State of the Environment Report Tabled

The 2016 Australia State of the Environment (SOE) Report (Overview) was tabled in Parliament in March 2017 to provide a basis for government policy makers to undertake more informed decisions about the environment. The SOE is a five-yearly series of authoritative, national environmental overviews (begun in 1996) and continues the ‘report card’ approach of assessments of pressures, condition and trends; discussions of risk and resilience; and future projections or ‘outlooks’ that were first implemented in SOE 2011.

The Meeting of Environment Ministers (Commonwealth, State and Territory) agreed in Melbourne on the 28 July 2017 to ‘work together to identify opportunities for cross-government collaboration to address concerns raised in the report’. It is hoped that this agreement, where the relevant minister does not have heritage responsibilities, will also bind the respective jurisdictional heritage minister.

The author of the substantial heritage theme contribution to the 2016 SOE was Professor Richard Mackay AM.

The link to this SOE theme can be found at: https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/heritage and the entire report can be found at http://www.environment.gov.au/science/soe. Links to the various SOE reports, compiled in their own independent processes, by individual state and territories, can also be found here.