Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that:

(i)

150 industrialised countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol met in the week beginning 27 August 2007 in Vienna and agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 per cent by 2012 and reached a non-binding agreement to target new cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 in an extension of the treaty,

(ii)

the meeting also agreed on a position to take to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change annual meeting in Bali in December 2007 to make substantial progress towards a final post-2012 agreement to extend Kyoto into a second commitment period,

(iii)

the meeting agreed that the 25 to 40 per cent reduction was necessary if global warming was to be constrained to a temperature increase of between 2 and 2.4 degrees Celsius,

(iv)

the meeting officially recognised the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 that global greenhouse emissions needed to be stabilised in the next 10 to 15 years and then substantially reduced by mid-century, and

(v)

Australia and the United States of America were the only two industrialised nations not involved in the talks; and

(b)

concurs with the agreement reached at the Vienna meeting and urges the Government to:

(i)

re-engage with the Kyoto Protocol process in time for the Bali meeting, and

(ii)

adopt a target for greenhouse cuts of at least 25 per cent by 2020.

Question put.