Environmental Law and Governance in the Pacific: Climate Change, Biodiversity and Communities

This volume examines environmental law and governance in the Pacific, focussing on the emerging challenges this region faces.

The Pacific is home to some of the world’s most astonishing biological and cultural diversity. At the same time, Pacific Island nations are economically and technically under-resourced in the face of tremendous environmental challenges. Destructive weather events, ocean acidification, mining, logging, overfishing and pollution increasingly degrade ecosystems and affect fishing, farming and other cultural practices of Pacific Islanders. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to understand and analyse the role of law and governance in responding to these pressures in the Pacific. Drawing on academic and practitioner expertise from the Pacific region, as well as Europe and the United States, this unique collection navigates the major environmental law and governance challenges of the present and future of the Pacific. Fourteen Pacific Island countries, including the Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Samoa, and a broad range of themes, such as deep-sea mining, fisheries, protected areas, heritage, endangered species, human rights and access to justice, are addressed in the volume, thus providing a truly comprehensive and state of the art overview of environmental law and governance within specific jurisdictions as well as across the Pacific region as a whole.

This volume will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in environmental law and governance in the Pacific region, as well as policymakers, practitioners and NGOs involved in the development and implementation of environmental law and policy.