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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 87 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 12 May 2021 by Ms C.M. Tonkin

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

BLUE CARBON ECOSYSTEMS

87. Ms C.M. TONKIN to the Minister for Environment:

I refer to the commonwealth government's recent announcement that it will invest $100 million in managing our oceans, sequestering carbon and helping address climate change. Can the minister outline to the house how the McGowan Labor government is seeking to work with the commonwealth to ensure that Western Australia benefits from this investment in blue carbon ecosystems?

Ms A. SANDERSON replied:

I thank the member for the question. I congratulate you on your election. My mum is very pleased to have a Labor member and to know also that she is not the only Labor voter in City Beach anymore!

As we know, blue carbon is carbon that is sequestered in marine environments, so that is seagrass, mangroves and tidal flats. Evidence shows that it can be up to four times more effective than terrestrial environments in capturing carbon. Given Western Australia has so much coastline, we are in a very good place to develop this industry. When UNESCO surveyed the 50 marine World Heritage areas, it found that more than half the blue carbon ecosystems across these sites were in Australia and two of them were in Western Australia, with Ningaloo and Shark Bay.

Shark Bay has the world's largest and most diverse seagrass ecosystem. During the heatwave of 2010, the Shark Bay World Heritage area lost large areas of its seagrass. That released what is estimated to be around nine megatons of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent from two coal-fired power stations. We know that marine heatwaves are becoming more common and are lasting longer due to the impacts of climate change, so restoring seagrass is really critical to restoring the functioning of that ecosystem and helping to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

The Shark Bay Malgana Indigenous community is currently funded through the Aboriginal ranger program and it has worked with scientists to develop seeding, shooting and planting methods to scale up our seagrass restoration activity. But despite our vast coastline, there are barriers to this, and one of those is the federal government. When it comes to developing and accrediting new methods of carbon abatement, the federal government has left out seagrass from its priorities, focusing mainly on mangrove environments, which are obviously more common on the east coast. That becomes really challenging for WA. The accreditation process is really important because it attracts private investment, and without that we cannot generate carbon credits, which are up to about $18 per tonne of carbon dioxide.

Last week, I informed the house that I had written to the commonwealth Minister for the Environment, Hon Sussan Ley, and requested that WA gets its share of that $100 million and that WA is at least one of those four major on-ground projects that was announced by the commonwealth. If we are going to act on climate change as a country, we need Western Australia to be included in this national approach on blue carbon and we cannot afford to be left out.

As Minister for Climate Action, I will continue to work with the Premier to push for greater recognition of our potential in blue carbon, and the government will continue to support scientists and Aboriginal communities in working on our blue carbon ecosystems through the expanded Aboriginal ranger program, the carbon innovation grants and the carbon farming and land restoring program.

The SPEAKER: That concludes question time.