Ecological vulnerability and the devolution of individual autonomy

Traditional notions of autonomy and environmental sustainability are not goodbedfellows. Environmental regulation is often at the bottom of a hierarchy of needs, surpassed by the promotion of individual autonomy that allows use of the environment as a resource for sustenance, shelter, entertainment, and profit. This hierarchy ignores our greatest source of vulnerability – the earth on which we exist. We are all, to varying degrees, vulnerable to air pollution, changing climate, deforestation, ocean acidification, urban sprawl and biodiversity loss. This article will focus on one of those sources:biodiversity losses caused by human conflicts with wildlife.Vulnerability Theory considers that individualised conceptions of autonomy are a myth that needs to be removed from our institutions. In wildlife management, individualised conceptions of autonomy are often directly incompatible with species protection.Autonomy is so internalised that stakeholders often rebel against state attempts to regulate. Perceived regulatory inadequacies can make landholders discontented, and they often retaliate by killing protected wildlife or worse. Further, competing personal interests and their link to individual autonomy can result in conservation conflicts that become ‘wicked problems’ – unsolvable by traditional means.We are already voluntarily giving up some of the more institutionalised notions of autonomy in the management of wildlife. A return to community, place basedgovernance has meant that some individuals are more willing to relinquish traditional conceptions of autonomy and replace them with a version of autonomy that gives them a voice in decision-making. When the involvement of state fosters a sense of place and a sense of community, while allowing for different voices, we can simultaneously increase autonomy and reduce our ecological and personal vulnerability.This article will focus on a few practical examples of the simultaneous pursuit ofautonomy and vulnerability in environmental regulation. It will be shown that those current applications, and a focus on ecological versions of vulnerability and autonomy in particular, can work together to reduce biodiversity loss and ensure sustained human security

Working Together to Protect Australia in the Age of Pandemics : Managing the Environmental Drivers of Zoonotic Disease Risks

The COVID-19 pandemic has infiltrated every level of social, cultural and political life and has demonstrated the truly devastating effects of ineffective pandemic management systems. Yet, the likelihood of another pandemic occurring in the short to medium term is greater than ever. The drivers of pandemics are not improving. Anthropogenic drivers, including agricultural intensification, land-use changes such as deforestation and urbanisation, wildlife trade and climate change are all contributing to what has been called the ‘era of pandemics’.This report contains key findings and research around pandemic prevention and zoonotic disease risk management

Shared vulnerability as the missing link in wildlife trade governance: A COVID-19 case study

At no time in recent history have we seen the effect of our use and abuse of wildlife in such a direct, immediate and catastrophic way as we have with COVID-19. In reality, a pandemic such as this could have originated anywhere in the world because governance at global, national and local levels does not adequately respond to the vulnerability that people share with their environments. Also, the use and abuse of wildlife is a worldwide phenomenon. Specifically, and despite the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan, China, international and Australian wildlife and environmental laws continue to allow forsimilar wildlife abuses that resulted in the initial disease transmission. What lessons will we learn from this over the long term? This article argues that the fragmented and specialised international and domestic laws regulating the environment need to be better integrated with laws regulating animal and human health and wildlife trade. Human vulnerability is inherently linked to wildlife vulnerability. The article draws on and explains the lens of human–wildlife conflict and suggests that a whole-systems governance approach is needed to address the ways that wildlife conflict such as trade and zoonosesaffect our world

Dingoes and humans were once friends. Separating them could be why they attack

While dingoes exist in many parts of Australia today, those on K’gari are thought to be “special” because of their genetic purity. This means they have not interbred with wild and domestic dogs to the same extent mainland dingoes have, and so are considered the purest bred dingoes in Australia.They are legally protected because of this special status, and because they live in a national park and World Heritage Area. Unfortunately, it is precisely this protection and separation from humans that has driven much of the increase in interaction and aggression towards people

A voice for wild animals: Collaborative governance and human-wildlife conflict

Animal lawyers in Australia and around the world often struggle to find room in law to participate in decision-making and give animals a voice. Collaborative governance is a regulatory mechanism that has the potential to overcome this struggle. This ‘new governance’ is of growing importance in environmental and natural resource management, premised on decentralised decision-making and removal of permanent hierarchies. This article will utilise two case studies to outline the benefits of legally integrated collaborative processes for wild animal welfare, including the allocation of a permanent voice in regulation for animal advocates and the ability to promote internalisation of animal-friendly norms

Pandemic Prevention and One Health

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread death and misery and has had a massive impact on both the Australian and global economies. But the pandemic was not unexpected. In fact, scientists have been warning that we're in danger of entering an era of pandemics for decades. So we need to look at how we can improve our response to pandemics and better still, how we can prevent them. Viruses like the one that causes COVID-19 are zoonotic, meaning they come from animals. Sars, Zika, swine, flu, and Hendra are all zoonotic two. Right now, there are thousands of undiscovered viruses in animals around the world, including some that may be able to infect humans. The rate of zoonotic spillover when animal diseases crossover to humans is increasing. This is mainly caused by human activities like the illegal wildlife trade. Land use changes, intensive agriculture and climate change

Wildlife and international law: can feminism transform our relationship with nature?

Humanity is facing a crisis. We are losing species at an unprecedented rate. The loss of species is both a moral issue and a practical one - human security is at risk as we lose species that perform vital ecosystems services essential to our survival. It is estimated that 58 per cent of all species were lost forever between 1970 and 2012. Human-induced habitat loss and climate change are significant contributing factors, however it is the human relationship with wildlife that is most damaging. Currently, that relationship is defined in law and policy by liberal notions of hierarchy, wherein humans (or certain privileged humans) are at the top of the hierarchy, ecosystems below, and individual animals at the bottom. That hierarchy results in a partisan style of management of wildlife interactions, wherein the wildlife are removed, and human behaviours, attitudes and values are not addressed. This relationship suffers the same dominating factors evident in patriarchal societies, and condemned by feminist theorists. Moreover, these factors are evident in the international law that seeks to protect wildlife and so minimise biodiversity loss. Currently, international law concerning wildlife management and species loss is in its fledgling stage. Wildlife has no blanket protection but instead is subject to the environmental principles encompassed in the Convention on Biological Diversity and a number of other international treaties with narrow scope. Those laws reflect a capitalist rights model, such that wildlife is managed to increase its value to humans (by either increasing its worth or decreasing its harm potential), and to maintain human socio-economic rights and individual interests. There is an ethical imperative to reassess our relationship with wildlife and find a more appropriate response to the vulnerabilities we have created. In this vein, we have been given a unique opportunity to insert the feminine perspective into law and management policy and transform our relationship with wildlife. Conveniently, critical feminist theory is largely concerned with the resolution of conflict and removal of hierarchy. There is a focus on interpersonal and environmental relationships and the care and compassion associated with them. This chapter will explore not only our ability to use feminism to transform international law, but also the use of feminism in international law to transform our relationship with wildlife and the greater environment. In doing so it will explore theories of eco-feminism and vulnerability. The purpose is to show that a sense of balance between gendered perspectives, reason and emotion, protection and compassion, can build a model of coexistence and work towards reducing species loss.</p

Most laws ignore ‘human-wildlife conflict’. This makes us vulnerable to pandemics

Never before have we seen how the human use of wildlife can yield such catastrophe, as we have with COVID-19.The current available evidence indicates COVID-19 was first transmitted in a wildlife market in Wuhan. The disease likely originated in pangolins, bats, or a combination of both and was then transmitted to humans.While various commentators have blamed pangolins, bats, or even our lack of “mastery” of wildlife, the real cause of this pandemic goes deeper – into the laws, cultures and institutions of most countries

Ecological Vulnerability : The Law and Governance of Human-Wildlife Relationships

Humans are responsible for biodiversity loss in many related and sometimes conflicting ways. Human-wildlife conflict, commonly defined as any negative interaction between people and wildlife, is a primary contributor to wildlife extinction and a manifestation of the destructive relationship that people have with wildlife. The author presents this 'wicked' problem in a social and legal context and demonstrates that legal institutions structurally deny human-wildlife conflict, while exacerbating conflict, promoting values consistent with individual autonomy, and ignoring the interconnected vulnerabilities shared by human and non-human species alike. It is the use of international and state law that sheds light on existing conflicts, including dingo conflict on K'Gari-Fraser Island in Australia, elephant conflict in Northern Botswana, and the global wildlife trade contributing to COVID-19. This book presents a critical analysis of human-wildlife conflict and its governance, to guide lawyers, scientists and conservations alike in the transformation of the management of human-wildlife conflict

NELA submission: Senate Inquiry into Australia's Fauna and Flora Extinction Crisis

NELA makes the following submissions: ● Australia’s environmental laws are beyond the need for tinkering. Rather, they require urgent, holistic and transformative change; ● There is a strong case for environmental law reform to happen at the national scale, even though there is also a need for law reform at the state and territory scale to effectively address the issue of species extinctions; and ● Including flora extinctions in this Inquiry broadens the opportunity to take a national stance on the role of native vegetation clearing and historical exemptions of Regional Forest Agreements from national environmental oversight – not just as drivers of biodiversity loss and flora and fauna extinctions, but also as activities that undermine Australia’s capacity to meet its climate targets in a cost-effective and biodiversity-positive way