What pressures can we influence

• Having more trees and water sensitive urban landscaping, creating cooler, shady and walkable neighbourhoods with access to nature.
• Delineating and maintaining areas with significant environmental values to protect landscape health, conserve biodiversity, and improve development certainty and transparency.
• Supporting enhancement of the urban biodiversity of the Adelaide Metropolitan region through greenways in transit corridors, along major watercourses, linear parks and the coast, and in other strategic locations.
• Ensuring greenways are landscaped with local indigenous species where possible, to contribute to urban biodiversity outcomes.
• Protecting the natural and rural landscape character of the Hills Face Zone and ensuring land uses in this zone contribute to this landscape backdrop and area of significant biodiversity.
• Supporting enhancement of the urban biodiversity in the Adelaide Metropolitan region through a connected and diverse network of green infrastructure.
• Minimising or offsetting the loss of biodiversity where possible, and avoiding such impacts where these cannot be alleviated.

• Increasing the proportion of low-rise, medium-density apartments and attached dwellings that support carbon-efficient living.
• Promoting green infrastructure (including green roofs, vertical gardens and water-sensitive design) in higher density and mixed-use developments to assist with urban cooling, reduce building energy use and improve biodiversity.
• Creating a more liveable urban environment through establishing a network of greenways, bicycle boulevards, tree-lined streets and open spaces, which will have a cooling effect on nearby neighbourhoods and buildings.
• Providing opportunities for neighbourhood-level alternative energy supplies, which may include embedded and distributed renewable energy, cogeneration and smart grid/green grid technology.
• Promoting energy efficiency, use of renewable energy sources and neighbourhood-level alternative energy supplies and storage in new developments to reduce energy costs and carbon footprint.
• Encouraging establishment of electric vehicle charging points in new higher-density developments, large public and private car parks, activity centres and employment lands.

• Incorporating water sensitive urban design in new developments to manage water quality, quantity and use efficiency, and to support public stormwater systems.
• Protecting and securing regional water resources in the region including Mount Lofty Ranges Watershed, prescribed water resources, recycled wastewater networks and stormwater harvesting.
• Increasing stormwater infrastructure (including water sensitive urban design) to manage and reduce impacts of runoff from infill development, urban flooding from increased short-duration intense rainfall events associated with climate change, and pollution from roads and other developed areas.

• Protecting coastal features and biodiversity including habitats that are highly sensitive to the direct impacts of development, important geological and/or natural features and landscapes of very high scenic quality.
• Protecting key coastal areas where critical infrastructure is at risk from sea level rise, coastal erosion and storm surges, and ensuring new coastal development incorporates appropriate adaptation measures.

• Working towards a zero-waste culture by reducing the waste footprint of new developments.
• Encouraging best practice waste management design and systems in high-density residential and mixed use developments.

• Incorporating information about nature protection areas, complementary developed areas and coastal features within the South Australian Multiple Land Use Framework. This supports land users and the wider community in considering benefits and consequences when making decisions about land use.
• Delivering a more compact urban structure that:
• protects valuable primary production land
• reinforces the Hills Face Zone
• preserves character districts and Environment and Food Production Areas
• conserves nature protection areas
• safeguards the Mount Lofty Ranges Watershed
• reduces vehicle travel and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

The policies outlined above are consistent with the following recommendations of the 2016 Australia SOER to improve our cities’ environmental quality through:

• reducing:
• per person use of land at the urban fringe
• energy use
• water use
• waste generation
• car use.
• improving urban green space
• reducing urbanisation areas at high risk from climate change
• reducing the diverse and varied pressures facing the built environment
• improving coordination and integration of urban management between the 3 levels of government.

The 30-Year Plan has an annual implementation plan that will be monitored by the recently formed State Planning Commission. It will produce an annual report card on the progress. Achievements to date include:

• a shift away from relying on housing growth at the urban fringe to infill (from 50:50 to 70:30 split) within the existing urban footprint. This reflects changing preferences for where people want to live
• reducing our carbon footprint by containing and managing urban sprawl
• protecting the special character of the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale regions
• closer integration of land use and transport planning and an expanded future tram network identified through the Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan process.

It is inevitable that any comprehensive urban development strategy will have some competing objectives, such as between a more compact urban form and increasing biodiversity and tree canopy cover. It is too soon to evaluate the effectiveness with which these trade-offs can be managed.

In the past, environmental issues on farmland were considered in terms of how they affected agricultural production. Weeds, pests and erosion were of concern in terms of how they affected the land’s profitability. More recently, farming landscapes have started to be recognised as important habitats for native plants and animals.

A loss of biodiversity

Our national parks and reserves do not adequately protect biodiversity, which is declining at a high rate. About 29% of SA is in formally protected areas, with more than a third of this used for non-conservation purposes such as grazing. Of the remaining 71% of SA’s land area, most is used for various forms of agriculture.

Livestock grazing is the most extensive land use. The South Australian Arid Lands Natural Resources Management region covers the largest total area of livestock grazing (almost 43 million hectares, or 72% of all livestock grazing in SA).

About 70% of the estimated global loss of terrestrial biodiversity can be attributed to agriculture. In addition to habitat loss, farming practices such as tillage, burning, livestock introduction, and nutrient and chemical usage have had negative impacts on biodiversity as well as soil, water and air quality. Increases in intensive farming lead to higher fertiliser and pesticide use. 

Compounding factors include a growing global population that, together with changes in diets from a growing middle class, will lead to large increases in the demand for food. This in turn further increases expansion and intensification of agriculture, which presents a conservation challenge on a global scale.

Policies to balance conservation and production play a vital role in protecting biodiversity. Biodiversity supports agricultural enterprises through ecosystem services such as bee pollination, control of insect pests, improved soil fertility and overall agricultural productivity. Biodiversity also improves amenity value of properties, satisfies goals of land stewardship and improves health and wellbeing. In this way, farms must be part of the solution to preserve natural habitats.

Driven by a combination of a growing population, affluence, product choice, marketing, and fashion, Australians are the second-highest producers of waste per person in the world. South Australians generate an average of 3 tonnes of waste per person in a year, which is increasing at higher rate than the population.

Between 2003–04 and 2016–17 the total amount of waste generated in SA increased by 59%, with the average waste per person increasing by 42% (Figure 7).Over the same time the amount of waste going to landfill has declined by 39% due to a growing resource recovery industry. In 2016–17, 83.4% of materials were diverted from landfill to resource recovery, the highest diversion rate in Australia.

Waste is considered an inefficiency of the production process and is created in all sectors of the economy and at each point in the production chain. Patterns of waste generation change, as do the types of chemicals and materials used to make the products we buy.

Waste covers a very wide spectrum ranging from food to electrical, industrial, agricultural, and construction materials. It could be solid or liquid, and includes anything in size and scale from decommissioned ships, to mobile phones and used car tyres.

The amount of residential and commercial photovoltaic (solar) panels is also growing at a rapid rate and as they reach the end of their useful life, are expected to become Australia’s largest electronic waste stream.

The more complex and hazardous the products and its packaging, the greater the challenges for effective waste management. Without effective management, waste can have large health, economic and environmental costs. This includes carbon dioxide and methane emissions associated with landfill and transport, contamination of groundwater, generation of dust and litter, loss of valuable resources, disposal costs, and competing land uses.

While the amount of waste sent to landfill is decreasing, a range of specialised and problematic waste streams remain a concern due to either their hazardous nature (hence potentially harmful effects on humans and the environment) or lack of commercially viable recycling alternatives. Examples include:

• copper chrome arsenate (CCA) treated timber
• microplastics and microbeads
• single-use plastic packaging products and items.

In 2008, SA increased the deposit on beverage containers (first introduced in 1977) and in 2009, banned single use plastic bags, resulting in a reduction in litter and the presence of these types of materials in the waste stream. In 2010 SA banned recyclable materials, including electronic waste, from going to landfill, encouraging their collection, disassembly and recycling.

Litter monitoring has been consistently undertaken since 1998, and shows a decrease in litter over that time. However litter remains a ubiquitious problem, especialy for cigarette butts, plastic items, and illegal dumping. In 2017, through the Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act 2016, SA strengthened local government’s powers to deal with litter issues.

Other measures to manage the complex area of waste and materials in SA include:

• South Australia’s Waste Strategy 2015–2020
• South Australia’s Waste and Resource Recovery Infrastructure Plan 2018
• National Food Waste Strategy 2017
• Environment Protection (Waste to Resources) Policy 2010
• Waste Management Reform Program
• Disaster Waste Management Guidelines

While diverting waste from landfill to resource recovery has significant environmental and economic benefits, it remains best to avoid the waste from being generated in the first place. South Australians are good recyclers, however much more remains to be done to reduce waste generation.

The waste management hierarchy is an internationally accepted guide for prioritising waste management practices with the objectives of achieving sustainable outcomes. It sets out the preferred order to waste management practices, from most to least preferred.

The waste management hierarchy is well-embedded in South Australia's waste management policy. It is one of the guiding principles of the Green Industries SA Act 2004 and a key element in South Australia’s Waste Strategy 2015–2020. It is also the main objective of the Environment Protection (Waste to Resources) Policy 2010 to apply the waste management hierarchy to achieve sustainable waste management.

A circular economy

The circular economy concept builds upon the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ rungs of the waste hierarchy and is included as a guiding principle in the Green Industries SA Act 2004. In 2017, South Australia became the first Australian jurisdiction to quantify the potential benefits of a circular economy for the state. The study found that a more circular economy could create jobs (an additional 25,700) and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (27% of 7.7 million tonnes of CO equivalent).

An important area of opportunity to strengthen a sustainable circular economy is in increasing resource recovery and local reprocessing of recyclable materials, supported by procurement of recycled products by national, state, and local governments. This could be further underpinned by an accreditation and labelling system for recycled products.