About the program
The Climate, Environmental and Antarctic Governance Research Program brings together legal scholars and governance experts to address some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time.
Our research matters because traditional legal frameworks are struggling to keep pace with unprecedented ecological and climatic change, requiring new approaches that can respond effectively to planetary-scale disruption.
With a strong commitment to climate mitigation and reversing biodiversity loss, our work pays close attention to issues of justice, legitimacy, and effectiveness across local, national, and global scales.
Our research focus
The group undertakes critical research at the intersection of law, governance, geopolitics and ecology, with particular emphasis on the challenges posed by climate change, ecological degradation and biodiversity loss, and emerging technological responses.
Our scholarship examines how legal and institutional frameworks can both constrain and enable adaptation to environmental disruption.
A central strand of our work examines the governance of climate interventions and ecological restoration.
This includes legal and ethical questions surrounding technology-based adaptation, solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal, and the design of adaptive and regulatory approaches for enabling landscape-scale ecological restoration.
For example, we investigate how international law might regulate atmospheric interventions that cross national boundaries. We have also developed model regulations for proactive restoration obligations.
By engaging with theories of ecological jurisprudence and Earth system governance—frameworks that consider how human and natural systems interact at a planetary scale—we seek to reimagine law's role beyond human-centered approaches and develop law and governance for social-ecological flourishing.
Marine and polar environments provide a second focal point, reflecting the group's particular expertise and geographic position in these critical regions.
Members have extensive knowledge of the Antarctic Treaty System, the law of the sea, and the regulation of fisheries and marine pollution. These contexts present distinctive challenges of international cooperation, enforcement and ecosystem-based management at a time of increased geopolitical tension in the international system.
They serve as crucial testing grounds for exploring legal and practical tensions between state sovereignty, conservation, collective stewardship and environmental protection in some of Earth's most vulnerable ecosystems.
Our research extends to examining how community and corporate entities contribute to improving environmental outcomes. This includes private landholders, corporations, not-for-profit organisations, Indigenous communities, and environmental professionals.
Our research interrogates the concepts of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability and how they facilitate or hinder behaviours; mandatory climate-related financial disclosures; greenwashing, voluntary sustainability related disclosures and emissions reductions targets, and conservation covenants.
This work connects to our broader themes by examining how private and public governance systems interact to shape environmental outcomes, with particular attention to stakeholder theory; accountability, ethics, corporate governance failures and the practical impacts of laws and other modes of governance.
Our contribution
Through interdisciplinary global collaborations and rigorous analysis, the group's scholarship advances a multifaceted understanding of environmental law and governance. We contribute to both academic debates, public discussion, international meetings and practical law reform initiatives that seek to navigate the profound ecological and climatic changes of the twenty-first century.