Did you know the federal government isn’t required to consider climate change when approving a development?

There’s been chatter in the environmental space for a while now about a “climate trigger”, and how it could help prevent fossil fuel projects from going ahead. If you’re not sure what it is, I’m here to help!

Our main federal environmental legislation is the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, or EPBC Act. It doesn’t get applied to all projects; it only activates if a project is likely to have an impact on one of nine categories laid out in the Act.

Climate change is not one of those nine categories.

When the EPBC activates, it is said to be “triggered”. So if a project will have a significant impact on, say, water (which is one of the nine categories), you would say it’s activated the water trigger.

So when you hear calls for a ‘climate trigger’ to be added, this is what people are asking for. We want climate change to be added as a 10th category to the Act, which would force the government to consider the impacts of climate change on major projects.

The government is planning to introduce changes to the EPBC Act in the next 18 months. At this stage, they have no plans to introduce a climate trigger.

What are the categories?

The nine categories are known as Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES). These Matters are:

• World Heritage
• National Heritage
• Wetlands of international importance
• Listed threatened species and communities
• Listed migratory species
• Protection of the environment from nuclear actions
• Marine environment
• Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
• Protection of water resources from unconventional gas development and large coal mining development

And that’s it. If you’ve come across anything else that’s confused you, drop me a line so I can do an explainer.