Australia’s biodiversity and the bushfire climate catastrophe: Neoliberalism, causality, responsibility and recovery

Abstract

Australia's climate-induced bushfire disaster during the 2019–2020 summer devastated ecological and human communities. The wildfires burnt over 10 million hectares, including vegetation that rarely burns or is poorly adapted to fire, led to population declines of hundreds of species of biota, and contributed to the extinction of at least one species as far as is known. This article investigates the causal factors which contributed to the catastrophe, including climate change and the prevailing social and environmental policy context in Australia. The fires placed a catastrophe lens on top of the slow violence against Australia's biodiversity caused by both the Federal and State governments' abrogation of their responsibilities to protect it. Their records on averting the biodiversity crisis are inadequate. Neoliberalism and its deregulatory agenda provide the overarching narrative to explain how the disaster unfolded, how the background conditions were created, and what stands in the way of recovery. Neoliberal ideas have been devastating for Australia's biodiversity, impeding the science-based policy frameworks required to prevent such disasters. Neoliberalism must not continue to dominate if we are to build better regulatory frameworks that will move us swiftly towards science-based legal protections for biodiversity, and ultimately benefits to society. The paradigm of what we value and how we interact with our environment needs to be reset. Absent such shifts, prospects for recovery and improved outcomes are dim. Here we build from our interdisciplinary knowledge to provide scientific, legal and philosophical perspectives to analyse the past critically and to reflect on Nature Positive as a pathway to recovery.