Convenor's Reports

Major Campaigns

Marine & Coastal

» Darwin Harbour

As part of the Darwin Harbour Alliance, ECNT ran an enormously successful public campaign which lead to the scrapping of government plans to construct a dam across the Elizabeth River. Thousands of people demonstrated their opposition to the dam with over 8000 people signing a petition that was tabled in Parliament. If you would like to learn more about the history of this struggle, there is a chronology of the campaign on our website at www.ecnt.org.

ECNT has also been monitoring the potential gas developments around the Harbour and in the Glyde Point area. This work is being done with a broad range of groups, including the Litchfield Shire, Top End Native Plants Society, the Environmental Defenders' Office and the Field Naturalists Club.

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Landclearing

ECNT and Environs Kimberley appointed Jann Crase as the Northern Woodland and Wetlands campaigner in April this year. Jann hit the ground running and has enormously increased our capacity to work on landclearing issues. In May ECNT released a new report "Clearing moves North" written by John Brock, which has been adopted by several NTU courses as a core text.

ECNT has been concentrating on preventing broadscale clearing for agriculture in the Daly, Ord and Tiwi Islands and on the introduction of landclearing legislation in the Northern Territory. While it is early days yet for this campaign we've had a number of positive results with restrictions being placed on development approvals as a direct result of our input. ECNT will continue to promote the need to maintain our natural abundance rather than repeating southern Australia's mistakes of landclearing and over-allocating water resources.

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Mining

» Jabiluka

ECNT continues to work with the Mirrar Traditional Owners to prevent the development of Jabiluka uranium mine. In March 2001 Rio Tinto (new owner of ERA, the company which has the lease to mine the Jabiluka deposit) announced that there will be no development of the Jabiluka mine for at least 10 years, because of "traditional owner and community opposition". This is a major victory for the campaign and vindicates the efforts of thousands who have been involved in the campaign over the past 5 years. Obviously however there is still much work to be done to ensure that plans to develop the mine are abandoned and that the Jabiluka mineral lease is fully rehabilitated and incorporated into Kakadu National Park.

» West Arnhem Land Uranium Exploration

ECNT has focused on uranium exploration in West Arnhem Land over the past year. We are about to release a report on this issue (which will be available on our website) and have collaborated with the Alliance Against Uranium to prepare a poster outlining for traditional owners the process by which exploration licences are issued. This is important as under the Land Rights Act agreement to exploration is deemed to be consent to mine should an economic ore-body be discovered.

ECNT has also monitored other mining operations throughout the Northern Territory and recently embarked on a campaign for the introduction of compulsory rehabilitation bonds for all Northern Territory mines.

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Climate Change

» Cool Communities

Gary Scott began working as the Cool Communities Facilitator in March and has been busy assisting communities to take part in greenhouse gas reducing activities. Cool Communities is a joint project between ECNT and the Australian Greenhouse Office aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the household level. Gary has also greatly increased our knowledge base on greenhouse issues.

ECNT remains an active member of the Climate Action Network of Australia (CANA). Over the past year we held an information night with Anna Reynolds (of CANA) in Darwin, contributed to national forums and several joint media and lobbying events organised by CANA and continued to comment on the Australian Government's continuing reluctance to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

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Other Campaigns

Northern Territory Election - ECNT engaged in the Northern Territory election by seeking and assessing the various parties' environmental policies. This process saw the Labor Party make a raft of environment policy commitments prior to the election which, if implemented, will lead to major conservation gains in the Northern Territory. ECNT will obviously be following up these commitments with the newly elected government.

Weeds

Our 1995 publication "Weeds of Natural Ecosystems: A field guide to environmental weeds of the Northern Territory" finally sold out this year. The book has been an invaluable tool for NTU students, Aboriginal communities, Landcare groups, government agencies and other land managers. ECNT has secured funding from a variety of sources for a reprint. We are extending the current publication to include Queensland and northern WA. We expect that the second edition will be available early next year.

ECNT has also worked on a range of other issues over the year, including waste minimisation, feral animal control, fisheries issues, terrestrial and marine protected areas, pesticide and herbicide use and aquaculture.

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Achievements

Organisationally some of our achievements have been as follows:

Future Activities

Some of the things we are planning for 2002 include:

Finally we would like to thank all our members, supporters, volunteers and Management Committee members for their crucial contribution to our efforts this year.

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