Evan Hamman

Principles of Transparency in Emissions Trading Schemes: The Chinese Experience

Free to read on publisher website Transparency is fundamental to environmental governance. It promotes public trust, goodwill, and credibility in environmental decision making. It also ensures that monitoring and enforcement of emissions reduction targets are efficient and effective. As the impacts of climate change increase, it is urgent that scholars and policy makers develop and test criteria for transparency in both the calculation of emissions reductions and the public reporting of emissions. This article highlights basic principles of transparency that should inform such criteria and that may be applied on a transnational basis. We also examine China’s recently implemented pilot emissions trading schemes and find that the approach in China does not yet comply with our suggested principles. Nevertheless, the positive direction of environmental governance in this region is encouraging.

The influence of environmental NGOs on project finance: a case study of activism, development and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

ABSTRACT Project financiers often influence not only the standards against which a project is managed, but also whether the project goes ahead at all. Non-government organizations (NGOs) are acutely aware of the leverage that project financiers possess. In today’s media-driven world, banks are especially sensitive to public opinion and bad press. Perception and reputation are important. In Australia, we have seen this play out with several of the world’s biggest financiers refusing to fund projects which might impact the Great Barrier Reef. In this paper, I explore some of those decisions and the influence of NGOs on the project finance industry. My aim is to better understand the context in which certain financial decisions are made, including who wields influence and how such influence is brought to bear. What seems apparent is that while financiers are powerful gatekeepers of major projects, their influence appears closely connected to that of civil society.

Chinese cultural competency and Australian law students: Reflections on the design of short term mobility programs

There is an emerging need for Australia’s law graduates to better understand the unique challenges and opportunities in our largest trading partner, China. Similarly, as China opens up to the world, its graduates are increasingly well-poised to make an indelible mark on Chinese-Australian relations, particularly in the areas of finance, property, trade and commerce. Chinese and Australian law schools must urgently develop a deeper awareness of each other’s language, culture and political systems in their graduates. The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of Chinese cultural competency to Australian legal education and reflect on projects that enable students to attain a level of cultural competency over a short period. We do this by considering a recent ‘short term mobility project’ in Wuhan, China.

The Control of Nutrient Run-Off from Agricultural Areas: Insights into Governance from Australia’s Sugarcane Industry and the Great Barrier Reef

Many parts of the world rely on nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus to improve farming production and increase yields. There are significant food security as well as socio-economic issues at stake. However, it is also clear that fertilizer loads are particularly damaging to aquatic environments, including lakes, rivers, coral reefs, and wetlands. This article explores governance approaches to fertilizer practices that impact on aquatic environments (eutrophication) by examining a case study of the Great Barrier Reef. Governance involves any and all forms of state and non-state control over a given set of issues. It can include, but is not limited to, rule-based approaches like regulation, although it can also involve market-driven measures like nutrient trading schemes, government grants and other financial incentives. So, which approach to governance works best to combat this particular policy question? What other insights into the design of effective regulation and governance can be gathered? In this article, the authors make three broad arguments for change: firstly, it is crucial that regulation features within government strategies; secondly, there must be a rigorous systematic evaluation of the strategies to ensure that the desired behavioural change is achieved along with the desired outcomes; thirdly, and most importantly, the strategies and the evaluation methods must be appropriate for the culture of the industry they are designed to regulate.

Transparency in Climate Finance After Paris: Towards a More Effective Climate Governance Framework

The Paris Agreement charts a new course for measuring, reporting, verification (MRV) of State obligations with the intensification of the emphasis on the criterion of transparency. This is, in part, responsive to modern debates in regards to environmental law generally and climate law in particular. Transparency is crucial to the success or failure of climate mitigation and adaption regimes because climate governance is intimately connected to the ideals of deliberative democracy, public participation, and the rule of law. The Paris Agreement thus presents a ground-breaking and important point in time for both developed and developing States. Aligned with this requirement is the desire to increase the amount and flow of ‘climate finance’ from developed to developing states. The associated need for transparency in funding flows has been raised in part through the accusations of misused or inadequate funds, ‘tied’ funding and double counting. Though there are new informational requirements placed on states in the Paris Agreement, they also present considerable practical challenges. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the principle of transparency in climate finance and to chart the direction of the associated informational requirements in light of the measures agreed at Paris.

The Polluter Pays Principle in Chinese Environmental Law

The effective implementation of international environmental law has taken on greater urgency in recent times. Behind the multitude of international environmental instruments sit generally accepted and potentially powerful principles like the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP). The PPP claims that sustainable development can be achieved, at least partly, by private operators internalizing the costs of their pollution, occasionally with state support. This paper analyses the application of the PPP in Chinese environmental law by focusing on a case study of Yangtze River pollution around the city of Wuhan. We find that the PPP, a powerful norm of international environmental governance, has increasingly been accepted in China’s environmental structures. Both national and local attempts to improve water quality in the Yangtze reflect a more sophisticated acceptance of the PPP’s main aims

Culture, humility and the law: Towards a more transformative teaching framework

Cultural competency has proven less effective than its proponents had envisioned. Disciplines outside of the law (social work, health and psychology) have turned to the more powerful theory of ‘cultural humility’ – a framework for lifelong learning and self-reflection. Cultural humility contends that one can never really ‘master’ another’s culture, but that we ought to remain respectful and reflective in our approach. In this article I make the case for teaching cultural humility in Australian law schools.