WA’s environmental laws and processes need to deliver greater environmental protection and positive outcomes for nature.
Key policy recommendations
Ensure Ministerial accountability
Strengthen the Biodiversity Conservation Act and the Environmental Protection Act to require Ministerial decisions to be consistent with the objectives of the Acts and with Recovery Plans for threatened species and ecological communities.
Prevent the Minister from approving projects that cause serious or material environmental harm, including species extinction.
Strengthen Environmental Impact Assessments
Establish stronger guidelines with clear thresholds for determining the level of assessment for referred projects.
Implement stronger standards for proponents’ environmental review documents to ensure they are scientifically rigorous and subject to necessary scrutiny and verification, including stronger provisions for peer review by independent third parties.
Ensure Environmental Impact Assessments are finalised before other departments are able to give approvals for projects.
Assess climate impacts
Ensure that in all environmental impact assessments conducted by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), climate change impacts on nature and greenhouse gas emissions from proposals are assessed against the Paris Agreement of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels or less.
Review State Government policy on State GHG emissions regulation to ensure the Environment Minister considers EPA’s recommendations on conditions related to emissions reduction and abatement.
Enact a new Water Act
Fulfil successive government promises to replace the outdated RIWI Act (1914) with a new, fit-for-purpose Water Act, which includes strong protections for our water resources and water-dependent environmental assets.
Define key terms
Define terms in the EP Act to ensure consistent interpretation in accordance with the objects and purpose of the EP Act (e.g., ‘significance’, ‘substantial commencement’, ‘inappropriate’, ‘relevant considerations’, ‘minor works’, ‘critical habitat’).
Proactive project filtering
Enable early filtering of flawed or inappropriately sited proposals in relevant agencies and amend the EP Act to allow the EPA to provide quick advice that a proposal is unlikely to be environmentally acceptable.
Ensure comprehensive Cumulative Impact Assessments
Strengthen WA’s environmental laws and processes to ensure cumulative impacts are properly and comprehensively assessed, and develop best-practice guidelines for these assessments.
Limit use of environmental offsets
Offsets have failed to protect biodiversity in WA.
Ensure that environmental offsets are strictly limited, rarely used, and governed by stringent criteria for their selection, use, monitoring and reporting, guaranteeing that offsets contribute to meaningful biodiversity conservation through requirements for an absolute gain in habitat and native biodiversity.
Protect critical and remnant habitat
Amend all relevant legislation to prohibit the clearing of critical and remnant habitat and ensure these habitats are permanently protected through legislation, with no exceptions for development or land use changes.
Require legislated buffer zones for protection for conservation significant species, threatened ecological communities and conservation significant wetlands.
Protect cultural heritage
In consultation with Traditional Owners and First Nations representative groups, pass new legislation to better and proactively protect Aboriginal Heritage and require Traditional Owners’ free, prior and informed consent for all decisions affecting Aboriginal Heritage.