Conservation and heritage groups have begun a federal court challenge against the Australian government's approval of a major Woodside gas project in Western Australia, in a case that will test how national environment law addresses the climate crisis.
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and Friends of Australian Rock Art (Fara) are running concurrent challenges to the approval by Environment Minister Murray Watt of an extension to Woodside's North West Shelf gas export project. The decision, which allows the Karratha gas processing plant to operate until 2070, has been described as a “carbon bomb”. The ACF says the project would release around 4 billion tonnes of CO2, equivalent to roughly ten years of Australia's annual emissions.
The plant sits beside the Murujuga Indigenous rock art complex, a landscape containing more than a million petroglyphs dating back 50,000 years, including the oldest known image of a human face. The case is being heard before Justice Catherine Button in Melbourne, with the United Nations special rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Astrid Puentes Riaño, granted leave to intervene.
The ACF will argue that the minister failed to properly consider how emissions from the gas plant could be a “substantial cause” of damage to Australia's protected environment. It also contends that the minister lacked sufficient detail about the gas to be processed, partly because it would involve third-party gas from projects yet to be approved, and that he incorrectly considered the claimed economic benefits. Fara will argue that the minister did not adequately identify risks to the rock art, with critics maintaining that industrial emissions are already causing erosion of the petroglyphs.
In his approval statement, Minister Watt accepted advice that future pollution from the liquefied natural gas facility could cause “degradation, damage, notable alteration, modification, obscuring or diminishing” of the area's natural heritage. Fara, a volunteer group that helped secure national heritage listing for the area in 2007, also sought details of meetings between Watt and Woodside during negotiations over approval conditions, but that request was refused by the court.
Adam Bandt, chief executive of the ACF, said: “It will be up to the court to decide the merits of the case … We're here saying the minister made the wrong decision and that some very significant factors including around climate change need to be taken into account.”
