DEVELOPMENTS that must meet the requirements of the Federal Government's environmental protection laws face being forced to account for their greenhouse pollution under a review of the laws announced last night.

The Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, has commissioned an audit of the flagship conservation laws, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which are 10 years old.

Mr Garrett said the laws were "potentially a very powerful tool for the protection of the Australian environment" but had not always been used as much they could have been.

Mr Garrett has this year knocked back a coalmine in Queensland because of its potentially negative effects on a rare cassowary and a housing development, also in Queensland, because of the impact it would have had on surrounding wetlands.

But Mr Garrett said although the laws were good for rejecting individual projects they did not protect the environment from "death by a thousand cuts" or a series of developments, none of which were individually threatening but collectively posed danger to a particular environmental characteristic.

Under the existing laws there are seven triggers which can lead to a development being knocked back on environmental grounds.

These include whether a proposed development would harm an already threatened species, adversely affect the quality of a body of water, or harm a national or international heritage site.

The Government has promised to add greenhouse pollution as an eighth trigger as grounds for rejecting a development. The review of the laws is the first step towards creating that trigger.

A spokesman for Mr Garrett confirmed the review "may consider the greenhouse trigger as part of the process".

The review will be led by Allan Hawke, the former head of the Department of Defence who is finishing a term as the Chancellor of the Australian National University.

The panel includes retired judge Paul Stein and the director of the Centre for Climate Law and Policy at the Australian National University, Professor Tim Bonyhady.