By Graham Matthews
TOWNSVILLE — Around 600 students from campuses all around Australia and Papua New Guinea attended the Students and Sustainability Conference, held at James Cook University here July 14-18.
"The conference has been a great success", said Mandy Trueman, JCU environment officer and conference coordinator. "There has been so much positive energy generated for the environment over this week. The point is to continue this energy in the future."
In a week of six major plenaries and more than 80 workshops, conference participants discussed diverse environmental issues, from uranium mining at Jabiluka to making a solar cooker that works, from indigenous land issues to the establishment of an Australian Student Environmental Network (ASEN).
The highlight was the plenary Indigenous Issues and the Environment. With speakers including Murrandoo Yanner and Jackie Katona, the plenary particularly highlighted the invasion of traditional owners' rights by international mining interests, CRA/RTZ and ERA.
Around 30 people attending the conference will take the opportunity to accompany traditional owners to protest at the Jabiluka mine site over the following week.
A significant decision was to establish ASEN. Resolutions passed by the conference as a whole moved to establish ASEN as "a national coordination assistance network involving the research and dissemination of information, the provision of support services and national and international liaison".
Resolutions also called on NUS to fund such a network, and for the secretariat for the next year be the NUS Environment Department.
NUS environment officer Matt Fagan told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ that it is imperative for student organisations to lobby NUS to maintain its commitment to environmental campaigns. Labor students' policy at NUS conferences over the last year has been to push for the abolition of the Environment Department.
"It's very likely this will be their position again this year", Fagan said, stressing the importance of pushing for NUS delegates to be committed to the department's retention, with appropriate funding.
Debates at the conference ranged through many areas, including population, the role of women, strategies for sustainable development and strategies for successful environmental campaigns.
A feature of the final day was a plenary on the North Queensland environment, given by activists from Townsville and Cairns. This included the Hinchinbrook development, the latest threat to the Daintree and the attempt to push power lines through a World Heritage area.
North Queensland Conservation Council coordinator Jeremy Tager detailed the massive threat to the marine ecology of the Great Barrier Reef from prawn trawling. For every three kilograms of prawns taken from the reef, over 10 kilograms of biomass are also destroyed.
The unsustainable process is endangering five varieties of sea turtle, and is not even profitable, when all costs are included. "If World Heritage is going to have any meaning for future generations, then clearly these destructive practices are going to have to cease", Tager said.
Gavin McFadzean from the Cairns Environment Centre spoke at length of the environmental impacts of John Howard's 10-point plan on Wik.
The legislation will create "a 3000 member land elite", McFadzean said. Allowing state governments to grant freehold title to leaseholders will create "a proliferation of unsustainable land use". Queensland law allows for no regulation of privately owned land.
"Selling off half the country should be the subject of a referendum, not just the policy of a particular government", McFadzean said. The alternative to the Liberals' legislation was regional agreements, such as the Cape York land use agreement, negotiated between environmentalists, traditional landowners and pastoralists.
To conclude the conference, more than 300 participants will be protesting against the Hinchinbrook development with a march through the town of Cardwell, which adjoins the development.