Australia ranks among the highest per capita electronic waste (e-waste)-generating countries in the world. Each year, Australians discard significant quantities of electronic devices, many of which end up in landfill. One notable approach to reducing e-waste is promoting repair to extend product lifespans to reduce the quantity of products going to landfill. Many jurisdictions have already addressed repair barriers through regulations that improve extended producer responsibility, design and parts availability, while providing repair incentives to encourage individuals and businesses to choose repair over replacement. This article examines the effectiveness of repair incentives in promoting a repair culture to reduce e-waste. It analyses how various European Union countries have implemented repair incentives and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches to determine whether the lessons can be applied to Australia. Insights from e-waste generation and crowd-sourced repair data, combined with reviewing policy and e-waste generation trends, are used to assess the broader environmental and economic benefits of repair. With Australia yet to begin removing key barriers to repair, this article aims to inform Australian policymakers of the merits of repair incentive initiatives in helping Australia meet its obligations under the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
Adaptive management (AM) is an iterative approach to structured decision-making, typically related to the management of natural resources, that emphasises the importance of ongoing learning and adapting as accrued knowledge reduces system uncertainties. AM is increasingly adopted in proposals seeking regulatory approval to offset uncertainties in expected environmental impacts, particularly in Australia. Here, we investigate and critique the AM guidance of Australian government agencies applied within environmental regulatory oversight, with comparisons to AM guidance from Canada, Denmark and the United States. AM guidance in Australia was found to vary across individual jurisdictions, in the absence of national guidelines. The results found major deficiencies relative to international guidelines, with major AM components often omitted. The significant variability in the AM guidance offered by Australian regulators has arguably led to deficiencies and inconsistent AM applications, as apparent in a review of Australian AM plans currently implemented to manage projects. Without clear, consistent guidance within Australia, AM will continue to be misinterpreted and misused, creating threats to environmental assets within the impact footprint of major developments.
Low waste mobile phone (WMP) recycling rates are a global phenomenon, including in Australia, where they persist despite recycling initiatives. Robust qualitative research has been advocated to deepen understanding of this complex sustainability issue. Accordingly, 127 Australian consumers provided insights via this study's online focus groups and interviews. This sample size had an 80 per cent chance of capturing four or five instances of hoarding and other WMP recycling barrier themes, as relevant to 5 per cent of the population. The key non-recycling reason was WMP hoarding convenience. WMPs are easily stored and are consequently kept as a digital archive and as a standby. Significantly, WMPs are retained, as hoarding also mitigates the wide-ranging issues and risks that consumers associate with recycling. Thematic analysis identified four broad WMP recycling barrier categories, comprised of nine themes and multiple subthemes. While the broad barrier categories align with prior research, this study's large qualitative sample further exposed the interrelated nature of WMP recycling concerns and how hoarding mitigates these. A comprehensive WMP hoarding and other recycling barriers typology is presented to inform future research and waste management strategies that focus on creating recycling benefits that outweigh the convenience of entrenched WMP hoarding behaviour.
In addressing the question of 'who drives just transition', we show the importance of regional geography in understanding change. We examine the closure of coal mines and power stations in one locality, Collie in Western Australia. To date, the just transition and climate politics literatures have focused on the critical role of state intervention in a transition from fossil fuel extraction and use. Our conceptual framing builds upon these approaches by drawing on insights from environmental politics and economic geography. We concentrate on the importance of place, as constructed over time, and power, as both energy and politics. Our study shows that besides the state, other actors, chiefly labour, must deploy their power if the transition is to be just. We further show how the local scale is critical to the just transition policy processes and outcomes. In examining an unusually positive case, in terms of process and, to a lesser extent, outcomes, the singular constellation of local factors that has driven this program serves to highlight that just transition in general is extremely difficult. This is because of the fragility of the ways in which those local factors coalesce and because of the wider pressures of firm ownership, market structures and politics.
Reform to Australia's primary federal environmental legislation - the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) ("EPBC Act") - has returned to the spotlight. After failing to pass its reform agenda through the last parliament, the Australian government introduced amending legislation in November 2025 and, after a short period of intense negotiation, an amended EPBC Act passed the parliament in December 2025. While shortfalls in the scope and effectiveness of the EPBC Act have drawn much scholarly critique over the past two decades, this critique does not typically articulate an analytical framework against which to evaluate reforms or standards for guiding new statutory or policy amendments. We define and characterise, for the first time, a nascent tool, "legal design principles", as a guide to future, more-ambitious law reform for an uncertain and challenging future. This tool also offers a standard for critically assessing legal reforms such as the EPBC Act reforms. In this article, we (1) define what legal design principles are, (2) articulate core characteristics of legal design principles and their value in guiding future law reform and (3) briefly examine how this tool might help us to critically and transparently assess the EPBC Act reforms against ambitious global priorities.
The climate crisis and global commitments to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 have intensified the focus on renewable energy. However, Australia's renewable energy sector faces significant challenges, particularly reliance on imported materials and technologies. This study evaluates trends and policy developments, identifies challenges to Australia's renewable energy transition and proposes strategic recommendations to enhance economic viability and environmental sustainability. A review of 45 selected studies based on the energy transition theory, sustainable supply chain management and global-local interdependencies, reveals key barriers such as reliance on fossil fuels, grid integration issues and regional disparities. These findings highlight the need for technological innovation, policy reforms and strategic investments to strengthen grid resilience and build sustainable supply chains. Australia has strong potential to lead the global renewable energy transition by expanding domestic manufacturing capacity, upgrading infrastructure and fostering coordinated action between government and industry. A comprehensive conceptual framework is presented to guide sustainable sector development. This study also identifies priorities for future research, including advanced grid technologies, local production systems, recycling practices and region-specific energy strategies to support a resilient and competitive renewable energy ecosystem.
This article presents a visual sociological analysis of contemporary visitor rock carvings at White Mountains National Park, Queensland, Australia. Systematic photographic documentation and image-based coding were used to analyse 18 usable photographs, which captured approximately 436 legible inscription units. These included six dated items, 14 discrete symbol units and multilingual inscriptions. The findings indicate that carving practices are patterned rather than random: inscriptions cluster on highly visible surfaces, reproduce shared conventions in letter form and placement and, in eight panels, display co-presence indicators consistent with small-group carving. By integrating visual sociology, rock art palimpsest scholarship and a Country-centred heritage perspective, this study contends that these carvings function as place-making practices through which visitors assert identity, produce collective memory and negotiate belonging. However, these practices also risk cultural harm by establishing precedents and overwriting on Aboriginal Country. The study translates these mechanisms into practical management recommendations, such as disrupting recursive 'graffiti zones', co-producing messaging with Traditional Owners and providing low-impact alternatives for visitor commemoration.
As a signatory to the Global Biodiversity Framework, Australia has committed to eliminate or reform biodiversity-harmful subsidies but has not yet initiated any relevant action. We present a preliminary assessment of biodiversity-harmful subsidies in Australia and the scope for reform. We adopted a method recommended by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and collaborated with biodiversity experts to assess the relative potential impact of different Australian Government subsidies on biodiversity. We identified biodiversity-harmful subsidies worth $26.3 billion in 2022-2023. Experts ranked subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels in energy and transport, and for agriculture, fisheries and forestry, as the most potentially harmful. At 1.1 per cent of Australia's gross domestic product, this estimate is materially significant. Due to data limitations, the total value of biodiversity-harmful subsidies in Australia is likely to be higher. Achieving Australia's international commitments under the Global Biodiversity Framework would require biodiversity-harmful subsidies to be reduced to a level where positive incentives and increased funding from all sources can achieve a nature-positive trajectory.
The New Zealand Resource Management Act 1991 promotes the sustainable management of natural and physical resources. Under this and associated Acts, local governments are required to identify environmental risks, including natural hazards and disseminate relevant information to their constituents and stakeholders. Local authorities must also strive to provide adequate, safe and affordable basic services and upgrade infrastructure as necessary. Thus, a dual pressure exists between the needs to increase housing supply and the need to comprehensively manage natural hazards. In response to various court challenges of local council decisions, recent amendments to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, specifically Section 44D, granted legal immunity to councils acting in good faith to disseminate hazard risk information in order to protect people, property and the environment from the adverse effects of natural hazards. This article outlines the impetus for granting councils legal immunity and councils' likely change of tact following a series of legislative and policy changes. Lastly, we consider a group of natural mineral hazards that have been largely overlooked in legislation and offer a framework by which local government can collaborate with the scientific community to assess environmental hazards and communicate these to constituents and stakeholders.
Municipal councils are the principal agents that manage solid waste and advocate sustainable practices in many countries. This is the case for many small island developing states in the Pacific, which experience high pollution rates and low rates of community-based recycling. The behavioural aspects of sustainable solid waste management are less studied and documented in the Pacific region compared to investigations about the socio-economic, technical and infrastructural factors. More rigorous reviews of council-led programs are needed to provide insights into best practices and the pitfalls to avoid for prospective behavioural programs. This study systematically reviews waste management interventions implemented by five municipal councils in Fiji from 2000 to 2019. The interventions span across three strategic areas - schools, homes and farmer's markets. This article assesses these interventions using the social marketing benchmark criteria, which are useful for evaluating behavioural interventions. Our findings indicate that local authorities are reliant on traditional communication channels, rather than interactive platforms, to communicate with end-users. Another important finding is that interventions lack user-centric design to elicit user engagement. Moreover, this article discusses alternative pathways to recycling and composting for communities and the type of behavioural strategies needed at schools to enhance pro-environmental attitude and behaviour.
To assess how scientific contributions reflect trends in environmental management in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and meet the needs of the environmental profession, we reviewed peer-reviewed articles published in the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management from 2004 to 2024. The 449 publications demonstrate a strong interdisciplinary focus on governance, policy and social dimensions as well as balanced attention to land and water issues across a wide set of contemporary and continuing environmental concerns, including climate change and conservation. We found the journal makes a sound contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals. Much of the research by the 1,044 authors is multi-sectoral, with growing collaboration among government, industry and not-for-profit organisations. The journal's knowledge base aligns well with the needs of the environmental profession as identified in a recent report. Topics warranting greater representation in future publications include climate change, disaster and resilience, political influence on policy, environmental education as well as Indigenous resource use. Although performing well on equity criteria, the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management encourages more contribution from Indigenous and female authors from both New Zealand and Australia.
Immediately prior to the 2025 Australian election, the Federal Government forced amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999 (Cth) through the Parliament. These amendments were passed ostensibly to protect the salmon farming industry in Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania, but risk catastrophic impact on the endangered Maugean Skate. In this article, we undertake a legal analysis to explain the context and content of these amendments and their effect within the Act's environmental impact assessment process more broadly. We analyse all referral decisions from 2011 to 2020, building a body of evidence that demonstrates the broad and perverse reach of what was announced as a salmon farming-specific amendment. We also explore why this amendment is at odds with the purpose and scheme of the legislation and also at odds with adaptive management principles that could otherwise promote learning and improvement in regulatory effectiveness over time. We conclude with a call to the Australian Government - and other governments undertaking environmental law reform - to avoid case-by-case, industry-specific carveouts. To be effective, environmental law reforms must instead take a long-term, holistic view of the value and vulnerability of Australia's rich landscapes and seascapes.
Regional land-use planning for utility-scale solar and wind energy production in the Northern Territory of Australia have been limited in consideration to regional ecological impacts and the long-term conservation of biodiversity policy goals. When conservation is prioritised in planning, rather than considering solely socioeconomic issues, more equitable land use outcomes are likely to be achieved. Here, we review existing formal conservation planning under current land use planning frameworks against bioregional area-based comprehensive and ecosystem representative policy goals for persistence of biodiversity using the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia in order to evaluate the threat of spatially cumulative impacts across large regions in the Northern Territory. Bioregional gaps in comprehensiveness and representativeness of ecosystems in recognised conservation areas are most evident on the pastoral lease estate, covering 44 per cent of land in the Northern Territory, with many ecosystems having little protection where land is increasingly being acquired and planned for development. The threat to biodiversity from the cumulative impacts of large centralised solar and wind farms of the type anticipated in the Northern Territory and regional development of other new land uses needs to be managed through strategic spatial planning with the assistance of conservation experts.
We report on a new archaeological feature - Aboriginal ponds - associated with earth mounds in Aboriginal Barapa traditional country settlements on the Murray River floodplain. These features are large depressions situated on flood runners that produce slight alterations to local hydrology. They hold one to five Olympic swimming pools of water (2.5-12.5 ML). We describe the structure and location of ponds at two Barapa villages. "Traditional Flows" were delivered, filling several ponds. Monitoring of small-bodied fish in the parent wetlands and adjacent ponds allowed for a preliminary assessment of the value of these features across the mid-Murray River floodplain. We demonstrate how minor modifications through traditional weirs affected local hydrology, with resulting water storage implications as well as the abundance and distribution of plant and animal resources. This improves our understanding of late Holocene Barapa settlement patterns and of how people modified the local landscape and, therefore, its ecology with consequences for food and fibre distribution as ponds developed over the last 3500 years. More importantly, there are implications for aquatic flora and fauna conservation as well as land and water management, all guided by Barapa intellectual property as set out in their local traditional knowledge distilled into their archaeological record.
Water markets are a demand management tool used by governments to respond to water scarcity. Australian water trading is well studied; however, little research exists outside the Murray-Darling basin. This study investigates water trading elsewhere, using a cross-jurisdictional water market comparison and case studies of the Tasmanian Midlands Irrigation Scheme (TMIS) and the similar-sized Victorian Macalister Irrigation District (VMID). Comparisons demonstrated that legislation and policy in Tasmania were less comprehensive relative to Victoria. Victorian water trading is integrated within the Water Act 1989, whereas two statutory instruments govern water trading in Tasmania, the Water Management Act 1999 providing more points of comparison than the Irrigation Clauses Act 1973. Case studies showed greater participation in VMID water markets for both short-term and permanent transfers and greater monthly volumes of permanent and short-term transfers than the TMIS. For the TMIS temporary water market, a significant, downward monotonic trend over time was found but there was no monotonic trend for the permanent water market. The VMID showed no monotonic trend for short-term transfers and significant, upwards monotonic trends for permanent transfers. Both states showed a significant inverse association between short-term transfers and rainfall, indicating that water markets facilitate adaptation to climate variability, and risk management.
