AFTER THE VIRUS - IN S.E.QUEENSLAND

The importance of environmental legal protections in the S.E.Queensland region

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GUEST: Revel Pointon - public interest environmental lawyer with the Environmental Defenders Office.

Introduction to this episode:

Environmental law, as a systematic form of legal practice, with an overarching objective of providing protection to the environment emerged in the first great wave of public concern about human impacts on the natural world in the 1960’s.Since then, it has developed into a broad range of legal interests, applied from local to global level: from monitoring the application of enacted environmental protection legislation in specific areas, to a push for more radical and systemic uses of legal protections for the environment, embodied in concepts such as Earth jurisprudence, and the creation of strong, international criminal sanctions against irresponsible environmental damage or ‘Ecocide’.

In Australia, there is a growing consensus that existing federal and state level environmental legal protections, as they are currently written and implemented, are mostly inadequate; that they have not factored growing climate change impacts into their frameworks, and have not helped stop a serious level of native species loss and habitat destruction over the last twenty years or so. This national failure, to adequately address climate change control and biodiversity loss, has serious repercussions for the future health and wellbeing of humans and other species, on this continent and across the wider world.

The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) as described on its website, is the largest environmental legal centre in the Australia-Pacific, dedicated to protecting the ‘climate, communities and shared environment by providing access to justice, running ground-breaking litigation and leading law reform advocacy.’

The EDO is ‘an accredited community legal service and a non-government, not-for-profit organisation that uses the law to protect and defend Australia’s wildlife, people and places.’ 

Some talking points for this episode

  • Revel’s background and how she developed her interest in environmental law.

The current situation

  • The crucial role of governance within environmental law, and its importance in helping avoid 'regulatory capture'.
  • The current state of play on some environmental protections within S.E. Queensland. Some examples in the current serious decline of an iconic species, the Koala in the region - and the case of proposed development at Toondah Harbour.
  • The inadequacy of current planning and development models – particularly in relation to decreasing opportunities for citizen input to current, poor-quality environmental assessment of developments.

    • Looking to the future

    • The inspiring examples of citizen juries and assemblies convened on climate change and other key environmental matters in other parts of the world.
  • In Australia, the beginning of direct citizen legal challenges to perceived harmful developments sanctioned by government.
  • In the region: the possibility of establishing a truly independent Environmental Protection Agency in Queensland.
  • The continuing value of environmental law to advocate for good governance on existing environmental protection - and to encourage citizens to realise their power in opposing deleterious and damaging developments - currently being encouraged by regulatory capture and a ‘development at any costs’ cultural skew within planning systems.

    • Guest and other contact details:

    Guest: Revel Pointon

    Managing Lawyer of the Southern and Central Queensland office of the Environmental Defenders Office

    Householders’ Options to Protect the Environment (HOPE):

    T  07 4639 2135  E [email protected]       W    F

    Production: researched and produced for HOPE by Andrew Nicholson. This episode recorded in Toowoomba, S.E. Queensland, Australia on Wednesday 3rd March 2021.

    Artwork: Daniela Dal'Castel   Incidental Music: James Nicholson

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