Biodiversity Law (LAWS90147)

Conservation biologists warn that we are in the midst of a great extinction crisis. Biodiversity Law is an emerging field, examining legal regimes designed to conserve Earth’s endangered forms of life. We will voyage to foreign intellectual lands – e.g. environmental ethics, conservation biology – and take a few real voyages to see biodiversity law in action. We will examine the nuts and bolts of Australian and foreign legal regimes with an attempt to discern most effective legal practices to conserve biodiversity, grounding our analyses in in-depth case studies.  Our investigations will be framed by two overarching questions: What is the legal framework for preserving life on Earth? What should be the components of the legal framework for preserving life on Earth?

Principal topics will include:

• A short primer on principles of environmental ethics and conservation biology and how these principles inform the practice of Biodiversity Law;
• Understanding the threats to biodiversity the law must confront;
• In-depth study of Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) to understand how this law interacts with Australian State and Territorial law to protect biodiversity;
• Consideration of Australian court cases that have interpreted the EPBC’s (and other biodiversity protective legal) provisions as applied to threatened species and ecosystems;
• Comparative studies of United States, South Africa, and other national legal approaches to, and court decisions on, biodiversity conservation;
• Attention to Australian (and foreign) biodiversity facing particular challenges (Great Barrier Reef, isolated marsupial populations, cetaceans) and how the law is (or is not) meeting those challenges;
• Analysis of the Convention on Biological Diversity,and other international treaties including how they are implemented in domestic law;
• In-depth case study on global wildlife poaching and smuggling;
• Discussion of “ownership” of biodiversity, including the rights that indigenous populations have to biodiversity;
• Discussion of market mechanisms designed to incentivize biodiversity conservation;
• Examination of non-legal means to preserve biodiversity;
• Synthesis of best practices for how to preserve and steward life on Earth.