PYLA is a new coalition of environmental activist groups all around Australia uniting to comprehensively plan a united campaign around environmental change[1] which includes a comprehensive report on the state of the environment in Australia, challenges it faces and a swathe of recommendations for the future of the environment in Australia. 50 or 60 of the largest and most committed environmental organisations are involved in PYLA including the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society, World Wildlife Foundation, Greenpeace, conservation councils around Australia and dozens of others.
PYLA has done extensive research into the state of the environment[2] and partnered with the Australian Panel of Experts on Environmental Law[3] to develop a comprehensive proposal for a New Generation of Environmental Laws[4].
As a volunteer I’ve been involved in some of the promotional campaigning for the new laws proposal there are several key takeaways from their legislative proposals, some of which are presenting and some are missing from out platform[5]:
- National oversight for land clearing (missing from our platform), biodiversity and ecosystems (missing or weakly included), water resources (included), climate change (included), air pollution (missing) and protected areas (included via national parks).
- An independent National Sustainability Commission to provide strategic monitoring, reporting and planning on national and regional environmental performance including developing species level conservation plans (weakly included in our platform).
- An independent National Environmental Protection Authority to conduct assessment, monitoring, compliance and enforcement actions relevant to environmental assessments (see above).
- Guarantee community rights and participation in environmental decision making including open standing provisions, open access to information about decision making and environmental trends, review of decisions based on their merits, third-party enforcement provisions and protections for costs in the public interest (strongly included in our platform in other areas, lacking wrt environmental policy).
As our policy already aligns with much of the PYLA proposals, over the next few months I’m planning to investigate a policy amendment for the Pirate Party platform to better align our national platform with the PYLA New Generation Environmental Laws proposal. There are some good proposals, and in particular the guaranteed community participation rights tightly aligns with our direct democratic ideals.
1: http://www.placesyoulove.org/
2: http://www.placesyoulove.org/resources/
3: http://www.placesyoulove.org/expertpanel/
4: http://www.placesyoulove.org/australiawelove/naturelaws/
5: https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Platform#Environment