Today the Wilderness Society decided not to join in the committees established by the Federal Government to discuss the issue of Ecologically Sustainable Development. Here's the statement we released explaining our actions.

ESD STATEMENT

The Wilderness Society is of the opinion that a move to an ecologically sustainable future is vital, not only for this generation but for generations to come. It is vital for the maintenance of the earth's physical systems and to the countless millions of plant and animal species with which we share the earth.

Australia's wild and natural places have been continually compromised for over 200 years. The Wilderness Society believes that the time has come for action to take the place of talk. The commitment now has to be to maintaining and improving the status of the environment or to face a world in which everyone is the loser.

The Society has therefore decided not to participate directly in the committee process established by the government to consider ecologically sustainable development.

We have decided on this course of action for the following reasons:

1. The government's recent decisions indicate that it is unlikely to put ecologically sustainability ahead of conventional economic growth.
2. A committee process designed to find a "compromise" between the environment and development is unlikely to produce policies which protect the environment.

There appears to be a strongly held view amongst politicians, industry and even some sections of the media, that the environment debate is some kind of spectator sport. Management of the natural environment is not some kind of gladiatorial struggle between opposed forces of human self-interest. Rather, it is, to date, a losing struggle between between human greed and people standing up for the future health of the planet

Governments have never grasped this fundamental difference. So long as they cannot, environment decisions in this country will continue to turn out as they nearly always have in the past- with the environment losing.

This country and its industries are in an economic mess because of a history of 200 years of bad decisions just like the recent ones on forestry and the failure to make a decision regarding Coronation Hill. It is time the Government ceased making the environment the scapegoat for these bad decisions. These so called compromised decisions are not balanced. They are environmental, ecological and economic disasters. What we lose on the swings, we shall never pick up on the roundabouts.

It is not the business of Government to prop up unsustainable industries such as forestry. The industries that are going to prosper in these hard times are not those that swim against the tide, nor those that look to the Government for shelter, but those that move out to the cutting edge of new environmentally-conscious techniques.

The Wilderness Society believes that an ecologically sustainable future requires the understanding and support of the broader community. We need to seek new ground, and not be restricted to retracing old pathways.

The views of the environment movement will be ably represented on the government committees.

The Wilderness Society's proven strength is in community education and mobilization. Consequently the Society will continue to work through its extensive grass roots networks to raise the level of community awareness about the need to base economic policy on the health of the environment, rather than the accumulation of wealth at the expense of our natural resources.

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