Page 1419 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 2021
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significant opportunities to sustain people’s health and wellbeing, recreation, exercise and social interactions. This foundation places the ACT in an enviable position.
In addition, the ACT government has undertaken significant planning and policy development to ensure the protection, conservation and enhancement of the territory’s natural and cultural environments. We know that the maintenance of our natural assets will not just happen but need active planning and work. The ongoing delivery of this suite of strategies, policies and plans will see the ACT continue to be recognised for its nature-based landscape, as a compact and efficient city, and as a global leader in conserving our unique plants and animals while ensuring urban liveability.
Our primary environmental policy, the ACT Nature Conservation Strategy, is based on a landscape-scale approach for the whole of the ACT. Similarly, the ACT Planning Strategy and Canberra’s Living Infrastructure Plan, which both apply to the urban context, take a whole-of-urban-footprint approach.
Moreover, the Urban Forest Strategy provides a vision for a resilient and sustainable urban forest that supports a liveable city and the natural environment. Canberra’s Living Infrastructure Plan and the Climate Change Strategy aim for a 30 per cent tree canopy cover and 30 per cent permeable surfaces in Canberra’s urban footprint by 2045, further recognising the importance of nature—our trees, grasslands, wetlands and watercourses—and their contribution to human wellbeing.
Together, these strategies will continue our delivery of a liveable city and the wellbeing of the community, despite a changing climate; and, importantly, they will assist us in building our resilience to future events.
However, we must remember that these strategies are paper thin, unless they result in demonstrable action. We need only cast our minds back to the devastating summer fires, smoke impacts and the extremely dry conditions of early 2020 to realise our connection to nature and its conservation is core to our survival. The ACT Bushfire and Flood Recovery Plan released in September 2020 will guide us in actions to assist recovery of our landscapes, cultural sites and ecosystem assets, and protect their environmental and cultural values. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Canberra Nature Park became a wellbeing hub for the people of Canberra, with its highest ever recorded levels of visitation as people used the park for recreation and a place for respite.
The ACT’s wellbeing framework recognises the importance of the environment as a foundation to our wellbeing, as a critical resource for Canberrans in coping with challenges such as COVID-19 as well as with day-to-day challenges. The ongoing provision of clean air, clean water and other ecosystem services provided by nature is fundamental to our life and the life of everything around us. Our natural environment conserves and protects biodiversity, which is extremely important to all Canberrans.
We are taking action, but more is needed. We must recognise that we are in the middle of an extinction crisis and this must be a core part of the work in protecting nature in our city.
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