State of the Environment (SoE) reporting themes
The Minister for the Environment is required, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, to table a report in Parliament every five years on the state of the environment.
National SoE reports are based on data and information, collated and interpreted by an independent committee of experts and results are presented within a structure of environmental themes. The final compositions and names of the themes vary dependent on the wishes of the Committee as demonstrated in the list below. For example:
- the 2006 Coasts and oceans theme was split in 2011 into two separate chapters:
- Coasts, and
- the Marine environment
- in 2006 an additional theme, the Australian Antarctic Territory was introduced,
- in 2011 the chapter Drivers was introduced.
A more detailed explanation of how the thematic chapters are structured can be found in the Approach section of the SoE 2011 report.
Thematic summaries
- Drivers
- Atmosphere
- Inland water (previously Inland Waters)
- Land
- Marine environment (previously a component of Coasts and Oceans)
- Antarctic environment (previously Australian Antarctic Territory)
- Biodiversity
- Heritage (previously Natural and cultural heritage)
- Built environment (previously Human settlements)
- Coasts (previously a component of Coasts and oceans)
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