Australia

AUSTRALIA IS A developed country in the Southern Hemisphere. With a landmass of 2,941,299 mi. (7,617,930 sq. km.), it is the sixth largest country in the world, but is sparsely inhabited, with a population of approximately 21 million. Prior to federation in 1901, the continent of Australia was comprised of separate colonies and territories. The Commonwealth of Australia is now divided politically into six states and two major territories. Australia is also responsible for a number of minor territories, including Christmas Island, the Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island.

Most of Australia's population is concentrated in the southeast of the country, although there has been rapid population growth in the northeast (Queensland) and in the southwest (Western Australia). The national capital is Canberra. The largest cities are Sydney and Melbourne (each with about 4 million residents); and Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide, each with 1–2 million residents in 2006. Most of the population lives close to the coast. There are inland agricultural and mining towns, but the interior of the country is semiarid or arid with little human settlement.

Indigenous people have inhabited the continent for at least 40,000 years. European and Asian exploration and trade occurred for hundreds of years before the arrival of the English. Dutch explorers, particularly those associated with the [Page 101]Dutch East Indies Company, are known to have landed on Australia beginning at least early in the 17th century. They gave the land the name Terra Australis Incognita (“unknown southern land”). Captain James Cook claimed the land for England in 1770, and English settlement began in 1788, in what is now Sydney. The colonies developed at different rates, boosted by gold rushes in New South Wales and Victoria in the 1850s, and in Western Australia in the late 1880s and 1890s. Mining booms have been significant, particularly coal mining in New South Wales and Queensland, and iron-ore mining in the northwest of Western Australia.

Climate change is an important issue for Australia, due to its position on the global political scene, its generation of greenhouse gases, and the potential impact of climate change for Australia. With regard to political positioning, in December 1992, Australia became the eighth country to ratify the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which had been signed by 155 countries in Rio de Janeiro. The most significant of the Conferences of the Parties (COP) held to develop and implement the framework was COP3 in Kyoto, Japan. At COP3 in 1997, the Annex One (developed) countries agreed to an average reduction of 5.2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from a base year of 1990 by the period 2008–12.

Australia signed up to an 8 percent increase in emissions over the same time period, but also managed to insert a clause into Article 3.7 of the Kyoto Protocol to allow the emissions from land clearing to be included in the total emissions by Australia in 1990. Land clearing had decreased between 1990 and 1997. The baseline inflation gave room for Australia to expand other sources of greenhouse gas emissions and potentially remain within the 108 percent target.

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