Shortcomings of the working group process

The division of the working groups into industry sectors meant that intersectoral and crosssectoral issues were either treated hastily and supefficially or were farmed out to bodies outside the ESD process. These issues included:

• biodiversity and ecological integrity,
• equity (both inter- and intragenerational);
• waste minimisation, reuse and recycling;
• population;
• women's and Aboriginal issues.

Concerning the last item, there were very few women and no Aborigines on the working groups. Moreover, the industry sectors treated in working groups were almost entirely male-dominated ones. The Mining Working Group was, by its very nature, an unsuitable forum for consideration of Aboriginal issues such as land rights.

At least the Greenhouse Effect was considered by an intersectoral ESD Greenhouse Co-ordinating Group, but unfortunately this group only acted in advisory capacity to the ESD chairpersons and their staff, who then selected material to include or exclude from their Greenhouse Report.

Although the ESD chairpersons conducted (belatedly) a series of community consultations, I saw no indication that community views expressed at these meetings found their way into the final ESD reports.

Several of the working groups were dominated by vested interests. For example, Energy Production had, in addition to the two Business Council of Australia (BCA) representatives (from the coal and oil industries, respectively), a representative from the industry/energy departments (or from an electricity utility) of each State and Territory and the Commonwealth. These 9 bureaucrats, together with the BCA representatives, tended to identify with the coal, oil and minerals industries.

Also, in some of the ESD working groups, the CSIRO representative tended to support consistently the BCA positions. This could be a reflection of the situation that CSIRO now has to obtain 30 per cent of its funding externally.

The large coal-oil-minerals bloc propagated the defeatist notions that Australia's economic future was limited to that of being a quarry which included some downstream minerals processing. The bloc claimed that we could not possibly compete on international markets in manufacturing 'green' products, or almost any other type of product. Attempting to provide balance against the large fossil fuel minerals bloc were the two environment movement representatives and the Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories representative. There was no business representative from the energy efficiency, renewable energy or gas industries. The environmental representatives found that they had to try to take on these roles as well.

Achievernents ol the ESD final reports

For the eight working groups in which ACF/WWF participated, a comprehensive, critical assessment of all the recommendations has been produced. From our viewpoint, the working groups in which least progress was made were Mining (the worst) and then Agriculture followed by Manufacturing. Possibly most progress was made in Tourism, Energy Use, Transport and Fisheries. Despite the imbalance of forces, Energy Production fell between these poles and even achieved some good (if cautious) recommendations.

On the reduction of greenhouse gases, the recommendations of the Energy Use, Transport and Energy Production Working Groups, despite their omissions, shortcomings and lack of vision, form an adequate foundation for further action. They contain sensible and achievable recommendations on:

• institutional reforms, eg, through the introduction of integrated least-cost energy planning and the financing of least-cost provision of energy services*
• energy labelling of appliances, buildings and motor vehicles
• minimum energy performance standards for appliances, buildings and motor vehicles
• restructuring energy prices to remove subsidies and cross-subsidies
• inclusion in energy prices of the environmental, health and social costs of non-greenhouse pollution caused by energy production activities
• to assist the market, Government procurement of cost-effective energy efficient products
• taxation and other incentives for energy efficiency
• provision of information, education and training
• urban consolidation and improvements in public and all rail transport.

Furthermore, consultants' data published in the ESD Energy Use Report suggest that using such measures to return the emission of the principal greenhouse gas, C02, to the 1990 level by the year 2005, could save $3.3 billion.

For me, these and other achievements of the ESD reports on energy, transport and greenhouse justify the many stressful meetings in airport conference rooms and board rooms in cities around Australia. The ESD recommendations have been published and cannot be expunged from the record. But, some powerful forces are working to shelve them and to produce new reports which are weaker and less threatening to the status quo.

ESD Phase 2: the bureaucrats' betrayal

Following the publication of the ESD working group reports in December 1991 and the ESD chairpersons' Greenhouse Report in January 1992, the Government handed over the 500 or so ESD recommendations to 37 committees of State and Federal bureaucrats. The purpose of these committees should have been to create an action plan for implementing the ESD recommendations. But, during the first phase of the ESD process, some of these bureaucrats had already been attempting to undermine the moves by industry, trade union and environment movement representatives to reach agreement on some issues. Now, in Phase 2 of the ESD process, the bureaucrats had a free hand. The results were the Draft National Strategy for ESD and the Draft National Greenhouse Response Strategy, released on 30 June.

The first of these discussion papers is so vague that it is almost meaningless. The second takes a big step backwards from the original ESD recommendations on energy and transport. Some ESD recommendations have been watered down or made subject to unnecessary, time-wasting conditions, while others have been omitted entirely. No attempt has been made in either discussion paper to create an action plan. Sadly, in December 1991, the assessment of Phase 1 of the ESD process hy ACF/WWF had already warned about this probable outcome of Phase 2.

To discuss and legitimise the draft strategies, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet convened a'consultative forum' for 6-7 August 1992. However, at the beginning of the forum, statements were presented by WWF and ACF explaining why we would not participate in the meeting. Our grounds were that, following the publication of the original ESD working group reports in December 1991, the process for developing ESD and greenhouse strategies had gone backwards, with the result that the content of the draft strategies was completely inadequate. The trade union and most business representatives supported several of our concerns, especially those on process, and the forum collapsed at the end of the first day.

If the Keating Government is serious about ESD, it should make a public statement to that effect and immediately set in place&emdash;with the participation of environment movement, business and trade union representatives&emdash;processes for creating an action plan to implement the original ESD recommendations.

Back...