Thursday 15 Oct 2009

1:00 - 2:00pm Forestry Lecture Theatre

Forestry building no. 48

Environment Law, Regulation, Governance: Shifting Architectures

Neil Gunningham, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, ANU

Abstract

Environmental law and policy has come a long way since the birth of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and the launch of the first European environmental policy in 1972. Today law is no longer centre stage but simply one instrument amongst others in the environmental regulator’s toolkit. And talk of regulation may itself be giving way to the broader concept of environmental governance.

 This article examines the evolution of environmental law, regulation and governance over almost four decades. It explores the major initiatives of that period and the lessons that can be learned from them, it maps shifting regulatory architectures and explains what has worked and why, and it considers the changing nature of the environmental challenge itself. Finally it seeks to identify which particular architectures are most suited to deal with particular types of environmental problems.

Bio

Prof. Neil Gunningham has degrees in law and criminology from Sheffield University, UK, is a Barrister and Solicitor (ACT) and holds a PhD from ANU. Although initially trained in law, his subsequent post-graduate work was in interdisciplinary social science, and for the last fifteen years he has applied that training principally in the areas of safety, health and environment, with a focus on regulation and governance. He joined the Fenner School in January 2002 and holds a joint appointment in the Regulatory Institutions Network, College of Asia and Pacific. Previously he was Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Environmental Law at ANU, Visiting and Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics. His books include Leaders and Laggards: Next Generation Environment Regulation (with Sinclair) Greenleaf, 2002, Shades of Green: Business, Regulation and Environment (with Kagan and Thornton) 2003, Stanford UP, and Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental Policy,(with Grabosky) Oxford UP, UK, 1998.

The Fenner School Seminar Series is held in the Forestry Lecture Theatre, Forestry Building 48, Linnaeus Way (comes off Daley Road), ANU (Acton) campus, ACT

The seminar will start at 13:00 and finish at 14:00