sydney

Mine of disinformation? Opponents question the accuracy of each other's reports on Jabiluka. Credit: ENERGY RESOURCES OF AUSTRALIA LTD

Australia's environment minister, Robert Hill, has launched an international battle to stop Kakadu National Park being named an endangered World Heritage site. The dispute centres on Jabiluka uranium mine, which is being developed — with Hill's approval — on the park's border.

Last week, the small Australian Democrat party led a Senate defeat of the Coalition government, by winning approval for a committee of inquiry to investigate the government's process for approving the Jabiluka project. Democrat Senator Lyn Allison, chair of the committee, says the environmental impact assessment Hill used lacked independent peer review by scientists.

According to leaked documents, Hill is exerting diplomatic pressure on Unesco member countries to vote against the ‘endangered’ recommendation when the full World Heritage Committee meets in July.

Hill's campaign is based on challenges to assessments by two Unesco advisory bodies: the World Conservation Union (on environmental effects) and the International Commission on Monuments and Sites (on cultural factors). The credibility of the UN agency itself is also being questioned (see Nature 396, 606; 1998 & Nature 397, 287; 1999).

He is relying on a rebuttal of the findings of a group of scientists from Australian National University (ANU), led by hydrologist Bob Wasson. The ANU group had found that there was a significant risk, during unusually severe rainfall, of leakage into park wetlands of radioactivity from ore stockpiles, and from dams planned to contain tailings from the milling of ore.

The rebuttal Hill is citing criticizes the ANU conclusion and claims that “natural values” are not threatened. The unsigned report was prepared “with assistance from experts” at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the Universities of Melbourne and New South Wales and the Bureau of Meteorology.

But the main thrust of Hill's criticisms has been directed at local Aborigines, the Mirrar people. They oppose drilling of the inclined shaft of the mine towards the rich ore body, claiming that this threatens their culture, as it approaches a sacred site. Hill has dismissed them as traditional owners of “a tiny fraction” the park's 20,000 square kilometres. He says that their wishes “would detrimentally affect the majority”.

Like Hill, Aboriginal and environmental activists are campaigning internationally. Two weeks ago the A$100,000 (US$65,000) Goldman Prize for environmental advocacy was awarded to senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula and to Jacqui Katona, executive officer of the Mirrar organization, the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation.

Meanwhile, Hill and science minister Nick Minchin have approved the development of Australia's fourth uranium mine, at Beverley in South Australia, the first to use the process of in-situ leaching.

The government's claim that “the waste will remain isolated from the biosphere throughout time” has been contested by the Australian Conservation Foundation. The foundation says similar uranium mines in Europe and the United States “have resulted in widespread adverse groundwater impacts and contamination”.