Government, Environment Management and Innovation

Author Richard White Published 31 August 2009

Governments the world over can play an important role in environmental management and sustainability by using their constitutional and legislative powers, and by supporting business innovation.

In Australia, the Constitution allows for the Commonwealth government to control the land it owns in the States and Territories. The Commonwealth government is also empowered to run the Commonwealth public service and pass environmental legislation that regulates the activities of Commonwealth agencies and any activities on Commonwealth land. Section 51 of the Constitution lists other areas of Commonwealth jurisdiction, such as industrial dispute, taxation, external affairs, defence and marriage.

Notably, the Australian Constitution does not include direct power over the environment. As a result, environmental management has been the responsibility of the States.

If the Commonwealth government desires to achieve environmental goals, it can only use its powers indirectly—that is, through taxation, trade and commerce, and external affairs. But Commonwealth intervention is fraught because States' rights is a potent political issue in Australia—consider the recent discussions about water rights in the Murray–Darling basin in South-eastern Australia. In the event that the Commonwealth and State governments cannot agree, the Commonwealth government might then leverage an international treaty to achieve its goals.

Governments have a number of critical activities in the field of environmental management. These include:

• responding to community expectations and requirements
• responding to industry expectations and requirements
• providing accurate, unbiased information to community and industry groups
• setting standards and limits for environmental impacts
• providing appropriate assistance to help organisations meet standards
• setting and enforcing penalties for those who do not meet the standards
• taking an appropriate lead in environmental issues for both community and industry

The activities that governments undertake vary according to the level of government. The Commonwealth Government is involved in broad agendas and issues that affect the whole country, while local governments deal with local concerns. Sometimes an issue might overlap government jurisdictions, requiring attention from all levels of government.

The actions that governments take may not always be driven by altruistic motives. Political expediency does occur occasionally. Not all election promises are kept, and sometimes they become another government’s responsibility? Co-operation between the Commonwealth and States fluctuates and is complicated by party politics.

But governments do strive to instigate effective programs. An example of this is New South Wales' Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) Established in 1996, SEDA became part of the Department of Energy, Utilities and Sustainability in 2004 (www.deus.nsw.gov.au). SEDA had the responsibility to reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions in New South Wales by investing in the commercialisation and use of sustainable energy technologies. In this context, the New South Wales state government was playing an important role within the state’s environmental management activities.

SEDA encouraged industrial use of appropriate technologies, which in turn reduced the cost of such technology, improved its reliability and created jobs in the process—outcomes that all governments are interested in. To achieve its aims, SEDA:

1. focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy
2. identified ways of increasing the use of sustainable energy technologies
3. assisted commercial (or near-commercial) enterprises to increase market share
4. entered into joint ventures
5. provided grants.

SEDA did not support fundamental research or projects that did not have broad applications within the marketplace. In this way, the NSW government followed the examples of overseas governments by raising the profile of energy efficiency and offering strategic funding to particular ventures. In both Europe and the US, market activity in the sustainable energy business has grown rapidly.

SEDA had a number of programs in place (e.g. Energy Smart Business, Green Power Accreditation, Renewable Energy Investment) to help businesses make profitable energy efficiency improvements. They also had a number of high profile stakeholders, including rugby league clubs, AGL, P&O Australia and universities.

These sorts of activities are beneficial to both the economy and the environment, and therefore should be popular with governments, industry and the community. The activities also show how governments can be involved in environment management programs at relatively little expense.