Cities bomb out on sustainable index

CANBERRA - Australian cities have been given an environmental thumbs-down in a new assessment of their green qualities.

Despite rating highly for quality of life, the Australian Conservation Foundation's sustainable cities index says the 20 urban centres included in the report performed poorly in international terms.

Only two of the biggest cities - Brisbane and Melbourne - made the national top 10 and Western Australia's capital, Perth, came last.

The most sustainable city was Darwin, ahead of Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

Foundation chief executive Don Henry said no Australian city had done well in the index, producing more greenhouse pollution and using more water than most other cities in the world.

In the developed world, probably only the United States was worse.

"Australia's major cities consistently rate among the most liveable, but liveability is not the same as sustainability," Henry said.

"Australians use more water and energy, and own more cars per person, than the citizens of almost any other developed country."

Henry said decades of wasting resources, combined with booming population growth, poor planning and a lack of infrastructure investment, had come at a real cost to the nation's economy, society and environment.

The index rated cities on indicators measuring environmental performance, quality of life and resilience.

These included air quality, each city's ecological footprint - the total amount of land required to support an average lifestyle - the construction of green buildings, average residential water use relative to mean annual rainfall, and the encouragement of biodiversity.

The index also rated health using the prevalence of type 2 diabetes as a measure of community health through its association with obesity and inappropriate diet, and further included population density, the number of private passenger vehicles per 1000 people, education, household finances, local food production and employment.

In terms of overall ranking, Australia's five most sustainable cities were Darwin, Sunshine Coast , Brisbane, Townsville and Canberra.

Melbourne ranked seventh, and Sydney 12th. The bottom five were Albury-Wadonga on the New South Wales-Victorian border, Wollongong on New South Wales' South Coast, Newcastle, north of Sydney, Geelong, south of Melbourne, and Perth.

The index said that in separate categories Perth ranked worst for its ecological footprint, water and transport, and was placed at the bottom of the environmental performance basket.

Topping the list for quality of life was the north Queensland city of Townsville, ahead of Darwin, the Gold Coast-Tweed coastal region of southern Queensland and northern NSW, Sunshine Coast and Canberra.

At the bottom were Albury-Wadonga, Wollongong, Adelaide, and Bendigo and Ballarat in Victoria.

But Adelaide and Ballarat were included among the nation's five most resilient cities - those most able to absorb future shocks and adapt to emerging pressures - an index topped by Canberra and which also included Darwin and Townsville.

The Greens said the index showed governments needed to urgently fund better public transport to get people out of cars and into cheaper, less congesting and less polluting transport options such as light rail, cycling and walking.

Energy and water efficiency also needed to be vastly improved.

And governments needed to lose the mentality that simply building more roads would fix traffic congestion, sustainable cities spokesman Scott Ludlam said.

THE GREEN & THE GRUBBY

AUSTRALIA'S TOP FIVE SUSTAINABLE CITIES:
* Darwin
* Sunshine Coast
* Brisbane
* Townsville
* Canberra

AND THE FIVE WORST PERFORMERS:
* Albury-Wadonga
* Wollongong
* Newcastle
* Geelong
* Perth