Reviving lake key to Our identity
The debate over the restoration of Lake Pedder is increasingly being framed as a litmus test of who we are as Tasmanians and how we intend to shape our future, writes
LAKE Pedder is back in the news and the polarised debates many of us went through in the 1970s are back again. The original debate was so polarised that there was no grey, only black and white.
Even today the actual words Lake Pedder are still contested with many people arguing that it is indeed no longer Lake Pedder but rather a hydro storage dam.
The original Lake Pedder is under the storage dam.
While the original debates were relatively simple – economic growth versus environmental sustainability – the new debate is much more nuanced and the arguments for and against clearer.
There are four interconnected main arguments supporting the restoration:
NOW and/or in the future the additional demand generated by Lake Pedder will not be required, especially as other renewables become more mainstream, it is no longer required for energy security;
THE original lake is still largely intact and can be restored to enhance the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area;
WE have an obligation to our future generations and the world to right the wrongs of the past and demonstrate this can be achieved;
TASMANIA can be a first mover globally in ecological restoration and reap the benefits including green investment.
The main interconnected arguments against the restoration are: THE
electricity generated is needed now and in the future and is cost efficient and part of an integrated network of energy security;
LAKE PEDDER is a (literally) sunk cost and it makes no sense to spend money to lose money;
THE flooding of the lake destroyed its basic integrity and it cannot be restored, the beach is no longer intact and it would just leave a big slush hole doing more environmental harm than good;
INVESTORS would lack confidence in supporting infrastructure projects if there was a risk projects could be unravelled in the future.
Try any of these arguments for either view in your next pub visit and see what happens. These were and still are emotive conversations, bubbling away beneath the veneer of our civilised society.
There are three main differences here from the debate in the 1970s and it is these differences that will most likely cause the restoration. Maybe not sometime soon but, sometime.
First, the restoration proposal is aligned with a broader global movement to undo what many see as the wrongs of the past. Statues being pulled down, regal titles abolished, history rewritten. In Tasmania we see this for example with the renaming or joint naming of places with Tasmanian Aboriginal names and the debate over Australia Day versus Invasion Day.
Globally the restoration of flooded areas and removal of dams is a major and rapidly growing industry most often associated with ageing infrastructure and with restoring river flows and ecosystems. So there is now a lot of evidence to sieve through. Evidence not political bluster.
The idea is sometimes called restorative justice which has moved from academic revision to practical actions.
The UN decade of Ecological Restoration provides a global context for these debates.
Second the debate is now being fuelled by a Generation Y and the Millennials who have a much more passionate view of sustainability and its importance to the future.
In the 1970s climate change was not part of the debate but is now inextricably entwined.
But probably most importantly the debate is increasingly being framed as a litmus test of who we are as
Tasmanians, our identity and how we intend to shape our future. Brand Tasmania presents us as innovative, quietly confident, environmentally caring selves. It has become the basis of our tourism marketing and attracting green investment and population.
In the 1960s and 1970s most of the images of Tasmania were of a place of manufacturing, farming and industrial growth. In the Brand Tasmania documents today there are more images of the (pollution-free)
Since the spectre of climate change is an existential question for us all it scoops up the Lake Pedder discussion into this broader context of future and identity.
environment than of factories.
Since the spectre of climate change is an existential question for us all it scoops up the Lake Pedder discussion into this broader context of future and identity.
Whether and how to restore Lake Pedder is a very sensible discussion to have, one where the words ‘right or wrong’ are genuinely grey for many Tasmanians.
It is shifting from a debate about economics to a debate about us.
In all likelihood the resolution over the restoration of Lake Pedder will be located in a broader discuss about the future of the south-west Wilderness – a discussion which is likely to be difficult but very important.
My own view is that if we are to believe the rosy Brand Tasmania images of ourselves then on the front page of Brand Tasmania in the future will be a restored Lake Pedder.
Professor David Adams is professor of management at the University of Tasmania and a member of the Lake Pedder Restoration Committee.