10th Frontiers in Environmental Law Colloquium
The TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland
8-9 February 2024
The annual Frontiers in Environmental Law Colloquium provides a forum for environmental law academics and practitioners to share and discuss their experiences, research, and teaching practices. Through a supportive forum, we aim to:
- foster a supportive and inclusive network of like-minded individuals
- explore innovative environmental law ideas and insights within and beyond our discipline
- contribute meaningfully to the future of environmental law in our region
- share approaches to teaching and learning in environmental law
- assist environmental law academics to actively build their careers.
Registrations have now closed.
Colloquium Theme for 2024:
Looking forward and looking back: balancing environmental protection, conservation and restoration
Adopted in late 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (‘GBF’) set an ambitious agenda for halting and reversing biodiversity loss. Target 1 aims to bring loss of areas of high biodiversity importance to close to zero by 2030. Target 2 sets out the so-called ‘30x30’ target, with a goal of 30% of areas of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030.
Achieving these targets will require an extraordinarily high level of ambition and action at all levels of government, including in Australia, with a key role for environmental law. Targets 1 and 2 also however create the added challenge of needing to look backwards and restore past harms, whilst also looking forward to prevent future loss and degradation.
We invite you to reflect with us on how environmental law can contribute to these goals of protection, conservation and restoration, in light of urgent deadlines imposed by the GBF, and the escalating climate crisis.
We welcome papers across a range of environment related fields (including biodiversity, climate, oceans, planning, health, equity) that explore topics such as (but not limited to):
- Ecological restoration
- The role of protected areas on public and private land
- Global biodiversity and/or climate goals, and mechanisms to implement them domestically
- The climate/biodiversity nexus
- Decolonisation and First Law/Indigenous Law
- Intersections between environmental law and other areas of law, including human rights, tort and corporate law
We welcome both legal and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Embedding climate change into the core curriculum
The 2024 Frontiers Colloquium will also incorporate a half-day session on legal education, with a focus on embedding climate change in the core curriculum. This will provide an opportunity to share experiences and progress in this area.
Abstract submission
We invite proposals for research presentations broadly related to any of the above themes, and/or in relation to teaching environmental law. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and submitted below. The due date for abstracts is the 17 November 2023. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed on a rolling basis, so early submissions are encouraged.
Submissions have now closed.
Program
The Colloquium will be held in person at the University of Queensland, St Lucia, and will be conducted in an interactive, workshop-style format, involving brief presentations, panel discussions, and Q&A.