11 - Pragmatism, Prosperity, and Environmental Challenges in Australia’s Foreign Policy

Summary

In conventional institutional terms, Australia’s role in world environmental affairs is the product of its foreign policy on regional and global environmental issues and its domestic implementation of formal treaty obligations and other commitments. Australia’s ecological profile provides good reason for governments of whatever political hue to take a keen interest in international negotiations to manage transboundary and global pollution, protect the world’s species and ecosystems, and advance the cause of sustainable development. Australia has one of the world’s most variable climates and is, with the exception of the Antarctic, the world’s driest continent. As the drought conditions that beset the country in the first half of the period under review demonstrate, the country is susceptible to water stress. Australia is one of the few industrialised countries that suffers from severe desertification, and it is the only developed country among the ten in the world that qualify as mega-diverse in their fauna and flora. As a country ‘girt by sea’, protecting the oceans from pollution and resources therein from over-exploitation is a key policy objective.