www.shutterstock.com

The Great Barrier Reef has been in the spotlight thanks to severe coral bleaching since March, leaving only 7% of the reef untouched. The bleaching, driven by record-breaking sea temperatures, has been linked to human-caused climate change.

Apart from bleaching, the reef is in serious trouble thanks to a variety of threats. Many species and ecosystems of the Great Barrier Reef are in serious decline.

It is now overwhelmingly clear that we need to fix these problems to give the reef the best chance in a warming world. In fact, the upcoming election is arguably our last chance to put in place a plan that will save the reef.

In a recent paper, we estimate that we need to spend A$10 billion over the next ten years - about five times as much as current state and federal governments are spending – to fix up reef water quality before climate change impacts overwhelm it.

Stop water pollution

Poor water quality is one of the major threats to the Great Barrier Reef. Sediment and nutrients (such as nitrogen) washed by rivers onto the reef cause waters to become turbid, shutting out light for corals and seagrass. It can also encourage algal growth and outbreaks of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish.

The Queensland and Australian governments have made plans with targets to improve water quality, but the main plan - the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan – is completely inadequate according to the Australian Academy of Science. Its targets are unlikely to be met. And others have suggested ways to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef.

To provide resilience for the Great Barrier Reef against the current and rapidly increasing climate impacts, water quality management needs to be greatly improved by 2025 to meet the targets and guidelines. 2025 is important as it’s likely that climate change effects will be overwhelming after that date. It is also the target date for the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan.

What needs to be done

In our recent article, we analysed what we need to do to respond to the current crisis, especially for water quality.

1. Refocus management to the “Greater Great Barrier Reef (GBR)” – that is, include management of Torres Strait, Hervey Bay and river catchments that run into the reef as priorities along with the world heritage area. This area is shown in figure above.

2. Prioritise management for ecosystems in relatively good condition, such Torres Strait, northern Cape York and Hervey Bay which have the highest current integrity. These areas should still be prioritised despite the recent severe bleaching in the northern Great Barrier Reef.

3. Investigate methods of cross-boundary management to achieve simultaneous cost-effective terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystem protection in the Greater GBR.

4. Develop a detailed, comprehensive, costed water quality management plan for the Greater GBR. In the period 2009-16, more than A$500 million was spent on water quality management (with some success) without a robust comprehensive plan to ensure the most effective use of the funding.

5. Use existing federal legislation (the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act) to regulate catchment activities that lead to damage to the Greater GBR, together with the relevant Queensland legislation. These rules were established long ago and are immediately available to tackle terrestrial pollutant discharge.

6. Fund catchment and coastal management to the required level to largely solve the pollution issues for the Greater GBR by 2025, to provide resilience for the system in the face of accelerating climate change impacts. The funding required is large – of the order of A$1 billion per year over the next ten years but small by comparison to the worth of the Great Barrier Reef – estimated to be of the order of A$20 billion per year.

7. Continue enforcement of the zoning plan.

8. Show commitment to protecting the Greater GBR through greenhouse gas emissions control, of a scale to be relevant to protecting the reef (for example those proposed by the Climate Change Authority), by 2025.

Unless immediate action is taken to improve water quality, the onset of accelerating climate change impacts mean there is little chance the current decline in reef health can be prevented.

Jon Brodie has received funding over the last two years from the Australian Government, the Queensland Government, Natural Resource Management groups, WWF, UNEP, Melbourne Water, NSW EPA.

Richard Pearson has in the past received funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council and the Marine and Tropical Science Research Facility. He is a member of ACF.

New mapping of one of the most remote areas in Antarctica has revealed regions deep within Earth’s largest ice sheet that are particularly prone to rapid melting.

Our study, published today in Nature, is focused on East Antarctica’s Totten Glacier, the outlet for the world’s largest ice catchment. The results suggest that if rising global temperatures trigger the glacier to retreat rapidly – as has happened previously in its history – this region alone could deliver sea-level rises of well over a metre over the ensuing centuries.

The Totten Glacier region is a key area for understanding the long-term vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, but until now, knowledge of this region’s glacial history has been very limited.

Our study shows that, although the region near the coast is quite stable on timescales of several millennia, regions further inland have potential for significant and rapid retreat as the climate warms.

Specifically, we identified two stable zones where the ice sheet is not prone to rapid collapse, and two unstable zones, where it is. We have also discovered that transitions between these states have happened repeatedly during the life of the ice sheet.

Stable and not so stable

As part of the international ICECAP project, my colleagues and I used ice-penetrating radar, as well as magnetic and gravity data, to chart the rocks beneath the glacier.

By mapping the shape of the ice-sheet and its base, as well as the thickness of the rocks and sediments beneath, we were able to study the characteristic patterns of erosion left behind by the ice sheet’s previous advances and retreats – thus revealing the ice sheet’s past behaviour.

The observed patterns suggest that the ice sheet has spent much of its history in one of two configurations: either the edge has been close to the current Antarctic coast (within 150 kilometres); or it has been located some 350-550 kilometres inland. In either of these states, the ice would be relatively stable, with this glacier providing sea level fluctuations of less than a metre over the course of glacial cycles.

But the pattern of erosion also shows that melting has periodically forced the ice sheet out of either of these stable states, causing the ice sheet to collapse and retreat far inland. These events might have typically driven up global sea levels by 1.3-1.4 metres over the course of a few centuries.

What is happening today?

Previous studies from satellite data have indicated that the coastal part of the Totten Glacier region and its floating ice shelf are melting rapidly. Last year, the ICECAP team discovered that there is currently warm water circulating underneath a floating portion of the glacier that is causing more melting than might have been expected.

Our results show that following a rapid loss of coastal ice due to the collapse of the floating ice shelf, this region is likely to respond more slowly than other parts of Antarctica to warming temperatures, due to the existence of a “stable zone”.

But as temperatures continue to increase, this glacier is likely to retreat into the unstable zone, and make a rapid and proportionally greater contribution to sea levels.

Our ice sheet modelling suggests that while the Totten region is not the first region in Antarctica to respond to warming climate, it is likely to become progressively more unstable as warming proceeds over hundreds to thousands of years. Ultimately this region could become the “fat end of the wedge” in terms of Antarctica’s overall contribution to rising seas, accounting for almost 15% of Antarctica’s total contribution to sea-level rise. This is likely to happen while other regions have become ice-free, or are stabilising after periods of rapid ice loss.

Our results suggest that the Totten region has severe implications for global sea level rise in warming climate conditions, especially once warming reaches the critical thresholds likely to tip the glacier out of its stable states. Given the long timescales involved for ice-sheet melting it is difficult to say with confidence when this tipping point might be reached.

Increases to carbon dioxide levels today will commit us to temperature increases that persist for thousands of years. The upper limit of the coastal stable zone could be crossed under conditions similar to those predicted for the next century, based on the higher emissions scenarios envisaged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Alan Aitken receives research funding from the Australian Research Council, the Science and Industry Endowment Fund and the State Government of Western Australia. These funding sources relate to other projects. His contribution to this work was funded by the University of Western Australia's Goodeve Foundation.

The records keep on falling Thermometer image from www.shutterstock.com

We’re not even halfway through the year but already you may have heard talk of 2016 being the hottest on record. But how can scientists be so sure we’re going to beat the previous record, set just last year?

Even before the end of 2015, the UK Met Office was forecasting with 95% confidence that 2016 would beat the record. Since then, that confidence has grown still further, as record after record has tumbled. April 2016 broke the record for the hottest April after we had experienced the hottest February and March on record already this year.

NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt recently estimated at least a 99% likelihood of 2016 being hotter than 2015.

The role of El Niño

The main reason why scientists are so sure that 2016 will be the hottest year is El Niño, which is associated with warmer sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The 2015-16 El Niño was among the strongest on record and has increased global average temperatures.

Even though the El Niño is now decaying, the second year of a major El Niño event is often associated with much warmer than normal conditions and is typically warmer than the first.

For instance, the 1997-98 El Niño was by some measures the strongest on record, and contributed to 1998 becoming the hottest year on record globally at the time.

Since the start of this year, we have seen global temperature records smashed time and time again. This means that much colder temperatures for the second half of the year would be needed for 2016 not to surpass the 2015 record.

Even a strong La Niña event (the cooler opposite of El Niño), which some analysts are forecasting, is unlikely to produce cold enough temperatures.

One thing that could prevent 2016 becoming a record-breaking hot year is a major volcanic eruption in the tropics. Volcanic eruptions at low latitudes can eject aerosols high into the atmosphere reducing the amount of energy from the sun reaching the Earth’s surface.

Previous eruptions such as Pinatubo in 1991 and Tambora in 1815 (which caused 1816 to be “the year without a summer”) reduced temperatures across much of the globe.

However, it is the year after the eruption that often experiences the most severe cooling, so an eruption would have to be pretty soon and very strong to scupper 2016’s chances of being the hottest year on record.

What about climate change?

The role of climate change is smaller because we’re comparing 2016 with last year (the previous record). Over such short periods of time, the contribution from global warming doesn’t change much.

However, scientists estimated that 2015 was about 1℃ hotter than it would have been without human-caused climate change. As the human influence on the climate has not increased greatly since last year this 1℃ estimate will also apply to 2016.

The highly likely record temperature of 2016 will join the previous 17 record-breaking hot years back to 1937 which were all made more likely due to human-caused climate change (the rising global temperatures were even noticed as far back as 1938).

So even if El Niño is driving the 2016 record, we can say that the temperatures of this year (and indeed the temperatures associated with all the records over the last few years) would be virtually impossible without climate change.

An omen for the future?

We expect 2016 to beat the 2015 record for global average temperature as the decaying El Niño event pushes up surface temperatures.

This year, we’ve already seen devastating events associated with unusually warm temperatures, like the mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef, which has been largely attributed to human-induced climate change.

In future, we can expect to see more extreme heat events, like we’ve already seen in 2016, impacting society and ecosystems across the world.

And even though 2016 is likely to be the hottest year by some margin, we wouldn’t bet on this record lasting too long. While 2017 is very likely to be cooler due to a possible La Niña, with the strong warming trend the world’s experiencing it’s only a matter of time before we have another record-breaking hot year.

Only if we substantially reduce our greenhouse gas emissions now will we see the benefit of fewer record heat events in the future.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Ed Hawkins receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (UK).