Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes:

(i)

the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Sydney Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development which states that ‘Ongoing action is required to encourage afforestation and reforestation and to reduce deforestation, forest degradation and forest fires...’,

(ii)

that Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which includes the following commitments:‘4.1      (f) Take climate change considerations into account, to the extent feasible, in their relevant social, economic and environmental policies and actions, and employ appropriate methods, for example impact assessments, formulated and determined nationally, with a view to minimizing adverse effects on the economy, on public health and on the quality of the environment, of projects or measures undertaken by them to mitigate or adapt to climate change’, and‘4.2      (a) Each of these Parties shall adopt national policies and take corresponding measures on the mitigation of climate change, by limiting its anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and protecting and enhancing its greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs’, and

(iii)

emissions from Gunns Limited’s proposed pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley will result in annual greenhouse gas emissions of at least 10.2 Mt CO2 per annum, equivalent to 2 per cent of Australia’s total emissions in 2005; and

(b)

calls on the Government to determine the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted by the pulp mill, including emissions resulting from forest harvesting, in line with the Sydney Declaration and Australia’s obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Treaty.

Question put.