Professor Paul Martin from the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law in the School of Law has been appointed to take a key role in international efforts to improve the effectiveness of environmental governance. He will lead the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law’s work in developing a framework for improving the effectiveness of natural resource governance arrangements around the world. The main aim of the IUCN Natural Resource Governance Framework (of which the legal aspect is a key component) is to provide an independent method to determine the strengths and weaknesses of natural resource decision-making and to improve implementation. The IUCN will develop, test and apply the new framework, aiming to provide the same coherency and consistency of approach as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species does for the conservation status of threatened species.
During 2013, Paul, working with the Deputy Chair of the WCEL, Professor Ben Boer, proposed the method for objective evaluation of the effectiveness of legal arrangements within environmental governance. That method has been adopted as a cornerstone of the development of this important work. The next stages in this major international effort will involve expanding the scope and approach to the work, and beginning the process of objective evaluation and continuous improvement.
“At Rio +20 it was recognised that the focus of legal governance must shift from creating new legal instruments to ensuring the effectiveness of instruments. This has contributed to a significant re-focussing upon the outcome effectiveness of environmental law.” said Professor Martin. “The IUCN initiative is a signal of a sea-change in environmental law, and represents a significant challenge for the scholarship, practice and politics of environmental law. Developing and testing a method of evaluation is a major challenge, but one that the Centre is keen to lead”.
This recognition of the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law as an international leader in applied environmental law and governance research reflects the substantial work that the Centre has done on environmental law effectiveness since 2005, and the increasing international recognition of that work. The Centre currently has 2 ARC research projects and one major CRC research program underway on related issues.
In 2013 Professor Martin convened an international research workshop entitled “Towards a Jurisprudence of Implementation of Environmental Law”. This event brought together leading scholars from as far afield as the USA, China, Canada, Spain, Finland, various countries in Africa and the United Kingdom to explore more effective implementation. A book has been commissioned for publication during 2014, which will bring further attention to the challenges of implementation that lie at the cornerstone of improving the effectiveness of legal arrangements for environmental governance.
