By Lisa Macdonald
SYDNEY — More than 200 people gathered at Sydney University on August 27 to participate in an "Environment in Crisis Conference" convened by the Nature Conservation Council (NCC) of NSW.
The conference brought together activists from a wide range of local issue environment groups in Sydney and around NSW, as well as individuals from the peak environment bodies and relevant government services. In order to guarantee a gathering of "genuine conservationists", representatives of political parties, green or otherwise, were not permitted to attend.
The stated aims of the conference were to facilitate information exchange and networking between environmentalists, to clarify the NSW environment movement's priorities and assessment of the state government's environmental record, and to maximise the NSW movement's impact in the coming state elections, which are to be held in March 1995.
The conference, which cost $10,000 to organise, resulting in a prohibitive registration fee of $30 for the day, involved a number of stages. In April the NCC canvassed around 450 environment groups in NSW regarding their main concerns, issues and election priorities. The responses to this survey were compiled into a list of draft resolutions which were the basis for discussion at the 21 workshops held at the conference.
These workshops covered topics ranging from water and forests issues to Aboriginal land and environment issues, public transport and local government. Lists of five priority resolutions and questions for forthcoming election candidates were discussed, compiled and taken back to a conference plenary from each workshop, where they were adopted by consensus or a 95% majority, or rejected.
The outcomes of this process will be published as conference proceedings and will form the basis of letters from the NCC to state election parties and candidates seeking their response. The answers received will be publicised.
The number and diversity of people and local environment groups that attended the conference was a clear indication that the environmental crisis continues to be a major concern for large numbers of people who are prepared to take action at the grassroots level. This was also reflected in the rich discussion in the workshops, which generated hundreds of ideas and proposals for both immediate and longer term policy changes to protect the environment.
Despite the enormous potential of this gathering, however, most of it remained unrealised by the end of the day. Compounding the problems created by time constraints was the tight control of the agenda, process and possible outcomes by the conference conveners.
The result was that, while a general aim of the conference was to discuss strategies for environmentalists to impact on the state elections, in fact discussion around any strategies other than lobbying the parties and candidates in the elections was not possible. When, for example, reporters from workshops raised proposals for non-candidate directed grassroots campaigning, they were told to reformulate their ideas in lobbying terms.
This narrow and basically conservative perspective which dominated the conference was summed up Milo Dunphy in his closing address when he said, "We have to clearly define what we want if the government is going to take us seriously". No assessment was offered of why the government has not been taking seriously the many crystal-clear demands of the environment movement in NSW in recent years (such as to stop logging the south-east and north-east forests).
The domination of the lobbying approach to environmentalism at the conference contrasted sharply with the activist approach which characterised the Students, Science and Sustainability conference held here two months ago. The earlier conference, which brought together many more young activists and far fewer representatives of the peak bodies in the environment movement, launched and built a number of campaigns which have since drawn new people into the movement.
In certain respects the outcomes of the Environment in Crisis Conference were very positive. The compilation of current issues and demands of large sections of the movement, for example, was very useful. The question remains, however, what is the most effective use of this information.
The experiences of the environment movement in Australia to date clearly indicate that neither the ALP nor a Liberal government will respond to such lists of concerns and demands, no matter how reasonable, well thought out and well presented they are, in the absence of a mass movement which actively mobilises increasing numbers of people against government policy. The goals and emphasis of the Environment in Crisis Conference would have been better focused on developing tactics and strategies to build independent activist campaigns that take the movement well beyond the framework of parliamentarism.
Readers can contact the NCC (NSW) on (02) 241 2502 to obtain a copy of the conference proceedings.