School of Law
University of New England
2022 Kirby Seminar series
Monday 5 December 2022, 1pm AEDT
From legal protection to restoration
of Australia’s coastal wetlands
Associate Professor Justine James Bell
TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland
If interested and to obtain a link, please register for this Kirby Seminar at
https://une-au.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5ueUOmI8QmmSHuo8dMVU2A
In this Kirby Seminar, Justine Bell James will discuss the complexities in moving from a legal regime for environmental protection towards one that facilitates restoration, using the coastal and marine context as a case study. The importance of coastal wetlands in delivering crucial ecosystem services like water filtration, carbon sequestration, fisheries habitat and shoreline protection. Wetlands continue to be threatened by fishing, aquaculture, clearing and development, pollution and climate change. They are disappearing at three times the rate of terrestrial forests. Climate change mitigation must be paramount, but urgent restoration activities in this coastal space is also needed. 2021-2030 has been declared the United Nations ‘Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’ with the aim of ‘supporting and scaling up efforts to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide’.
In January 2022, the Federal Government released a methodology for blue carbon projects under Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund. This allows for some restoration projects, namely, tidal restoration of blue carbon ecosystems, to be accredited and receive carbon credits. A significant door has opened for coastal restoration projects, and should create a broader discussion of how the law can promote restoration goals across the landscape.
Justine Bell-James is an Associate Professor at the TC Beirne School of Law at University of Queensland with expertise in environmental and climate change law and climate change litigation. Justine’s research focuses on legal mechanisms for protection of the coast under climate change, incorporating both human settlements and coastal ecosystems.
She currently leads an ARC Discovery Project (2019-2022) considering how coastal wetland ecosystem services can be integrated into legal frameworks. Justine is also an expert on legal mechanisms to facilitate blue carbon projects in Australia and internationally, and she was involved with the development of a blue carbon methodology under Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund.
Justine’s work is highly interdisciplinary and she is an affiliated researcher with UQ’s Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science. Her recent collaborations and consultancies have involved colleagues from science, industry, NGOs, government and legal practice. Justine also has expertise in climate change litigation, and her work on opportunities for litigation under Queensland’s Human Rights Act 2019 has underpinned the first test case in this area
