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Environmental Law

The AJP advocates for a new way of thinking about and relating to nature. Scientists can measure human disturbances in the ecosystem with a precision never dreamed of in the past. How should our legal system respond to news that reactive nitrogen levels are increasing, or carbon dioxide? Or that we risk running out of antimony or indium? We have a legal system which has evolved regulating the actions of people and, more recently organisations, but we are trying to use it to influence global outcomes which may be complex and largely unknown functions of individual and corporate activity.

Key Objectives

1. Introduce new federal environmental laws which adequately deal with climate change, land clearing and other crucial issues.
2. Establish a Commonwealth Environment Commission (CEC) with the power to implement bioregional plans, programs, strategies and environmental standards.
3. Establish a Commonwealth Environmental Protection Agency (CEPA) with adequate resources to monitor, enforce and prosecute offenders.
4. Increase citizen participation in environmental decisions, especially community groups and environmental protection organisations, and enshrine their ability to litigate on behalf of nature.
5. Legally recognise the inherent Rights of Nature, including the right to survive and be restored, and pursue the most appropriate means of protecting these rights (for the rights of individual animals, see our Animal Law policy).
6. Challenge the cultural, economic and legal conceptions of nature and animals as property to be owned by humans and educate the public to live within our ecological limits.

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