In March 2023, history was made when the UN finally agreed on a new Global Ocean Treaty. This Treaty is a powerful tool that can help protect at least 30% of the oceans by 2030. Time is running out, and reaching this target will require a strong and urgent political response. This report offers clear routes to action to get across the finishing line and help the oceans thrive again.

The High Seas cover 61% of the world’s oceans and occupy 70% of the living space on our planet, including land and sea. These international waters are home to a stunning wealth of marine life and ecosystems. They are crucial to many of the key processes that sustain life on our blue planet, including mitigating climate change.

But in recent decades life in the High Seas has dwindled under the rising impact of multiple human stresses, prompting the United Nations to begin a process to reform management in international waters.

Woodside Energy aims to start risky seismic surveying for its Scarborough gas project. The process uses underwater airguns to blast powerful sound waves towards the seabed to assess fossil fuel reservoirs beneath the ocean floor.

The area Woodside plans to conduct seismic surveying in is in proximity to whale migration routes and close to the UNESCO-protected Ningaloo Reef. Seismic surveying can seriously injure whales and potentially kill other marine life. A growing body of research indicates that this noise pollution can damage, sometimes permanently, the hearing of whales and fish, as well as kill important prey species like plankton. Greenpeace believes that Woodside’s plan poses a particular threat to pygmy blue whales. This includes conducting seismic blasting activities during the endangered pygmy blue whale migration periods.

A worst-case scenario accident during seismic surveying could impact marine wildlife almost 1,000km away, potentially affecting four Marine Protected Areas.

Current auto industry planning is not aligned with a 1.5°C compatible carbon budget and might result in millions of vehicles manufacturers can’t sell. This report aims to shed light on these questions. It defines the number of ICE vehicles that could still be sold within a 1.5°C carbon trajectory and projects the auto industry’s ICE sales based on the assessment of four major manufacturers’ plans – Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai / Kia and General Motors – and quantifies the overshoot.

Climate leadership and expectations of Australia as an ally to Pacific Islands

Swept to power in a widely heralded “climate election” the Australian Labor Government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, promised to take decisive and effective action on climate change and repair damaged relationships with the Pacific. If the Albanese government is sincere in its intention to show climate leadership on the world stage, and to be a “different Australian government” to the Pacific, then it must deliver on a range of climate policies and commitments.

A decade of inaction on climate change has seen Australia and its Pacific Island neighbours suffer through catastrophic bushfire, floods and cyclones, causing environmental, social and economic devastation. The Climate Change Bill thus provides a welcome foundation on which to build a safer climate future for Australians and our regional neighbours in the Pacific.

The dirty secret behind Australia’s most trusted carmaker. Toyota has been fighting against effective climate policy all over the world, including in Australia: blocking clean air regulation, flip-flopping on renewables and pressuring governments to support fossil fuel powered hybrid cars. We can’t sit aside while Toyota continues to put profit ahead of the health and safety of Australians and our precious environment.

Woodside promotes itself heavily to the public and its investors as a positive contributor to the climate transition. However, its actions indicate otherwise, and expose the company and its investors to multiple risks. Greenpeace has significant concerns about how Woodside is managing this risk. Woodside’s actions also expose the company and its investors to short-term legal, regulatory, ESG and reputational risk.

Alongside seismic surveys and ongoing operational noise pollution, Woodside’s Burrup Hub presents a slew of other potentially fatal threats to whale species in Western Australian waters.

The ocean off north west Western Australia is one of the most biodiverse marine regions in the world. Hosting a stunning array of species, it is home to many threatened and migratory whales who breed, calve, forage and migrate in these waters.

For blue whales, humpbacks, sperm whales and fin whales,whose global populations were severely reduced over many decades due to commercial whaling, protecting habitat and migratory routes remains essential in ensuring the proper recovery of these species. However, the various pollutants and hazards associated with the offshore oil and gas industry pose an existential threat to these already embattled species.

Woodside Energy plans to build the ‘Burrup Hub’ within the known habitat of several threatened and migratory whale species in north west Australian waters. The Burrup Hub comprises two offshore gas projects – Scarborough and Browse – and will entail seismic surveying, the dredging and installation of two extremely long subsea pipelines ranging between 430 kilometres (Scarborough) and 900 kilometres (Browse), and the drilling of 84 wells over the lifetime of the projects.

AUTHORS

Dr Alex Edney-Browne – Acting Head of Research and Investigations, Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Nick Ritchie – Research & Investigations Assistant, Greenpeace Australia Pacific

A spill or accident at Woodside’s Burrup Hub gas project could release toxic gas and condensate of a similar consistency to crude oil into World Heritage listed marine parks, with dangerous pollution reaching West Australian coastal communities and as far as Indonesia

Woodside Energy’s Burrup Hub is the largest fossil fuel project currently proposed in Australia, involving the extraction of six untapped gas fields and the drilling of 84 wells off the Western Australian coast. The Burrup Hub project includes two major gas projects – Scarborough and Browse – and the transport of this gas onshore via undersea trunklines ranging between 430km (Scarborough) and 900km (Browse) in length.

Using Woodside’s own documents provided to state and federal regulators, Greenpeace has mapped Woodside’s Burrup Hub offshore infrastructure and its spill and accident scenarios using Geographic Information Software (GIS) data. This mapping shows that Woodside’s proposed infrastructure runs directly through or adjacent to habitats critical to threatened and migratory species as well as coral reef ecosystems. It also shows, for the first time, the full geographic extent of a worst-case gas spill or other accident on protected marine ecosystems as well as the coastlines of Western Australia, East Timor and Indonesia. This is just one of the reasons that Greenpeace is calling on Woodside to walk away from its toxic gas project.