Environmental Futures
Our work is focused on improving law, public policy, local governance, and international cooperation to protect ecosystems and enhance community resilience, and mitigate the effects of human-caused environmental change.
It also investigates the significant impact of climate change on communities, such as livelihood sources and transition initiatives to renewable energy in the Asia-Pacific.
Key projects are outlined below:
A Coal Elimination Treaty
Anthony Burke and Stefanie Fishel have published an article in Earth System Governance making an integrated environmental, public health and security case for the adoption of a Coal Elimination Treaty (CET) by 2030. They specify its design principles and propose three negotiation pathways, including a normative model inspired by the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Building resilience of coastal communities in the Indo-Pacific
This project aims to build a network/consortium of Australian-international academics and stakeholders to exchange knowledge and ideas to build coastal resilience in the Indo-Pacific. In this project, we conduct inter-disciplinary research such as community disaster relief and resilience building against coastal hazards and climate change (sea level rise, land subsidence, coastal erosion, flooding etc.). The green energy transition to reduce CO2 emissions necessitates the mining of critical minerals and causes environmental destruction and risks livelihood losses in the downstream community. This project runs in partnership with HASS, Science, Business and Engineering at UNSW Canberra.
Climate Change & the UN Security Council
In this project, Shirley Scott and Charlotte Ku gather a range of researchers and experts to consider how the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) could assist in addressing the global security challenges brought about by climate change. Contributing authors contemplate how the UNSC could prepare for this role; progressing the debate from whether and why the council should act on climate insecurity, to how? The key outcome of this project is the book, Climate Change and the UN Security Council, which includes analysis of climate migration, proposals for a climate court, peace missions, the EU role, and the attitude of the P5 powers.
Crimes Against Biodiversity
This project, led by Professor Anthony Burke and Dr Stefanie Fishel, aims to develop an understanding and description of a new international criminal law – Crimes Against Biodiversity – which, while inspired by work on the crime of ecocide, shifts the concept into the biodiversity concept and regime, rather than international human rights and humanitarian law. It aims to establish the key elements of the crime, along with proposals to legislate and prosecute it; to develop a legal, governance, and philosophical defence of the crime as a general concept relevant to our times; and to ascertain its potential value as a normative, preventative and policing tool in the global governance and protection of biodiversity.
Harnessing the growth of private investment in biodiversity and natural capital
Investors are increasingly favouring socially responsible and sustainable investments. A growing asset class is conservation finance, which is investment made directly or indirectly to conserve biodiversity, and maintain natural capital stocks including soil, ecosystems, clean air and water. Using a governance perspective and an agency theoretical framework, in this project Dr Megan Evans will evaluate the effectiveness of impact investing for biodiversity conservation. The impact investing “ecosystem” involves multiple sectors, social networks, and actors. This project will analyse each of these three scales, while drawing lessons across multiple jurisdictions to identify key factors that enable or inhibit the effectiveness of impact investing for biodiversity conservation.