Page 56 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Chapter 5

The Australian environment: impact assessment in
a sunburnt country

Tim Grant

5.1 Introduction
There is a substantial body of ecological and climatological evidence that the landscape and
environments of Australia differ significantly to those of other continents. Australian ecosys-
tems are in many ways distinct, due to the size, physical isolation and natural climate variabil-
ity of the continent. Varying cycles of rainfall along with land use practices lead to episodic
and endemic problems with salinity and eutrophication. Meanwhile, about 80% of Australian
plant species and vertebrate animals are unique in the world (SoE 2006).
This presents challenges for life cycle assessment (LCA) because, in order for LCA findings
to be used confidently and applied beyond the specific case, the technique relies on the
subject(s) of enquiry exhibiting a range of properties, including reliable ‘representation of the
average’ around a normal distribution. LCA also relies on the availability of inventory data and
appropriate impact assessment algorithms. In a widely varying environment, which is differ-
ent from the global ‘norm’ (if this exists), and in a situation where most of the inventory data
and impact assessment algorithms have been developed in Europe or North America, there is
an apparent difficulty for LCA practice in Australia.
The issues associated with LCA methods, applicability, transferability of results, inventory
and impact assessment have been introduced in Chapters 2–4. The focus of this chapter is the
‘uniqueness’ of the Australian environment, the challenges that this presents for LCA practice,
and the ways in which these challenges can, are and may be met. In Section 5.2 some of the
‘unique’ characteristics of the Australian natural environment are introduced, and in Section
5.3, features of the urban environment. In Section 5.4 the concept of bio-productive capacity is
introduced and considered in the Australian context. In accepting the ‘unique’ characteristics
of Australia, what these differences mean for LCA is probed in Section 5.5 – in both undertak-
ing LCA and in interpreting the results.

5.2 Land use and the natural environment in Australia
The continent’s terrestrial ecosystems fall broadly into the following categories: rainforests, scle-
rophyll forests, savannah woodlands, grasslands, deserts and freshwater wetlands, but the over-
arching physical conditions are dryness, and variable rainfall and river flow (Archer and Beale
2004). Australia is the driest inhabited continent on Earth. The State of the Environment Report
2006 details the current physical state of Australia’s settlements and landscapes (SoE 2006) and a
short summary of some key aspects is pertinent here.
43

100804•Life Cycle Assessment 5pp.indd 43 17/02/09 12:46:16 PM