Protecting our rivers and landscapes

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The NT Government’s new Agribusiness Strategy raises the stakes on the threat to our rivers from big business, like cotton. Now, more than ever, we need to fight for our rivers.

The NT Government are bowing to the demands of big business – against the wishes of the local community, the best advice of environmental scientists and aboriginal communities.

The strategy reveals more than 56,000 football-sized fields of native savanna are at risk of being bulldozed for cotton crops and industrial gins in the NT over the next decade.

This is a massive escalation in the threat to the health of our rivers and floodplains like the Daly, Roper, Victoria and Adelaide.

In the NT Government’s newly released ‘Agribusiness Strategy’, there is alarming detail:

A target of 100,000 hectares of the Northern Territory to be cleared for crops like cotton within the next decade.
Changing land use laws to make growing cotton easier including undermining legal rights of Native Title holders
These changes mean it will be quicker and easier for big business, like cotton, to get land and take more water

Now is the time to let the Government know that the community does not support this future for our rivers and environment.

If we see more clearing of iconic native savanna and more water being taken from our rivers, it will put the health of our iconic river systems at risk.

Join the call for a better way to protect our rivers and landscapes – write to Chief Minister Fyles today.

Take action

Send a message to:

Hon. Natasha Fyles – NT Chief Minister

Hon. Lauren Moss – NT Minister for the Environment

Hon. Paul Kirby – NT Minister for Fisheries

Hon. Selena Jane Malijarri Uibo – NT Minister for Local Decision Making

Hon. Chansey Paech – NT Attorney General and Minister for Local Government

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Your message

To: Chief Minister Natasha Fyles; Minister Lauren Moss; Minister Paul Kirby, Minister Selena Uibo, Minister Chansey Paech

I wish to express my concerns over the 2023 Agribusiness Strategy that your government recently released.

I note that this strategy:

-. Changes the permitted use of existing pastoral land tenure to include cropping and horticultural activities and circumvents legal rights of Native Title holders 
- Reduces timeframes for obtaining land clearing and water licencing approvals.
- Proposes significant changes to environmental, emissions and cultural heritage regulation and processes.

These changes would undermine genuine consultation with native title holders, circumvent proper scrutiny and avoid current and future legal challenges to land clearing.  It is a clear threat to efforts to tackle climate change and to commitments by Territory, State and Federal Governments to arrest environmental decline and prevent new extinctions.

I am concerned that these moves are against the wishes of local communities, the best advice of environmental scientists and many Aboriginal communities.

Land clearing is rapidly increasing in the Northern Territory, spurred in part by the cotton industry's huge expansion plans. Plans to target our intact landscapes and rivers for a massive agricultural and cotton expansion will cause irreversible damage to our top end environment and lifestyle.  We need sustainable development and jobs that work with our landscape that have the support of the people of the NT.

To protect our native landscapes, we need real protection for the environment that supports our top end lifestyle and jobs. The rights and interests of local communities and particularly Traditional Owners must be respected over those of big businesses from outside the Territory.

I call on you to review the impact of this Agribusiness Strategy, and instead enact laws that will properly protect our unique and amazing Top End rivers and landscapes.

Thank you,

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