On 20 November 2025, the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability released the State of the Marine and Coastal Environment (SMCE) Scientific Assessments 2024—a major update on the condition of Victoria’s coastal and marine ecosystems. For those of us in the Concerned Coastal Waterways Alliance (CCWA), this report provides a timely and scientifically robust confirmation of what coastal communities and advocacy groups have been observing for years: what happens upstream does not stay upstream.
The report sets out a detailed picture of pressures intensifying across Victoria’s coasts and estuaries. Many of these pressures such as declining freshwater inflows, degraded catchments, sediment and nutrient loads, stormwater pollution, industrial inputs, and climate-driven extremes, are directly tied to how our rivers and landscapes are being managed inland.
For the CCWA, this assessment speaks directly to our mission: to protect the ecological health of Victoria’s coastal rivers, estuaries, wetlands, and near-shore environments by addressing the full catchment system that feeds them.
Key themes emerging from the SMCE Scientific Assessments echo long-standing concerns raised by CCWA member groups:
- Reduced and altered river flows impacting estuary openings, salinity regimes, and the ecological stability of coastal systems.
- Pollution and nutrient loads travelling through river catchments and accumulating in estuaries and near-shore waters.
- Cumulative impacts from development and land-use change, including increased stormwater volumes and sedimentation.
- Climate vulnerabilities, from heatwaves to storm surges, amplified by weakened ecological resilience.
- The lack of coordinated, catchment-to-coast governance, despite decades of recommendations in policy and science.
Importantly, the report also outlines practical solutions, many of which align with CCWA’s member groups current advocacy work, including stronger environmental flow management, improved waterway and catchment monitoring, integrated planning, better stormwater and wastewater management, and protecting and restoring coastal habitats.
We encourage partners, supporters, and coastal communities to read the report and consider its findings in the broader context of protecting Victoria’s waterways from headwaters to sea.
Read the full report:
State of the Marine and Coastal Environment (SMCE) Scientific Assessments 2024
https://www.ces.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/SMCE%20Report%202024_Scientific%20Assessments_DIGITAL.pdf