NSW bushfire survivors take environment watchdog to court over climate change

Bushfire victims will try to compel stronger climate change action when they take the NSW Environmental Protection Authority to court.

NSW Rural Fire Service crews fight the Gospers Mountain Fire as it impacts a structure at Bilpin Source: AAP

Bushfire survivors are taking legal action against the NSW Environmental Protection Authority in an attempt to force more significant climate change action.

The Environmental Defenders Office, acting on behalf of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, will argue the EPA has a duty to protect NSW communities by regulating greenhouse gas emissions to levels consistent with a safe climate.

It comes after a devastating bushfire season that claimed 25 lives and more than 2000 homes in NSW.

Burnt-out bushland on the outskirts of Cobargo Source: AAP

EDO chief executive David Morris said they were seeking to compel the agency to create policies and objectives regarding greenhouse gas emissions.

He said it was "staggering" that the state's primary environmental regulator didn't have a climate change policy.

"They don't have a policy with respect to greenhouse gas emissions at all," Mr Morris told AAP on Monday.

"They don't treat it like the pollutant that it is, and if you're going to fulfil your aim, fulfil your statutory mandate of protecting the environment, there's an inherent futility to that if you are ignoring the most important influencing factor on the environment long term which is stabilising the climate."

He said the EPA was empowered to act on climate change and the EDO would argue it also had a duty to do so.

"It's an agency with real teeth and it's just not using them in respect of regulating greenhouse gas emissions and climate change," he said.

"We say that is in breach of its statutory duty."

Mr Morris said victory in the case could be influential for other states.

The NSW EPA made no comment on Monday except to say it had received court documents from the EDO and was considering them.

Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action chair Jo Dodds, a survivor of the 2018 Tathra fires and a Bega Valley Shire councillor, said state authorities urgently needed to develop meaningful climate policies.

"As bushfire survivors we've experienced the devastating loss and trauma of catastrophic fires," Ms Dodds said in a statement.

"We want to ensure that other communities don't go through this and we don't want to go through it ourselves again - and that means urgently tackling climate change."