WWF: Population growth mass burning east coast habitats

By Leith van Onselen

Australia’s population growth has for more than a decade been a world leader and is on track to nearly double the nation’s population mid-century to around 40 million people:

And this will be driven by annual population growth that is roughly twice as high as the post-war average, primarily due to mass immigration:

The latest federal government State of the Environment report, released last year, explicitly noted that Australia’s natural environment is being placed under acute strain from rapid population growth and economic development, and noted that these are the main drivers of environmental problems such as land-use change, habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change.

Now, these findings have been confirmed by the latest World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Living Planet Report, which has revealed that Australia’s East Coast has been trampled by over-development. From The Guardian:

Australia’s east coast has been compared to the Amazon as a “deforestation front” in a new global report by the World Wide Fund…

The report assessed 11 deforestation hotspots, where broadscale clearing had occurred at problematic levels since 2010, and where deforestation was expected to continue in the next decade. Eastern Australia was the only location in the developed world to make the list…

More broadly, the WWF report explicitly notes that the near exponential rise in human population over the past 70 years has driven a commensurate surge in resource use and pollution:

The biggest single phenomenon in the last 50 years is barely discussed in the media, politics, business or education circles. It is the Great Acceleration – a unique event in the 4.5 billion-year history of our planet… with exploding human population and economic growth driving unprecedented planetary change through the increased demand for energy, land and water…

The 1950s marks an explosion in growth. After this time, human activities (left panels) begin to interfere significantly with Earth’s life support system (right panels) (these graphs are from Steffen et al., 2015 30 and all the references to the datasets behind them are in the original paper)…

None of this is new. The WWF has previously nominated human population growth as the key risk factor for endangered species, noting that “the current rate of extinctions is 100 times what would be considered normal without the impact of human activity… more of us means more of that” (see below graphic).

In a similar vein, the Australian Conservation Foundation in 2010 called for Australia’s population to be stabilised and nominated human population growth as a “key threatening process” to Australia’s biodiversity.

The fact of the matter is that there are few better policy solutions to protect Australia’s environment than limiting population growth and abandoning plans for a ‘Big Australia’, which necessarily means significantly cutting immigration.

Australia’s birthrate of 1.8 is below replacement level and the nation’s population would stablise at roughly 27 million by 2060 under zero net overseas migration, according to the Productivity Commission. By contrast, if current mass immigration setting are maintained, Australia’s population will exceed 40 million – a difference of more than 13 million people (see below chart).

The above does, once again, highlight the complete and utter negligence of The Australian Greens. Despite their purported concerns for the environment, The Greens have remained deathly silent on Australia’s world-beating immigration program and have refused to argue the case publicly for a smaller and more sustainable population for Australia.

Moreover, what a shame little of this critical, underlying environmental science was included in the recent ABC specials on a ‘Big Australia’ or has failed to penetrate the thick heads of The Guardian or Grattan Institute. All of them supposedly supportive of “left” environmental policy.

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