Environmental Law Group

The oceans cover 70 per cent of the planet and provide vital avenues of transportation and communication, critical supplies of living and non-living resources, and ecosystem services that underpin human existence and well-being. 

Ocean-based activities such as fishing, shipping, seabed mining, laying of underwater cables and pipelines, oil and gas exploration and extraction, generation of off-shore energy, bioprospecting and ocean tourism all pose significant governance and regulatory challenges. 

These challenges are made more complex by the effects of climate change and ocean acidification and by their interaction with land-based activities and coastal zone and port development. Our research focuses on legal and governance concerns relating to:  

• the changing ocean economy: including sectoral changes, like low-carbon shipping and deep seabed mining; environmental changes, such as ecosystems and their benefits; and social changes, such as livelihoods and coastal migration  
• the changing ocean environment: including effects of climate change and ocean acidification on existing and future governance arrangements (for example, for fisheries and whaling), climate mitigation and adaption (such as marine geo-engineering and marine carbon) 
• shaping our oceans for future generations: including access for future generations to ocean resources (such as fisheries and minerals) and ecosystem services, including integrated ocean accounting  
• monitoring and enforcement: including monitoring of marine industries, compliance mechanisms, and dispute settlement.

Energy, water, food and climate are the pillars on which our society and security rest. Yet, economic and population growth threaten the accessibility and reliability of existing water, energy and food supplies. 

Globally there is an increasing consensus that governing the energy-water-food-climate nexus is one of the defining challenges of our time. Despite the increasing rhetoric of integrated resource management, however, the interconnections and impacts between these sectors remain underappreciated and underexplored. 

Our research examines the way in which pressures in any one sector produce tensions in others. We identify the successes and key flashpoints of law and governance responses with a view to developing truly integrated legal and policy responses to regulate potential negative impacts and the incentive structures and mix of public, private and community actors needed to best respond to local, national and global nexus challenges. Our focus includes:

• energy transitions: including the regulatory levers to break fossil fuel lock-ins and deliver low-carbon energy sources, while minimising impacts on biodiversity, food, water and other land uses
• prevention of resource theft: including water theft and illegal degradation and pillaging of natural resources
• governing complex nexus issues: legal and governance arrangements to respond to cross-sector and cross-scale interactions between water, energy, food and climate, to increase efficiency, reduce trade-offs, build synergies and improve governance across sectors.

Cities have always been experimental sites of collective social change, from the era of the city-state through to the contemporary urban megalopolis. In contemporary times, the twin challenges of climate change and rocketing inequality create increasing pressures to ‘think big’, imagining system-level and transformative change. 

Our research examines specific ways that the developing body of urban law can help to nurture just, healthy relationships and connections between residents that express respect, care and dignity via a robust democratic dialogue about rights, responsibilities and relationships between cities and citizens. 

Reaching beyond environmental law as traditionally understood, our research seeks to interrogate and develop legal frameworks that enable a meaningful shared life in a world well cared for. Our focus includes:

• legal and policy frameworks for the creation of inclusive, convivial and ecologically thriving urban spaces (including housing, transport, public space, infrastructure and services that are liveable, equitable and sustainable) 

• legal and policy frameworks to sustain local economic flows of money, resources and convivial exchange that supports both community sociality and ecological integrity.

The naming of the Anthropocene requires humankind to acknowledge the profound consequences of the scale and speed of the global change that human actions have wrought. This acknowledgement demands major changes in law to provide for a greater enmeshment of humans and nature and a more holistic and sustainable approach to governance of the planet on which we live. 

Our research is leading this rethinking through theoretical and practical analysis of the concept of ‘nature rights’ with a view to offering a transnational framework to interrogate how intra- and inter-generational inequity and non-human species should be accounted for. 

This includes analysis and development of frameworks capable of re-balancing state responsibility and the environment and for integrating environmental, public health, biodiversity and heritage concerns by synthesising them into rights not over but of nature. Our focus includes: 

• Earth systems law 

• implementing nature rights: including rights and legal personhood for nature.

• Rosemary Rayfuse, opens in a new window, Emerita Professor
• Bronwen Morgan, opens in a new window, Professor
• Natalie Klein, opens in a new window, Professor
• Amy Cohen, opens in a new window, Professor
• Cameron Holley, opens in a new window, Professor
• Amelia Thorpe, opens in a new window, Associate Professor
• Dr Janice Gray, opens in a new window, Senior Lecturer
• Dr Marc de Leeuw, opens in a new window, Senior Lecturer
• Dr Ben Milligan, opens in a new window, Scientia Fellow
• Dr Aline Jaeckel, Lecturer, ARC DECRA Fellow
• Dr Zsofia Korosy, Postdoctoral Fellow

• Lucas Lixinski, opens in a new window, Associate Professor
• Cathy Sherry, Associate Professor
• Michael Grewcock, Senior Lecturer

• Aaron McIlroy
• Alice Bleby
• Carley Bartlett
• Caterina Guidi
• Chris McElwain
• Mark Hamilton
• Millicent McCreath
• Oxana Wolfson
• Pat Martin
• Priscilla Rivas
• Rachel Ravignani