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Water reforms in Australia over a decade ago have seen large-scale recovery of water for the environment. While the recovery programme commenced with bilateral political support, there has remained ongoing debate in the media around the recovery volume, method of recovery and delivering of this water through the river system. In November 2017, a group of academics and practitioners met to discuss the need for legitimacy as a core component of environmental water programmes. We discuss legitimacy in terms of both the process and outcome of an environmental water programme. This article, along with the others in the special issue, makes the case for investing in community support for, and demonstrating outcomes from, environmental water programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of the key features of the carbon pricing mechanism in Australia in 2011. It says that the principal federal law establishing the country's carbon pricing mechanism is called the Clean Energy Act 2011, the objects of which reflect domestic and international interests in addressing climate change. The compensation provided by the scheme to emission-intensive industries is also discussed.

Adaptation to climate change is a complex process of societal change and should be studied as such. Attention to issues of climate adaptation has increased considerably over the past few years. Until now, less attention has been paid to questions concerning normative issues of societal change. In this paper we will address three important questions on the normative level: (a) What kind of legal and policy principles should public and private actors take to heart when formulating and implementing adaptation measures? (b) Which societal interests should be protected by a climate-adaptation policy and in what order? (c) To what extent are governments responsible for adaptation to climate change and what are the responsibilities to be borne by private parties and citizens? We will treat these questions from a mix of legal, administrative, and economic perspectives. We conclude with some recommendations on how to deal with these normative aspects in policy-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the escalating international row over the decision by the European Union to include aviation emissions in its Emissions Trading Scheme from 2012 onwards. The main point of controversy is that the ETS will apply to foreign airlines to the extent they operate flights to and from EU airports. The article sheds light on the background of the dispute by providing an overview of the slow progress on aviation emissions under the UNFCCC and the International Civil Aviation Organization. It describes the main features of the EU scheme and discusses the pending request for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the compatibility of the ETS with international law. The article concludes that there is a good case to be made for the legal design of the EU's scheme for aviation emissions under international law. Furthermore, from a climate-policy perspective, the scheme can be seen as a necessary first step towards controlling rapidly growing aviation emissions. At the same time, the continuing global impasse on climate change mitigation raises concerns over fragmentation of climate change law and the spread of unilateral climate policies and retaliatory measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyses the proposed Australian regulatory approach to the crediting of biological sequestration activities (biosequestration) under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative and its interaction with state-based carbon rights, the national carbon-pricing mechanism, and the international Kyoto Protocol and carbon-trading markets. Norms and principles have been established by the Kyoto Protocol to guide the creation of additional, verifiable, and permanent credits from biosequestration activities. This paper examines the proposed arrangements under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative and Carbon Pricing Mechanism to determine whether they are consistent with those international norms and standards. This paper identifies a number of anomalies associated with the legal treatment of additionality and permanence and issuance of carbon credits within the Australian schemes. In light of this, the paper considers the possible legal implications for the national and international transfer, surrender and use of these offset credits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the number of court cases around the world raising the issue of climate change has increased dramatically, especially in jurisdictions that have not yet adopted effective national responses to climate change, such as Australia and the United States. In these countries, litigation provides an alternative path to encourage mitigation of the causes and adaptation to the effects of climate change. In Australia, much of the litigation, particularly the early climate change cases, has taken place in state courts or administrative tribunals, and has focused on applying existing legislation to require government decision-makers to consider future climate-associated risks in planning decisions. The influence of these cases have been wide reaching, leading to the revision or formulation of government policies on mining and coastal management. Other cases, particularly within federal courts, have been less successful, but have nonetheless highlighted areas in need of law reform. In the United States, recent high-profile cases targeting major sources of greenhouse gas emissions including power stations have raised novel arguments based on common law public nuisance grounds and the public trust doctrine. This article examines the extent to which climate change litigation, mainly in Australia, but also in the United States, has influenced government decision-makers, legislatures, and polluters to curb emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preventing dangerous climate change presents a significant political challenge. Extensive, urgent, and sustained political action is required to support necessary technological, economic, and behavioural changes. Yet the long-term, global, and uncertain effects of climate change, combined with the substantial short-term costs of mitigation action create what economists term a 'credible commitment' problem, given the dominance of material considerations and short-term electoral cycles in political decision-making. Accordingly, building effective climate change law is not simply about devising appropriate measures to reduce emissions, but more fundamentally about instituting legal and political 'regime change'. The UK Climate Change Act 2008 represents an important attempt to address the credible commitment problem on a domestic level. Not only does it impose long-term, legally binding emission-reduction targets, it also creates a so-called 'carbon accounting' regime, designed to maintain government focus on meeting the targets. The Act involves a 'pre-commitment strategy' which is intended to have a systemic and transformative effect on government action, and it has been described as having a 'constitutional' significance. The aim of this article is to interrogate this claim to constitutional status. It discusses, first, whether it is appropriate to describe the Act as a constitutional measure and why this classification might matter. Secondly, it considers the likely impact of the Act's substantive and institutional/procedural provisions. Finally, it considers the wisdom of 'climate change constitutionalism', and asks whether this is an approach which ought to be emulated by other states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a proper account of property and native title in Australian law and land. Any account of property and its grounding in law in Australia must begin with the beginning; with the origin story of law and property that cannot interrogate its own origins. That origin story was once predicated on an absence of racial difference through the convenient fiction of terra nullius and settled colonies - through the very denial of an aboriginal cultural and legal memory in the Australian continent. Such is the function and power of law that it exists to legitimate the moment of the acquisition of sovereignty, yet the authority and grounding of sovereign force remains mystical. In Mabo v Queensland [No 2], where this original dissonance in sovereign authority is revealed, the law is both reified and reifying. This befits a Sovereign who was no longer God but merely King. Thus the nation of Australia, as it was to become, could assert itself as having a unitary foundation in its English heritage of law and executive governance. This type of law prominent in Mabo was the common law, so called; and the conjoined avatars it produced or reproduced in this transformation were property and nation.