A thematic approach to State of the Environment Reporting

The 2026 State of the Environment (SoE26) Report uses a new, simplified structure built around 4 interconnected themes:

• Coastal environments
  • Ocean influenced land and tidal environments, including estuaries, beaches, coastal wetlands, tidal coral reefs and seagrass meadows.
• Freshwater environments
  • Inland fresh to saline water environments, including groundwater ecosystems, springs, wetlands, rivers and lakes.
• Land environments
  • Dry land environments, such as rainforests, woodlands, grasslands and deserts. It also includes agricultural and urban environments.
• Marine environments
  • The ocean beyond the tidal zone, including non-tidal seagrass meadows, sub-tidal coral and rocky reefs, canyons, sea mounts, and kelp forests.

These themes align with international frameworks including the:

• International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Ecosystem Typology (GET)
• United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN SEEA).

Each theme looks at the health of ecosystems from the ground up. It looks across landscapes and seascapes, considering how they function and interact.

The streamlined structure means:

• users will find the report easier to navigate
• content will be more consistent from one edition to the next.

It reflects how Australia’s environments connect. We will no longer treat them as separate or isolated topics.

The thematic approach also supports more integrated assessments across land and sea of:

• environmental condition
• pressures
• responses.

By reducing the number of sections and focusing on connected systems, SoE26 will:

• improve clarity
• support smarter decision-making
• make it easier for readers to understand the bigger picture of environmental change.