Professor
Environment regulation, governance and policy
Phone: +61 2 6125 3397
Fax: + 61 (0)2 6125 0746
E-mail: neil.gunningham@anu.edu.au

Neil Gunningham obtained the degrees of LLB (Hons) and MA (Criminology) from the University of Sheffield, UK, and is a Barrister and Solicitor (ACT). He also holds a PhD from ANU. Although initially trained in law, his subsequent post-graduate work was in interdisciplinary social science, and for the last ten years he has applied that training principally in the area of environment, with a focus on regulation. He joined the Fenner School (then SRES) in January 2002. Previously he was Foundation Director of the ANU Australian Centre for Environmental Law.

Professional Activities

My research and teaching interests focus on environmental regulation, governance and policy. One strand of my research has been concerned to identify the contribution that broader, innovative forms of regulation can make to environmental law. This includes the potential roles of community participation, information based strategies, environmental partnerships and various forms of co-regulation. I have also sought to explain the interrelation between such mechanisms; and to identify the comparative advantage of different instruments in different institutional, economic and social contexts and to argue the case for developing an optimal regulatory mix.

Most recently, I and my colleagues are researching a far reaching alternative to traditional natural resource management strategies: The New Collaborative Environmental Governance. We are seek to examine, assess and critique the new governance, develop principles enabling its mobilization in an effective and democratically acceptable manner, and investigate the challenges it poses for our understanding of law, regulation and public policy, and its implications for theories of governance more generally. Our longer term agenda is to identify and promote possible models for effective collaborative governance to be used to tackle climate change.

Academic Highlights

Fulbright Senior Scholar, University of California, Berkeley. Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences.

Selected Publications

Books:

Gunningham, N Kagan R and Thornton, D 2003. Shades of Green: Business, Regulation and Environment, Stanford University Press, USA.

Gunningham, N and Sinclair D 2002. Leaders and Laggards: Next Generation Environmental Regulation, Greenleaf, UK.

Gunningham, N. & Grabosky, P. 1998. Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental Regulation, Oxford University Press, UK.

Articles:

"Motivating Management: Corporate Compliance in Environmental Protection" (with D Thornton and R Kagan) Law and Policy, Vol 27 No 2, April 2005; 89-316;

"Corporate Environmental Responsibility: Law and the Limits of Voluntarism: in McBarnett, D, Voicelescu, A & Campbell T The New Corporate Accountability, Cambridge UP 2007.