New Frontiers in Australian Nature Law: Leadership and Inspiration from the Subnational Jurisdiction?

Despite fraught reform processes for national environmental laws, some Australian states and territories have forged ahead with ambitious law reform to address the biodiversity crisis. Subnational approaches have differed, depending on unique political, economic, ecological and other contextual constraints. However, these subnational reforms have shifted statutory objects and purposes, and introduced entirely novel statutory mechanisms and institutional arrangements for administration and compliance. We chart these emerging frontiers in nature law. We reflect on their potential to address well-recognised legal shortfalls such as failures to arrest habitat loss and address cumulative impacts; and their value in responding to complex new imperatives such as climate resilience, empowering First Nations’ biodiversity management, and strategic ecosystem restoration. Given limitations in recent Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) reforms and the need to progress nature law reform across the federation, it is timely to stocktake subnational progress and emerging, potentially transformative, examples of change.