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We recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the sovereign Traditional Owners of Australia and thank them for their stewardship of this Country, its lands, waters and skies. We respectfully acknowledge their culture and customary practices, and pay respect to their Ancestors, Elders and future leaders.

For the first time, the State of the Environment report includes a strong Indigenous narrative across all 12 thematic chapters, a narrative crafted through recognising the leadership, collaboration and authorship of Indigenous Australians who continue their connection as Traditional Owners to their lands, waters and skies.

Click to view the State of the Environment report

 

On 28 March 2025 the government assumed a Caretaker role. Information on websites maintained by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water will be published in accordance with the Guidance on Caretaker Conventions until after the conclusion of the caretaker period.

Due to technical issues, graphs, maps and tables are currently not displaying within the main content, however, are available via the chapter resources navigation bar. We are working on a solution to resolve the issue.

Graphs, maps and tables

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Figure 31 Recent trends in metal emissions from coastal mining, minerals processing and energy operations
Series of graphs showing that lead and cadmium releases are increasing over time, whereas copper, zinc, arsenic and selenium are relatively constant; none is decreasing over time.

NPI = National Pollutant Inventory

Note: Data represent national emissions of 6 common metals released into water from energy production, mining, mineral processing and port facilities (NPI codes 0801-0809, 0911, 1701,1709, 2090, 2110, 2131-2133, 2139, 2611, 5212). Data were filtered to include only facilities located close to the coast (<2 kilometres from a coastline, inlet or coastal lake, as assessed on Google Earth).

For more information, go toIndustry
Figure 32 Source and Australian plants of Arctotheca populifolia
Figure 33 Map of iconic harmful algal bloom events around Australian coasts, 2016–20
Figure 34 Traditional Owner thoughts about tensions and power balance in the influence of Traditional Owners on environmental policy in Australia
Figure 35 Initiatives with Indigenous-led management of sea Country
Figure 36 Mrs Lisa Lui and Mrs Vera Havili unveil the Meriam Areriba Tonar seasonal calendar poster
Figure 37 Mer community representatives with Torres Strait Regional Authority Chairperson Mr Napau Pedro Stephen to celebrate the launch of the Meriba Areriba Tonar seasonal calendar
Figure 38 Traditional Owner thoughts about management effectiveness
Figure 39 Ocean accounting framework and estimates for seagrass in Geographe Marine Park
Figure 40 Intactness of Australia’s coastal regions; areas with a higher intactness percentage are less impacted by human activity
Map showing that around the north and in the Bight, the intactness is around 20 to 60%, but elsewhere it is more like 0 to 20%.

Note: For the terrestrial realm, Williams et al. (2021) define intactness using the terrestrial human footprint (a threshold of <4, representing a reasonable approximation of when anthropogenic land conversion has occurred to an extent that the land can be considered human-dominated and no longer ‘natural’). For the marine realm we use the cumulative human impact dataset (with a threshold of the 20% quantile) and we exclude climate change pressures.

For more information, go toManagement approaches