Economics

In what has been described as an important victory, Ecotourism Australia has been granted a number of interlocutory court orders by the Queensland Supreme Court, to protect both intellectual property and also the public from potentially misleading environmental marketing.

Ecotourism Australia found that an uncertified operator was using its ECO Certification Logo, without permission. The Eco Certification Program provides accreditation to successful eco and nature tourism applicants in Australia and is now being exported as the International Ecotourism Standard.

The Australian Rainforest Foundation (ARF) has recently distributed an explanation of its position and the work it has been tasked to do, particularly where it applies to the rainforest areas between the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation.

Much of what it describes as ‘always controversial’ is all too frequently rationalised against a series of subdivisions that were registered by the Queensland Government in the early eighties. What is rarely offered, by way of qualification, is that this decision was made in favour of competing interests that sought substantive removal of rainforest for sugar-cane cropping, on lands that had been held under freehold title for much of the preceding century. With a full disclosure of historical fact, the decision to oppose the expansion of sugar-cane was remarkably enlightened in its protection of an extraordinary rainforest habitat.

Not that the significant number of residential properties, with existing-use-rights, was without concern; indeed, if all twelve-hundred properties were developed to capacity, there would have been significant habitat losses. In recognition of these concerns, $23million was allocated in the mid-nineties for voluntary acquisition and conversion to National Park.

For resolution of outstanding concerns at the conclusion of this program, the Daintree Futures Study was undertaken and submitted to the Wet Tropics Ministerial Council. Three spheres of government were to sign a Memorandum Of Agreement to endorse its recommendations, including the package of financial contributions from Commonwealth and Queensland Governments and the Douglas Shire Council.

The Queensland Government was to allocate $16.1million to Ergon to supply grid electricity, but the Queensland Minister for Mines and Energy effectively circumvented the requirement by authorising an amended policy that prohibited the supply of electricity using a network and excised the Daintree region from Ergon’s distribution area.

The Douglas Shire Council was to collect an extra $1million from the Daintree River ferry over five years, but its specific purpose tourism/conservation levy was ultimately ruled illegal by the Queensland Supreme Court.

The Commonwealth government was to underwrite a $10million Daintree Land Trust, however, the Ministerial Council rather agreed to fund $300,000 each from Commonwealth and Queensland governments and an additional $400,000 outstanding from the previous $23million, to establish a $1million seeding grant for the ARF, as described in the above-mentioned explanation.

Tens of millions of dollars have been poured into ‘Daintree Conservation’ over the years, with changing names on title, covenants, property boundaries being reconfigured and development rights expropriated. There is little debate that this area of outstanding conservation value should be protected and to the greatest possible extent. To this end, its resident community has been regulated into a conservation land-use function, but what it requires, more than anything else, is an appropriate economy and one that is not contingent upon development. So far, none of the ‘rescue programs’ have managed to provide this requirement.

As a relatively recent land-holder, the ARF is grappling with the same conservation challenges as all landholders within the Daintree; its application for compensation for loss of development rights is an expression of an economic lack of choice.

An unusual paper has appeared in the journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change:

Sunspots, GDP and the stock market

Theodore Modis

Abstract

A correlation has been observed between the US GDP and the number of sunspots as well as between the Dow
Jones Industrial Average and the number of sunspots. The data cover 80 years of history. The observed correlations permit forecasts for the GDP and for the stock market in America with a future horizon of 10 years. Both being above their long-term trend they are forecasted to go over a peak around Jun-2008.

The paper concludes:

…..If one accepts that there must be some correlation between GDP growth and stock-market growth as
displayed in Fig. 5, then one cannot use the lack of scientific proof as an argument against the existence of
correlation between the stock market and sunspots (Fig. 2), or between GDP and sunspots (Fig. 4). On the
other hand, if these correlations are real, then we can venture long-range forecasts for the DJIA and the GDP….

….The levels forecasted here for the DJIA of 13908 in mid 2008 and 7919 in early 2014….

Well, we won’t have to wait too long to test the mid 2008 prediction. There’s time enough for Lockwood & Frohlich to debunk The Great GDP Sunspot Swindle, and for James Hansen to make several adjustments.

Douglas Shire Council (DSC) has authorised the public release of its Blue Hole Reserve draft Management Plan, which aims to create a reserve for community purposes at a site of global environmental and cultural heritage significance, at the centre of the Daintree Cape Tribulation rainforest.

The underlying objective, it would seem, is to commandeer a designated area for public swimming and other associated recreational activities.

The draft applies to a portion of land known colloquially as the ‘Blue Hole’ incorporating property on a diversity of tenures surrounding a deep pool situated on a bend in Cooper Creek. It is inextricably connected to Cooper Creek Wilderness within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, which is a pre-existing authorized provider of regulated public access to World Heritage goods and services, including recreational access to Cooper Creek on a user-pays basis.

Interestingly, Queensland’s Parks and Wildlife Service (the State’s principle land manager with over ninety-percent of the area) has opposed the formal sanctioning of such a facility on National Park, because of environmental sensitivities, cultural heritage values and legal liability.

Surely if the Queensland Government wants a venue for unrestricted public swimming in the Daintree Cape Tribulation region, then it should develop one or more, BUT PLEASE on its own lands; National Park in particular, declared for that very purpose and manageable under the provisions of the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and its various regulations.

Cooper Creek Wilderness is a working-model of private-sector management through best-practice ecotourism. It does not have the statutory authority that would allow for management of the public at large. Indeed, having signed a conservation agreement with the Minister for Environment, it is not permitted to allow the public at large to enter its Nature Refuge.

The site is also unsuitable for the proposed use because of its extremely important cultural heritage values to its traditional custodians as a birthing site and spiritual resting place for the unborn, since a time immemorial. As a requirement of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003, the proponent has a duty of care to take all reasonable and practical measures to ensure their activities do not harm cultural heritage.

The Cultural Heritage Report, prepared by Dr. Nicky Horsfall in November 2005, recommends that,

“The proposed reserve should be made to protect the natural and cultural values; it should not become a recreational reserve.”

The environmental report for the draft, prepared by consultant biologist Dr. Robyn Wilson, states;

Dr Wilson observed during her site inspection that a large tree (Ristantia pachysperma) on the northern bank near the tributary, that was helping to stabilize part of the bank, had collapsed and was filling the northern end of the Blue Hole. Dr Wilson surmises that a fact that may have contributed to its collapse was people climbing this tree to access a rope swing. Access to this tree would have compacted the soil at the base, which was eventually eroded and washed away by floodwater.

This proposal to provide unrestricted pedestrian access for recreation will devastate Cooper Creek Wilderness, which was effectively expropriated of development capability when it was compulsorily inscribed within Australia’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, except for the highly regulated provision of public access to World Heritage goods and services on a user-pays basis.

For years Cooper Creek Wilderness has formally requested a seat at the negotiating table to develop a cooperative solution to a complex management issue across multiple tenures, but has hitherto been denied such an invitation. Providing free-entry, unrestricted public access to that which Cooper Creek Wilderness has been compulsorily regulated to provide on a user-pays basis, is unconscionable.

There is a very acceptable solution to this matter that doesn’t involve the destruction of Cooper Creek Wilderness, but it would seem the proponents of this draft are resolutely disinterested.