Crossing the line from academia to activism

Last year, an Independent Review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, 1999, specifically examined the interaction between the Act and the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement (RFA), and whether this provided unfair exemptions to forestry operations.

The Independent Review found that the RFA was indeed ensuring that forest management in Tasmania was meeting the requirements of the EPBC Act, and with regard to the claim of exemptions reported that:

The interaction between the EPBC Act and forestry operations is often referred to as an “exemption”. This term does not, however, accurately reflect the relationship. The rationale for the RFA provisions in the Act recognises “that in each RFA region a comprehensive assessment has been undertaken to address the environmental, economic and social impacts of forestry operations”. Rather than being an exemption from the Act, the establishment of RFAs (through comprehensive regional assessments) actually constitutes a form of assessment and approval for the purposes of the Act.

The relevant knowledge of the “eminent group of professionals”

Calling for legal reform of the management of an activity requires more than just an understanding of the law. It requires a detailed understanding of the activity itself including knowledge of how its regulatory regime was developed and has evolved, including past examinations of its veracity, such as last year’s Independent Review.

As the internet profiles of the 26 University of Tasmania scientists and academics who signed the “open letter” suggest, very few have any experience in forestry or land management, it appears that the majority of the group has little more than a distaste for native forest timber production and (presumably) a determination to end it. This seems particularly pertinent to those working in unrelated disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, accounting and economics.

The danger of publicly supporting causes of which you are not fully versed is perhaps illustrated by the case of Professor Tim Bonyhady. He was a leading signatory of a similar “open letter” by 100 academics and scientists opposed to Tasmanian forestry operations which was published in The Australian just prior to the 2004 federal election.

Professor Bonyhady is now the Director of the Australian Centre for Environmental Law and the Centre for Climate Law and Policy at the Australian National University. Last year, he was one of three academics who conducted the Independent Review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 1999, which (as described above) found that Tasmanian forestry is being well managed in accordance with the Act.

Further to that, the Independent Review noted that:

As a consequence of the Tasmanian RFA, 79 per cent of old growth forest and 97 per cent of high quality wilderness is in reservation. This exceeds the global target of effective conservation of 10 per cent each of the world's ecological regions, set out under the Convention for Biological Diversity. These achievements, which often go overlooked or unremarked in debate, deserve greater public recognition.

It seems that Professor Bonyhady’s exposure to the full suite of facts surrounding Tasmanian forestry have caused him to re-evaluate his earlier thoughts on this issue. It is likely that a good many of the signatories to this “open letter” would follow a similar path if they were to objectively evaluate all the facts, rather than unquestionably accept skewed views generated by incessant anti-logging activism.

The ideological position of the eminent group of professionals

Several of the group are long-standing opponents of Tasmania’s timber industry causing one commentator to describe the group as “the usual suspects” when their “open letter” was published.

The two non-university signatories and several of the other academic signatories have been closely associated with the Environmental Defenders Office which has in the past provided legal assistance to environmental activists opposing Tasmanian forestry operations.