Living wonders

What are our living wonders? They are the many uniquely Australian animals, plants, places and ecosystems that are special to our enjoyment, our health and our tourism economy.

The Living Wonders legal intervention was the work of another small conservation group, Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECoCeQ), with expert legal assistance from Environmental Justice Australia. They asked the federal Environment Minister to reconsider the climate change impacts of 19 coal and gas proposals across Australia based on a rarely used section of Australia’s environmental legislation.

Historically, only local impacts have been considered when assessing the impacts to matters of national environmental significance. The Living Wonders legal argument was that it doesn’t matter where the greenhouse gas emissions come from, they do impact on all Australia’s Living Wonders.

EnvA provided support by writing submissions, letters and promoting the Living Wonders climate cases.

The Living Wonders website has lots of information about the legal intervention and it is a great source of information about the impacts of climate change on our threatened plants, animals and habitats.

So what happened?

The reconsideration request was successful with the Australian Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek agreeing to reconsider 18 of the 19 projects subject to this intervention. Central Queensland Coal was not included as the refusal decision was imminent due to the significant direct impacts to the Great Barrier Reef.

Then two of the projects were withdrawn by the proponents including the Valeria coal proposal in Central Queensland and two CQ proposals were cancelled by the Minister as the Proponent had failed to provide the required assessment reports in a reasonable timeframe.

In May 2023, the Minister decided that three of the fossil projects could proceed to assessment without having to consider the climate impacts on our Living Wonders. This was very disappointing news.

But ECoCeQ wasn’t going to accept this without a fight! They took the Minister to the Federal Court, and then appealed to the full bench of the Federal Court. Unfortunately they were not successful so bravely applied for special leave to have the case in the High Court – but this was refused so the Full Federal Court’s decision stands.

This is likely to be the end of the road for ECoCeQ’s Living Wonders legal challenge, but it is not the end of the campaign to save our Living Wonders from the impacts of climate change!