by Dr Alan Butler, Leader - CERF Biodiversity Program

What are the 10 key issues that must be addressed urgently to improve our deserts? Our estuaries? Our alpine areas?  Our temperate marine systems?  What is the impact that urban settlement, fisheries, agriculture, tourism all have on sustainability?

Each of these questions is addressed by some 26 Australian ecologists in a book launched by the Hon. Peter Garrett, Federal Minister for the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, together with renowned primatologist Jane Goodall PhD, DBE at Parliament House, Canberra on 13 October 2008.

Ten Commitments is already selling well and has been sent to as many politicians and senior policy-makers as possible.  Alan Butler, leader of the Biodiversity Program in the CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub, wrote the chapter on Temperate Marine Systems.  His “10 things” are:

1. Mitigate human-induced climate change as far and as fast as possible.

2. Manage for resilience in the face of change.

3. Adopt integrated management at all scales.

4. Implement Australia’s Oceans Policy and Integrated Coastal Zone Management.

5. Implement a systematic approach to marine biodiversity conservation.

6. Understand our temperate marine systems better.

7. Identify key systems or regions, predict system behaviour, monitor, manage and distribute data well, thus improving predictions.

8. Introduce a comprehensive Integrated Marine Observing System for Australia.

9. Think about major activities such as fishing not only as ‘uses’ of ecosystems but as massive and cumulative changes in systems. Think of recreational fishing as fishing. The community must make decisions about such activities as it does about any other ‘land-use’ in a modern context.

10. Engage everyone.

Ten Commitments (eds David Lindenmayer, Stephen Dovers and Molly Harriss Olson) is available from CSIRO Publishing: http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/5954.htm