State of the Environment 2011 (SoE 2011)

State of the Environment 2011 Committee. Australia state of the environment 2011.
Independent report to the Australian Government Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.
Canberra: DSEWPaC, 2011.

6 Marine environment

4.5 Evaluation of management effectiveness

No national evaluation of marine management effectiveness has been conducted. Applying the principle of subsidiarity (as proposed by the independent review of the EPBC Act⁸¹) implies that an analysis of the Australian Government’s marine management system would be a suitable point to start an initial national evaluation. Although the independent review of the EPBC Act mainly considered future arrangements, with past performance inferred rather than reported, the depth and breadth of the recommended improvements in relation to all marine matters suggest a high level of inadequacy in existing arrangements.⁸¹ Notwithstanding progressive improvements and many important recent achievements from both the states and the Australian Government management systems, the review’s summary of an expected role for the Australian Government in such matters encapsulates the broad extent of the system’s weaknesses and needs:

The Commonwealth’s role in a national system should be one of leadership, as a champion of the national interest, and a standard setter in environmental management.

In assessing the effectiveness of current management of the marine environment, it is valuable to examine the effectiveness of the management system—particularly the six elements of management listed above—in dealing with the main pressures on the environment (as identified in Section 3 of this chapter), to maintain the assets, values and resilience of the marine environment.

Smaller scale assessments of management effectiveness have been conducted in marine areas across Australia—for example, in the Great Barrier Reef and in Western Australia.

The GBRMP evaluation found that many of these elements were being achieved. Importantly, objectives relating to community understanding of issues and development of effective partnerships were found to be achieved. However, arguably the most substantive element (achievement of desired outcomes) was ranked as poor for GBRMP management effectiveness as a whole. Achievement of desired outcomes (values protected, threats reduced, long-term environmental and economic sustainability) was found to be very variable across issues. Overall, the greatest concern in relation to achieving desired outcomes related to the management of impacts of climate change. Poor outcomes were also found for management of coastal development, extractive use (fishing) and water quality.⁹⁴

At a state level, in Western Australia, 18 actions were identified by the Western Australian Government for the ‘Marine’ theme in response to the 1998 Western Australian SoE report. By 2007, 14 of these actions remained incomplete, 2 were completed but not evaluated, and only 2 had been completed and evaluated. The large number of incomplete actions reflects the lack of attention to the marine environment and the sheer size of the state’s marine environment, its remoteness from major settlements and the high costs of research and monitoring in such circumstances.⁴⁸

Assessment summary 6.8—effectiveness of marine management
Summary	Assessment grade				Confidence
Summary	Ineffective	Partially effective	Effective	Very effective	In grade	In trend
Climate change impacts
Understanding: Strong institutional partnerships are being formed to develop a comprehensive and agreed knowledge base about drivers—includes knowledge of physical processes; knowledge of biological process is lagging. Cross-discipline synthesis programs are developing, as yet embryonic
Planning: Limited preparedness or anticipation in most affected assets and systems
Inputs: Few resources are devoted to identifying the issues, or to strategies for responses or mitigation of impacts
Processes: Very limited development of management tools or approaches to adapt in an integrated manner to climate impacts
Outputs: ‘Business as usual’strategies prevail, except in coastal flood-prone lands; few strategic responses to provide for maintenance of biodiversity values
Outcomes: Habitat and species declines are beginning to become evident, with limited preparedness to adapt
Coastal urban development
Understanding: Good understanding of types and sources of pollution, impacts of habitat alienation, and broad dependencies of coastal ecosystems and valued assets. Information base lagging on impacts of endocrine disruptors from sewage, stormwater, groundwater and agricultural systems on nearshore species and habitats
Planning: Strong regulatory measures are being developed and applied. Asset amenity and economics of coastal lands continue to preclude assessment of environmental issues that reflect ecological processes and biodiversity values
Inputs: Major resources are devoted to planning and management at all levels of government
Processes: No national synthesis of coastal impacts or development issues recognising the natural values of coastal systems. No integration of effective management approaches or frameworks. Incremental development prevails, focusing on technological advancement rather than avoidance of impacts
Outputs: Impacts are decreasing, but no agreed management system for identifying capacity limits, or low-impact development solutions that maintain biodiversity and ecological aspects of shoreline ecosystems
Outcomes: Coastal lands continue to be developed, with pollution and impacts on habitats in adjacent waters, and extensive growth in all regions
Port facilities
Understanding: Management issues and impacts of port developments are well known
Planning: Planning and approval systems are advanced, and continue to provide high-quality assessment systems to minimise impacts
Inputs: Commitment of resources to avoiding impacts is limited by cost factors and operational requirements
Processes: Issues are managed on a local and individual issue scale; little management of cumulative impacts or impacts outside local precincts
Outputs: Ports are managed loosely as a system, often privatised and outside direct government control, typically implementing generic rule-based systems that do not always recognise impacts on local values
Outcomes: Port developments continue to be driven by operational requirements at the expense of local species and habitats, with substantial ongoing levels of cumulative impact
Oil and gas exploration and production
Understanding: Impacts of the exploration, production and transport phases of the industry are well understood, although specific issues about dispersants and medium-term effects are yet to be resolved
Planning: Major lack of a regional environmental planning and assessment framework with relevant constraints on development
Inputs: Substantial resources are applied to the impact issues
Processes: Individual sites are approved based on production and economic requirements rather than environmental constraints; there appears to be only limited cumulative impact assessment. Site-based processes are good, although human error continues to have major consequences and needs much better supervision of compliance
Outputs: Strong regulatory regime at the site level, although lacking in onsite compliance systems; few effective outputs at the region level
Outcomes: Increasing rate of disturbance of marine mammals, and risk of accidents and oil spills due to large number of seabed and land-based structures; increasing exploration, construction activity and ship movements; and remoteness from regulatory control centres
Fishing
Understanding: Limited context is applied, mainly focused on resource use; limited recognition of trophic or cumulative impacts
Planning: EPBC Act assessments cover more than 120 fisheries. Marine bioregional planning for Commonwealth waters is committed to considering pressures, including fishing. State-based fisheries legislation is generally committed to ecological outcomes, as well as economic ones. However, there is no comprehensive national assessment or reporting system for fisheries sustainability or environmental impacts; no national mechanism for assessing environmental outcomes; no national system for information capture across environmental aspects
Inputs: Limited mainly to resource management systems, not environmental impacts
Processes: Strong systems are in place for management of commercial fishing impacts on habitat and EPBC Act–listed species, but limited management of trophic impacts. Limited management of recreational fishing. Many jurisdictions, including the Commonwealth, are moving to improve ecosystem-based fisheries management approaches
Outputs: Good achievement of commercial fisheries programs; limited achievement in recreational fishing management; strong growth of resource certification systems in the private sector
Outcomes: Fisheries management achieves limited environmental outcomes: all species that can be fished are held at population sizes significantly below pristine levels under current management systems. Trophic structures in the oceans are heavily impacted—ecosystem resilience to trophic impacts, cumulative impacts and potential time to recovery are uncertain
Shipping
Understanding: Good understanding of impacts, other than acoustic impacts and behavioural disturbance
Planning: Good level of national and international coordination to manage shipping impacts
Inputs: Strong management systems are in place, although issues remain regarding monitoring and compliance
Processes: Shipping management systems are well developed and moderately effective. Groundings, shipping lanes and pest species are generally well managed nationally and internationally, but species introductions continue to occur at a high rate
Outputs: Further management is needed to ensure that best-practice procedures are maintained
Outcomes: Intensification of shipping remains a significant risk for pests, groundings and marine mammals
Aquaculture
Understanding: Impacts and risks of land-based and sea-based aquaculture are reasonably well understood
Planning: Management systems are dominated by resource and commercial issues, not environmental impacts; limited regional planning systems have been developed
Inputs: Very limited external inputs are deployed; management systems are mainly confidential and commercial property; inputs to management of diseases, chemical use and wildlife interaction are generally very limited
Processes: Limited management systems control and report on impacts of aquaculture. All industries are managed with some attention to major environmental issues, but with little public scrutiny or government accountability. Site-level management is held to best industry practice, but there is limited compliance monitoring
Outputs: Repeated episodes of serious disease outbreaks sourced from farms, both within farms and in wild species. Rapid growth of sea cages resulted in increasing fishing pressure on wild populations of small pelagic fish for feed. Wild-caught sardines for use as aquaculture food are now Australia’s largest fishery by weight
Outcomes: Widespread ecological impacts from multiple disease outbreaks; local impacts on ecosystems; increasing trophic impacts from small pelagic fishing; very limited control of cumulative impacts
Catchment run-off
Understanding: Issues and context are reasonably well defined, including nutrients, sediments, agricultural pollutants, dams, soil management practices; linkages to marine impacts are not well known
Planning: A strong catchment management ethos and natural resource management system are developing to better manage catchments and land run-off
Inputs: Commercial pressures are high, and restoring catchments is expensive; dealing with catchment health as it impacts marine ecosystems has had a limited focus
Processes: Catchment management systems and natural resource management organisations are becoming well developed; effectiveness across Australia is variable, particularly for the estuaries and nearshore marine ecosystems
Outputs: Historical degradation of soils, deforestation and salinisation of lands. Estuaries remote from urban areas are affected, some severely, by nutrients and sediments from poor agricultural practices. More urban rivers are affected by poor sewage and stormwater practices
Outcomes: Legacy of heavily impacted estuaries and nearshore ecosystems, including wetland habitats reclaimed; rivers with highly altered flood regimes; and coastal rivers, lakes and lagoons with altered mouth dynamics
Tourism facilities
Understanding: Good understanding of the issues and management requirements
Planning: Planning systems are comprehensive, and many respect the environmental assets that are also the attractions, although cumulative impacts remain a weak area of knowledge
Inputs: Considerable private and public input of resources and activities to manage and maintain environments; management of unstructured tourism and cumulative impacts is limited
Processes: Strong management of commercial tourism facilities. Effective measures ensure impacts are acceptably small. Unstructured tourism is largely unmanaged
Outputs: Industry best-practice systems are in place; some certification systems operate; structured tourism conducts self-assessment and monitoring
Outcomes: Structured tourism has few significant impacts. Unstructured tourism is reliant on site, asset and values management, which has limited effectiveness in marine ecosystems
Mining and industry
Understanding: Impact issues are clear, although cumulative effects are poorly understood
Planning: In relation to marine issues, this is mainly ad hoc, driven by commercial constraints; resource projects are not denied on environmental impact grounds; there is little consideration of regional cumulative impacts
Inputs: Site-based inputs are substantial, and there is substantial monitoring of site impacts
Processes: Shoreline and marine-based structures are heavily regulated and subjected to site-based assessments to minimise local impacts
Outputs: Increasing management programs for water, air and land pollution; limited management of cumulative impacts, alienation of coastal habitats for infrastructure requirements, or alterations to water and sediment regimes in adjacent areas
Outcomes: Modern industry and mining have limited local area impacts, except where the resource itself is mined, such as marine sands. However, cumulative impacts of infrastructure are significant, and risks (such as pollution) are increased by intensification, with demonstrated impacts on local habitats and species
Marine debris
Understanding: Management systems are poorly informed about the extent and risks of debris, or the relationships to trade globalisation and container shipping systems
Planning: Much of the issue is global, and global shipping systems (International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships [MARPOL]) are in place, but there are few practical arrangements in place to combat either gross or microparticle debris
Inputs: Domestic and global waste management programs have been developed
Processes: Management of marine debris issues is weak; domestic and foreign-sourced materials management is limited to industry arrangements and codes of conduct on shipping traffic and fishing vessels; limited processes to reduce losses from container vessels or manage waste from accidents
Outputs: Limited compliance monitoring of vessel-based waste management arrangements
Outcomes: Debris heavily impacts tropical waters; whales, birds and turtles are impacted (entanglement and ingestion) and probably a range of invertebrates. Plastic microparticles are globally widespread and increasing in all ocean waters, with an increasing but unknown level of ecological impact

Recent trends	Improving	Stable	Confidence	Adequate high-quality evidence and high consensus
	Deteriorating	Unclear		Limited evidence or limited consensus
	Deteriorating	Unclear		Evidence and consensus too low to make an assessment
Grades	Very good	Good	Poor	Very poor

Search within SoE

SoE 2011 - Reader Survey

What do you think of SoE 2011? Please provide your feedback through the reader survey.
SoE 2011 - Reader Survey

Acropora coral reef, Great Barrier Reef, Queensland. Photo by Gary Bell

State of the Environment 2011 (SoE 2011)

6 Marine environment

4.5 Evaluation of management effectiveness

On this page

Search within SoE

SoE 2011 - Reader Survey