* the Golden shouldered and the Double-eyed Fig Parrots,
* frogs and reptiles like the Torrent Tree frog, Boyd's Forest Dragon and the Pygmy Spiny-tailed Skink, as well as mammals like
* the Bandicoot, the Mulgara and the Bilby.
All of these face imminent extinction as a direct consequence of an unsustainable and destructive agribusiness drive for food exports. They are the hidden cost of harmless sounding products like wheat, rice, barley, maize, oats, sunflowers, chick peas and cotton seed. The exports of these are worth over A$5 billion annually. Wheat alone is worth A$3.5 billion each year - accounting for 17 per cent of the world's export market.
Australia also exports a wide variety of fruit, vegetables, nuts, cut flowers, sugar and wine. Supermarkets stock a range of Australian products like wine and sultanas grown in areas recently cleared of temperate rainforest, indeed the UK is the major market for Australian wine growers. Fruit growers utilise mass electrocution of rare bats and flying foxes in the production of export teas, coffees and soft fruits.
Sugar exports are dwindling in value, but the consequences of years of irresponsible pollution of the waterways are only now beginning to be noted. The Great Barrier Reef is beginning to die as coral leaching, from cane field run off but also from cattle production resulted in increased algae while weakening the coral itself.
But above all it is beef, as in the Amazon rainforest, that is the main culprit. Australia is the world's largest exporter of beef. Some of it is sold raw through supermarket chains, the rest processed into other foodstuffs. The end result of all this is that Australia has the worst record on the planet for animal extinctions, and a list of species on the brink of extinction second to none.
Even having said that, there's worse. The land clearing is historically linked to the violent colonisation of the continent, a process in which the indigenous people, forest cover and animals alike were seen as hostile. Until recently land was leased to farmers only on condition that they actively cleared it. Many indigenous communities used to be forest ones, not 'desert people' as they are sometimes portrayed. The human cost of the land clearance has been written out of history.
The unsavory fact is that the ongoing ecocide that has resulted in the planet suffering what scientists call the 'sixth great extinction' is due to the rapacious appetite of the peoples and corporations of the rich world, not the ignorance and backwardness of the poor.
The original Rio Summit had two landmark outcomes - the Kyoto protocol, which essentially put up the price of energy for developing economies (and tried to create a multi $trillion carbon trading scheme) and a global treaty on biodiversity that was so-worded that no country, however outrageous their policies, had any trouble signing up for. Australia, of course, was one of them. And so were most of its greedy customers.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
