In late October the House of Representatives Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts Committee tabled its report, Managing our Coastal Zone in a Changing Climate: the Time to Act is Now. This calls for new governance arrangements for Australia’s coastal zone in light of climate change and the environmental impacts of increasingly frequent and more intense storm surges.
The Committee’s recommendations include how national leadership can be provided in a collaborative framework with State and Local Government through a COAG intergovernmental agreement (IGA) that would set out the roles and responsibilities of the three spheres of government in future coastal zone management.
Committee Chair, Jenny George, said with around 80 per cent of our population living in the coastal zone, this concentration of population and infrastructure along our coast makes us particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, including sea level rise.
With many of our growth corridors along coastal strips and the popularity of a seachange, this is putting even greater pressure on our fragile coastlines.
Already some beach areas and private land has been lost, so planning must be sustainable to ensure houses and other infrastructure is not washed away in the future.
As well as the potential to adversely impact property values, some councils are already undertaking expensive beach regeneration works to ensure the attraction of their locality for tourists is
not undermined.
And then there are the legal issues. The Committee’s recommendations include the need to clarify whether public authorities were liable for “acting or not acting in terms of climate change adaptation and possible coastal hazards” and whether councils should be broadly indemnified.
The report states, “Councils need to develop clearly defined policies to deal with the impacts of climate change and make the risks of climate change impacts an explicit part of their decision making criteria to assist in limiting their potential exposure to legal action.”
Coastal management decisions are certain to upset some residents, business operators and developers. But would a national approach of one size fits all be the best solution?
If an IGA on coastal management is established, clearly defining roles and responsibilities across the three spheres
of government – along with adequate funding arrangements – will be vital as councils and communities strive to protect their
local amenity.
