Environmental/Sustainable Development

The Principles

All forms of life - plant, animal and human - are fundamentally interconnected and inter-dependent.

The conservation of the earth's resources is vital for our own and the planet's survival.

Future generations have a right to inherit a healthily-functioning and bio-diverse environment.

The Indigenous People of this land have inherited a culture that preserved the integrity of the environment for over 40,000 years.

All elements of the environment have intrinsic value, irrespective of the extent to which they can be utilized by humans.

The Issues

1. Australian Society, along with the rest of the Western world, is based on an economy that depends on an ever-increasing consumption of resources. This is environmentally unsustainable.

2. The bio-diversity of Australia's flora and fauna is under threat because of a number of factors:

• Logging of bio-diverse, old growth native forests and destruction of other areas of high conservation value is proceeding at a significant rate in many parts of Australia.
• Waterways, lakes and oceans are being contaminated by run-off from businesses and farms using chemically-based fertilizers and pesticides.
• Genetic engineering is being undertaken without our knowing the long-term consequences; it could be threatening irreversible genetic pollution.
• Over reliance on fossil-fuels with their emission of green-house gases is polluting the atmosphere and leading to climate change which in turn threatens the inundation of large areas of coast-line and even whole island nations.
• In the last two decades alone, millions of litres of oil have been spilled in the oceans, endangering marine life.
• Wholesale removal of trees and unwise use of irrigation has led to salination, destroying soil fertility.

3. Economic globalisation, which is an increasingly determining factor in Australia's national policy, is a growing threat to environmental sustainability. Global institutions e.g. World Trade Organization, European Union and others have shown themselves to be heavily influenced by multinationals.

Alternatives ·

• Reduction of reliance on fossil and nuclear fuels and conversion to renewable, cost-effective energy based on wind, solar and tidal technologies.

• Up-grading of public transport systems to reduce use of automobiles.

• Reduction of subsidies and incentives, which now favour agribusiness and other large-scale enterprises, towards support for smaller businesses, shops and farms

• Encouragement of local initiatives, creating community gardens, consumer and marketing co-operatives, community-supported agriculture, re-vegetating denuded foreshores, reclaiming streams, watersheds, wetlands and arable land.

• Development of policies which encourage the minimisation of our consumption of Earth's finite resources by reducing, reusing and recycling.

• Replacing unsustainable monoculture, toxic pesticides and intensive animal factory-farming with high-yielding, diverse, organic agricultural systems and free-range animal farming.

• Composting currently wasted bio-degradable materials and using humus-rich soil for home gardens, municipal parks, farms and forests.

• Reducing soil salinity by propagating planting and caring for trees, especially natives.

• Engaging in an on-going reconciliation with Indigenous People, honouring their laws, their spiritual values and affinity with the earth.

• Providing education courses which incorporate reverence for nature, spirituality, a knowledge of the principle of permaculture, bio-dynamic farming and organic gardening.

• Supporting university courses which deal with the ecological and human costs of a consumer society as well as the economics of sustainability.