How can legal rights and remedies be used to achieve ecologically sustainable use and management of natural resources?

        Prue Taylor, Senior Lecturer, Urban Planning, Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries, and Deputy Director, New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law (NZCEL), and Associate Professor David Grinlinton, Founding Member of NZCEL, Faculty of Law.

We collaborate on research and teaching in environmental and resource management policy and law. We share the aspiration that law becomes part of the solution to ecological problems, not a contributory cause.

Property rights are an important cause of ecological harm, but can also be a powerful tool to provide effective solutions to environmental and resource use conflicts. Significant new research directions include the legal duty of property owners to use land sustainably, and the emergence of the ‘public trust’ doctrine requiring governments to more proactively protect environmental values.

Prue works primarily in the realm of international environmental law and the development of a legal order based upon ecological sustainability. David focuses on New Zealand law and policy, and New Zealand’s experience as a ‘laboratory’ in pioneering sustainable management of natural and physical resources.

We’ve also focused on novel and creative solutions to respond to ecological problems such as climate change, damage to oceans and fisheries resources, and the impacts of mining and energy development.