Development of climate law in Australia

Abstract

Introduction Climate change, as we have seen, is the quintessential global environmental issue in the sense of being an indivisible problem with global causes and effects. Its global dimensions support the logic of the development of an international climate law framework, as described in the previous chapters. However, climate change also has important implications for domestic legal frameworks. This is partly because international climate change treaties, like other international environmental laws, depend heavily upon the national implementation of measures such as reliable reporting systems for their effectiveness. It is also because the complex environmental and economic consequences of climate change include local effects (in the area of biodiversity, for example), as well as regional and national effects (for example, shifts in patterns of energy use). With continuing uncertainty at the international level over the shape of future legal arrangements, climate law at the national level has taken on a new prominence. This is not to say that domestic climate law has been completely freed from the bonds imposed by international agreements, nor from the imperatives created by the need for a collective effort to respond to the global problem. However, as we highlighted in Chapter 1, an increasing refrain in climate law scholarship and policy discussion is debate over whether regulation should be ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’. This has seen greater attention paid to legal developments taking place at the sub-national, national and regional levels, in addition to top-down regulation at the international level establishing emission reduction obligations for states.