Environment

• Rights of nature

  4th May 2023

  What if nature was recognised as a legal entity with the same rights as humans to survive and thrive? What if Australia followed New Zealand's example and granted personhood status to the Murray Darling Basin or the Great Barrier Reef? Dion Bull of Stacks Law Firm discusses the movement gaining momentum using this strategy to protect the natural world from destructive forces such as climate change and overdevelopment.

• Uninsurable nation: Australia’s most climate-vulnerable places

  26th May 2022

  ‘While climate change affects all Australians, the risks are not shared equally,’ writes The Climate Council, who have just released a report, Uninsurable Nation: Australia’s Most Climate Vulnerable Places, along with a detailed Climate Risk Map of Australia. This article summarises their key findings. 

• Governments face a reckoning in the courts over climate change failure

  9th Jan 2020

  In the midst of the bushfire catastrophe in Australia and in the shadow of the failure of successive governments to act on warnings by scientists, Greg Barns SC argues that it will only be a matter of time before the courts are forced to step in as they have done with Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.

• ALA supports Montara class action

  3rd Aug 2016

  A Federal Court class action today seeks to finally bring justice for thousands of Indonesians affected by an Australian oil spill in 2009.

• The challenge of transboundary environmental disasters

  9th Dec 2015

  Following the devastation surrounding the Samarco mine disaster, the Brazilian government has filed legal proceedings against the companies involved. Emily Mitchell, Senior Policy Officer at the Australian Lawyers Alliance asks: had transboundary damage occurred, would there have been such swift action? 

• A voice against threats to mining objection rights in QLD

  31st Jul 2014

  Recently, legislation was proposed in Queensland that clearly favours mining companies and proposes to significantly reduce the legal rights of landholders and the general community. Communities' rights to be notified, consulted and to object should remain protected, writes Amy Park.