LAWS20035  Environmental Regulation in the Asia Pacific Region

This course combines an overview of the underlying principles and institutional framework of Public International Law (now recognised as being a global public good) in the context of the explosion of environmental law-related treaties, instruments and agreements in the latter part of the 20th century, with a survey and critical appraisal of environmental law and management systems in selected countries of the Asia-Pacific region. The extent to which environmental regulation in the increasingly global economy explicitly incorporates and advances individual human rights and collective welfare remains controversial. However, the view advocated in this course is that growing world trade and economic development in the Asia-Pacific region in particular, is not antithetical to the security and enhancement of individual and collective welfare (including human rights). A comparative survey of the environmental laws and management systems in selected countries in the region however, reveals a wide diversity in their scope, degree of integration, coherence, enforcement and effectiveness.