ENVIRONMENTAL BENCHMARKS FOR AGRICULTURE - CLARIFYING THE FRAMEWORK IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM - AUSTRALIA

Increasingly, liability for environmental damage is being allocated to those responsible for it, and the use of environmental auditing as a means of managing this process in non-agricultural industry is expandi ng. This paper describes a framework which clarifies the nature of the roles and responsibilities of all people making decisions which affec t the environmental impact of agriculture, as a preliminary step in th e development of benchmarks or standards in a federal system of govern ment to audit progress towards the achievement of ecologically sustain able agriculture in Australia. It is argued that farmers make many dec isions which have significant environmental consequences on their farm - what we have termed localized impacts. It should be possible to der ive various benchmarks or standards against which the effectiveness of farmers in dealing with their localized environmental impacts may be measured and assessed, Other environmental effects associated with agr iculture, whilst observable on the farm, may be traced back to decisio ns made by others, in local, regional, state or federal management age ncies. Decisions of such agencies affect the functioning of whole ecol ogical and hydrological systems, and are observable as widespread envi ronmental impacts - what we have termed systemic impacts, Consequently , it should be possible to derive a series of benchmarks and standards relevant to the responsibilities of decision makers in the various sp heres. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.