PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT: FROM PROPOSAL TO ACHIEVEMENT

The Protecting the Environment program (Program 1) within the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Sugar Production (CRC Sugar) emerged from a proposal in 1994–95 to a coherent, eight-year research and development initiative embracing the eastern Australian sugar industry. Most of the research, education and technical transfer linkages across nine host parties within the Centre and others beyond had not previously been contemplated at the intensity and scale undertaken. Natural resources used and influenced by sugarcane production practices have benefited. The program has actively engaged in participative research at block through to industry scales. Research activities were initially delivered via three sub-programs, subsequently consolidated into two. Through Program 1, CRC Sugar has been an ‘honest broker’ in quantifying the industry’s environmental ‘footprint’, clarifying concerns such as reasons for low dissolved oxygen in waterways, providing understanding of processes in environmental and natural resource management issues, and in undertaking ‘watching briefs’ on sensitive topics such as dioxins and mangrove dieback. It is now clear that cane growing is not the cause of dioxin residues in dugongs, while a broader perspective was introduced into the debate on mangrove health near Mackay. Achievements include helping the New South Wales industry achieve self regulation of its management and use of acid sulfate soils, which just five years earlier was threatening that industry’s economic and environmental survival. There is new understanding on risks and on enhanced practices for pesticide use, advice to the industry and to government on water quality pressures and status in sugar catchments, and informed guidance on mill mud and other waste reuse strategies that are now being adopted. Benchmarking of heavy metal cycling and fate has contributed to the National Cadmium Minimisation Strategy, while the industry's greenhouse gas budget was defined for the first time. Considerable resources were directed to developing and ‘case-studying’ well developed natural resource planning tools, inclusive of resource economics. A Program Consultative Group helped guide and review the research undertaken. While CRC Sugar will cease to function beyond June 2003, the need for strategic research on the sugar environment will continue, driven by plans to produce ethanol at new locations, heightened community expectations, and close proximity of sugar growing areas in Queensland to the Great Barrier Reef.