Climate Law in Australia.

AuthorStephens, Tim
PositionBook review

Tim Bonyhady and Peter Christoff (eds), Climate Law in Australia (Federation Press, 2007, ISBN 978 186287 673 6, 315 pages)

Only a few years ago use of the term 'climate law' to describe the body of statutory and common law relevant to the regulation of climate change in Australia would have raised eyebrows. However it is now very much part of the legal lexicon, as this remarkable and significant edited collection of chapters from Australia's preeminent commentators on climate law and policy makes clear.

The observed and projected physical changes being brought about by climatic change in Australia has prompted a suite of private and statutory actions in virtually all levels of the Australian court system. It seems inevitable that just as the United States Supreme Court has engaged with climate change (1) the High Court of Australia will likewise at some point be called upon to address a climate case. Parallel with climate litigation has come a developing body of regulation at State and Federal levels. Whereas such laws emerged slowly during the years of the Howard Government, (2) there is now a raft of State and Federal legislation in place, (3) or in the pipeline. (4) Also impossible to ignore is the developing international law of climate change, which seeks to build upon the foundations provided by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (5) ('UNFCCC) and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol ('Kyoto Protocol). (6)

Climate Law in Australia was published just a few weeks after the Rudd Labor government was elected to office, by which time the new Prime Minister had participated in the Bali summit on climate change, and taken the much acclaimed step of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. This book is therefore situated at the juncture between the regressive policies of the Howard Government and the progressive policies of the Rudd Government. Nonetheless most of the 16 chapters have a high degree of currency given their focus on changes to the landscape of climate law and policy promised by the Australian Labor Party in the 2007 Federal election campaign.

Following an introduction by the editors in which they trace the provenance of climate law in Australia to the 1980s, and to the pioneering work of Rob Fowler, Tim Bonyhady contributes an engaging chapter on the 'new Australian climate law' in which he introduces the burgeoning climate change case law through a characteristically historical and literary discussion of disputes that have flared across the Australian continent, from King Island to Mackay. Bonyhady makes the point that despite several false starts and sceptical reaction to mainstream scientific opinion Australian courts are now engaging with this existential threat and beginning to impact on governmental decision making as we wait expectantly for the Commonwealth to pass a comprehensive legislative package to implement the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Our attention is then turned to the international law and policy of climate change in a chapter by Peter Christoff and Robyn Eckersley that examines the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate ('APP'). First styled as the AP6, this non-binding arrangement among a small collection of major emitters around the Pacific Rim became known as the APP when Canada joined as the seventh member in late 2007. Christoff and Eckersley make a compelling argument that far from complementing the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, as was the stated premise of the APP, in fact it is pulling in an entircly opposite direction. They argue that by...

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