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Contracts for large scale solar farms in Australia heading to $70-75/MWh for projects starting construction in 2018.

Infigen Energy today announced that it would proceed to construction of the 113.2 MW Bodangora wind farm in NSW.

Australia’s residential electricity prices are amongst the highest in the world so it’s not hard to see why customers have been up in arms about high prices.

New AEMO boss Zibelman suggests paying consumers for solar and storage services to get rid of "super peaks" and lower costs.

After decades of sustainability initiatives, key environmental indicators keep getting worse. The Capital Wind Farm, REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo

In 1992, more than 170 countries came together at the Rio Earth Summit and agreed to pursue sustainable development, protect biological diversity, prevent dangerous interference with climate systems, and conserve forests. But, 25 years later, the natural systems on which humanity relies continue to be degraded.

So why hasn’t the world become much more environmentally sustainable despite decades of international agreements, national policies, state laws and local plans? This is the question that a team of researchers and I have tried to answer in a recent article.

We reviewed 94 studies of how sustainability policies had failed across every continent. These included case studies from both developed and developing countries, and ranged in scope from international to local initiatives.

Consider the following key environmental indicators. Since 1970:

• Humanity’s ecological footprint has exceeded the Earth’s capacity and has risen to the point where 1.6 planets would be needed to provide resources sustainably.

• The biodiversity index has fallen by more than 50% as the populations of other species continue to decline.

• Greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change have almost doubled while the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent.

• The world has lost more than 48% of tropical and sub-tropical forests.

The rate at which these indicators deteriorated was largely unchanged over the two decades either side of the Rio summit. Furthermore, humanity is fast approaching several environmental tipping points. If crossed, these could lead to irreversible changes.

If we allow average global temperatures to rise 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, for example, feedback mechanisms will kick in that lead to runaway climate change. We’re already halfway to this limit and could pass it in the next few decades.

What’s going wrong?

So what’s going wrong with sustainability initiatives? We found that three types of failure kept recurring: economic, political and communication.

The economic failures stem from the basic problem that environmentally damaging activities are financially rewarded. A forest is usually worth more money after it’s cut down – which is a particular problem for countries transitioning to a market-based economy.

Political failures happen when governments can’t or won’t implement effective policies. This is often because large extractive industries, like mining, are dominant players in an economy and see themselves as having the most to lose. This occurs in developed and developing countries, but the latter can face extra difficulties enforcing policies once they’re put in place.

Communication failures centre on poor consultation or community involvement in the policy process. Opposition then flourishes, sometimes based on a misunderstanding of the severity of the issue. It can also be fed by mistrust when communities see their concerns being overlooked.

Again, this happens around the world. A good example would be community resistance to changing water allocation systems in rural areas of Australia. In this situation, farmers were so opposed to the government buying back some of their water permits that copies of the policy were burned in the street.

These types of failure are mutually reinforcing. Poor communication of the benefits of sustainable development creates the belief that it always costs jobs and money. Businesses and communities then pressure politicians to avoid or water down environmentally friendly legislation.

Ultimately, this represents a failure to convince people that sustainable development can supply “win-win” scenarios. As a result, decision-makers are stuck in the jobs-versus-environment mindset.

What can we do?

The point of our paper was to discover why policies that promote sustainability have failed in order to improve future efforts. The challenge is immense and there’s a great deal at stake. Based on my previous research into the way economic, social and environmental goals can co-exist, I would go beyond our most recent paper to make the following proposals.

First, governments need to provide financial incentives to switch to eco-efficient production. Politicians need to have the courage to go well beyond current standards. Well-targeted interventions can create both carrot and stick, rewarding eco-friendly behaviour and imposing a cost on unsustainable activities.

Second, governments need to provide a viable transition pathway for industries that are doing the most damage. New environmental tax breaks and grants, for example, could allow businesses to remain profitable while changing their business model.

Finally, leaders from all sectors need to be convinced of both the seriousness of the declining state of the environment and that sustainable development is possible. Promoting positive case studies of successful green businesses would be a start.

There will of course be resistance to these changes. The policy battles will be hard fought, particularly in the current international political climate. We live in a world where the US president is rolling back climate policies while the Australian prime minister attacks renewable energy.

Michael Howes has received funding from the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, the Commonwealth government, the Queensland government, and Griffith University.

Senator Nick Xenophon expects the deal he struck to pass the federal Coalition’s tax cuts on Friday should guarantee that Australia’s first large scale solar thermal plant begins construction before the next election. Xenophon got the Coalition government to deliver on its pre-election promise of facilitating solar thermal by agreeing to “fast-track” the tender process […]

Fancy looking a polar bear right in the eye, then swinging across the canopy of the Brazilian rainforest? VR is for you

I worry that humanity isn’t getting enough direct contact with the wild and we’ll all end up with Nature Deficit Disorder. Plus, how can you protect what you don’t love and haven’t experienced?

Greenpeace has been encouraging us to bear witness for more than 40 years. In the past this meant telexes sent from the ship Rainbow Warrior; now it means virtual reality (VR).

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A leading biologist says Scotland's native honey bees are being threatened by imports brought in because of the hobby's growing popularity.

Rare only 40 years ago, farmed salmon is now taken for granted in our kitchens. But the growth of the industry has come at great cost

Every day, salmon farmers across the world walk into steel cages – in the seas off Scotland or Norway or Iceland – and throw in food. Lots of food; they must feed tens of thousands of fish before the day is over. They must also check if there are problems, and there is one particular problem they are coming across more and more often. Six months ago, I met one of these salmon farmers, on the Isle of Skye. He looked at me and held out a palm – in it was a small, ugly-looking creature, all articulated shell and tentacles: a sea louse. He could crush it between his fingers, but said he was impressed that this parasite, which lives by attaching itself to a fish and eating its blood and skin, was threatening not just his own job, but could potentially wipe out a global multibillion-dollar industry that feeds millions of people.

“For a wee creature, it is impressive. But what can we do?” he asks. “Sometimes it seems nature is against us and we are fighting a losing battle. They are everywhere now, and just a few can kill a fish. When I started in fish farming 30 years ago, there were barely any. Now they are causing great problems.”

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Llanfairfechan, Gwynedd In their usual river habitat, these magnificent, large, hole-nesting ducks are shy and rightly so

Traeth Lafan’s wide expanse of sand is a landscape that draws you in, like the Elenydd moors or the high Arctic, through its abstraction. Nothing’s solid here; all’s sketched and coloured in shifting tones of water and light. Even history has become ambiguous, uncertain. These are drowned lands, their legends tide-steeped, wind-honed.

I come here for the birds, to which the fluid landscape accords a peculiar gift. Its bas-relief undulations, its distances, absorb and hide. What on first glance appears empty, on closer scrutiny teems with life. Though on this grey and turbulent day, with a flooding tide, little stirs. A couple of oystercatchers, heavy-billed, speed past. A little egret lifts out of a filling channel and braves the buffets as it heads back towards the old heronry at Penrhyn Point. In the stand of Scots Pine at the furthermost end of the promenade ravens discourse, shear down to the water’s edge, soar aloft with shellfish in their bills, to drop them from a height on the concrete sea-wall before folding their wings and swooping down to pick out the morsel of flesh.

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If the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility hasn’t got a risk policy yet, how can it be considering a $1bn loan for the Adani project?

We don’t yet know whether the $5bn Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) will be – as was alleged in parliament this week – a “slush fund” used to pursue the government’s “pro-coal agenda”.

But we do know some government ministers are absolutely determined to promote coal mining and generation – in particular the Indian conglomerate Adani’s $21bn Carmichael coalmine in Queensland – without a thought for how it will contribute to the global warming that is bleaching the Great Barrier Reef up and down the Queensland coastline and increasing the intensity of cyclones.

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"We can't drive the system by looking in the rear view mirror". New AEMO boss to stabilise market whilst creating a flexible, faster system to include renewables, demand management and storage.

Alice Kohler shares photos and thoughts on her time in the Xingu river basin in the Brazilian Amazon

Alice Kohler is a Brazilian photographer who has visited over 20 countries during her career. In Brazil in particular she has travelled into some of the remotest parts of the Amazon basin and spent time with many of the country’s indigenous peoples, including the Araweté, Asurini, Guarani, Kamaiura, Karajá, Kayapo, Kuikuro, Parakanã, Pareci, Xavante and Yawalapiti.

An exhibition of Kohler’s photographs of the Araweté opens in Cusco in neighbouring Peru today, held at a newly-opened Amazon-themed gallery run by Peruvian company Xapiri. Kohler and Xapiri are holding the exhibition out of concern for the impacts on the Araweté and many others of the Belo Monte dam complex - arguably the world’s most well-known hydroelectric power project because of the opposition it has generated - as well as plans by a Canadian-headquartered company, Belo Sun Mining, to develop what would reportedly be Brazil’s biggest open sky gold mine.

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The gas argon tells scientists that the atmosphere at Mars was once as thick as it is on Earth today.

Researchers at Utah University have captured video of an American badger burying a calf carcass in Utah’s Grassy Mountains. The images show the badger digging around the cow’s body, which then sinks into the tunnels below, before covering it with earth. It then returned to feed on it over the coming weeks. This behaviour has never before been caught on camera

• Can you dig it? Badger captured on camera burying cow
  

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In an astonishing display of digging prowess, an American badger has been seen completely burying a calf carcass several times bigger than itself

An American badger has been captured burying the carcass of a cow – a previously unrecorded behaviour – in an astonishing display of the creature’s digging prowess.

The images were taken by camera traps set up by researchers who had left seven calf carcasses in Utah’s Grassy Mountains in January last year in an attempt to study which scavengers descended on the animals.

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The birth of Britain’s first crowned sifaka, a type of rare lemur, has been filmed by staff at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. Yousstwo, a male pup, was born to parents Bafana and Tahina in December. The sifaka lemur is critically endangered in Madagascar, so the birth has extra significance

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Orcas on the attack, bioluminescent mushrooms and a giant Australian cuttlefish are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Research reveals the toxic secret behind the fang blenny's pain-free bite.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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