July 2, 2012: Panel 3A - A Comparative Analysis for Maintaining Biodiversity

A Comparative Analysis for Maintainikng Biodiversity Video

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Lost in Translation: Threatened Species in Australia

Jacqueline Williams et al. — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Australia is currently experiencing an unprecedented expansion of mining activities into previously unaffected rural regions, encroaching lands of high environmental and agricultural value. Coal seam gas and significant underground mining of rare and precious metals also threaten surface and groundwater resources. Australia’s environmental laws are ill equipped to respond and sufficiently manage these new land-use conflicts giving rise to a greater risk of adverse environmental and social impacts. These new land-use conflicts involve very complex institutional issues in particular new players competing for scarce natural resources. The mining industry is perceived as a powerful and often government-supported player as mining royalties creates a duplicitous relationship for government: representing the public interest in sustainable natural resource management and raising revenue for government expenditure from mining royalties. The State of New South Wales alone earned $1.28 billion in royalty revenues in 2008/09.

This paper will explore the evolution of environmental law in Australia since the ‘Rio Declaration on Environment and Development’ in 1992 focusing on threatened species legislation. The discussion will use a case study to explore the issues, involving an IUCN red listed endangered species the Giant Barred Frog (Mixophyes iteratus) whose habitat is potentially threatened by mining activities in Australia. Institutional issues surrounding the protection of threatened species and their habitats will be examined comparing legal intent and actual practice. New policy initiatives currently underway in Australia will be critiqued and recommendations for law and governance reforms required to adequately protect threatened species.

The Nagoya Protocal on Access and Benefit Sharing in Genetic Resources and Biodiversity Conservation in Africa

Eliamani Laltaika — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:00:00 PDT

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (hereinafter the Protocol) was adopted at the tenth conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (hereinafter CBD) on the 29^th October 2010 in Nagoya Japan. The Protocol aims at implementing the third objective of the CBD namely fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from utilization of genetic resources. To this end, the Protocol is seen as a milestone in the regulation of access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge corresponding to Articles 15 and 8(j) of the CBD respectively. Reviewing documented cases of biopiracy in Africa since the CBD entered into force seventeen years ago, poverty levels and dependency on the natural environment among communities in Africa as well as inability of conventional intellectual property rights to protect traditional knowledge, this paper investigates whether or not the Protocol is too little too late. It is concluded that while the Protocol signifies an important step in international environmental law, complementarities and synergies need to be sough elsewhere including World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) processes related to traditional knowledge and associated genetic resources.

Sustainable Development Through a Rights Based Approach to Conserve Protected Areas in China

Miao He — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Protected areas are the world’s most effective tool for biodiversity conservation, and their role in helping mitigate and adapt to climate change is also increasingly recognized. However, neglecting internationally and domestically guaranteed rights can be a trigger for protected areas destruction. The crossroads of protected areas conservation on the one hand and human rights protection on the other is an urgent issue. A rights-based approach to conservation meets the need to better balance the human rights protection and protected areas conservation and can make an important contribution to sustainable development.

Protected areas in China, with a total surface of 1,562,257km², play a very important role in the world. Unfortunately, protected areas with a high biodiversity value are usually the economically poor place. The conflicts between conserving protected areas and protecting human rights seems to be inevitable in China. Hence, how to adopt rights-based approach to conserve protected areas in China becomes an important problem. However, there is little literature paying attention to this problem. With the aim of adopting rights-based approach to conserve protected areas and to meet the need for sustainable development in China, this paper tends to fills the gap within three layers. Firstly, it will establish what the main conflicts are in China between protected areas conservation and human rights protection. It will briefly analyze the two main conflicts in China, viz. right to information and right to participation. Secondly, why a rights-based approach can help to solve the conflicts, it will explain its advantages and challenges, especially in the Chinese situation. Thirdly, it will explore how to adopt a rights-based approach to protected areas conservation, in order to solve the conflicts in China. This will contain four parts: (a) empowering rights in legislation on protected areas; (b) safeguarding rights in the enforcement of legislation on protected areas; (c) assessing rights when evaluating the enforcement; (d) providing legal remedy. When these four steps are implemented, they might help to solve the conflicts and to achieve harmony between protected areas and human rights.

Sustainable Management: a Sustainable Ethic?

Trevor Daya-Winterbottom — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:00:00 PDT

New Zealand is a country rich in biodiversity and natural resources, steeped in Maori culture and indigenous values, that legislated for sustainable management under the Resource Management Act 1991. Despite the rhetoric of sustainable management, environmental law and governance in New Zealand continue to grapple with persistent challenges:

· New Zealand is a significant contributor to global biodiversity but has one of the highest species extinction rates due to continued habitat loss and invasion by pest species.

· While New Zealand has a plentiful supply of clean freshwater, water demand from agriculture and urban growth is increasing and water quality is getting worse with elevated nutrient levels in almost 50% of rivers and aquifers.

· Environmental management is devolved to local authorities that have largely been left in a policy vacuum in the absence of national policy statements or standards.

· Political decision making by local authorities on policy statements and plans has been captured by property rights arguments and voluntary approaches to protecting biodiversity on private land, heritage and landscape have been prevalent.

· Recognition of Maori interests in resource management, e.g. allocation of natural resources, has not been reflected in practice

New strategies are however emerging for promoting environmental justice and using the law to advance sustainability. National policy statements are being gazetted in relation to freshwater management, indigenous biodiversity, and renewable energy. Regional rules have been prepared allowing nitrogen offsetting between properties to provide flexibility for landowners to meet the new regulatory requirements. Co-management of freshwater resources has been enacted to ensure Maori participation in environmental decision-making. Critical thinking has emphasized the role of sustainable management, as an ethical concept that, like justice, our law should seek to embrace, and that will require major structural reforms.

My paper will explore the New Zealand experiment in legislating for sustainable management in its domestic, comparative and international context. It will likely conclude that while the current resource management reform programme provides an opportunity to lay some ghosts to rest, the history of ongoing legislative reform indicates that major structural reform is unlikely.