IILAH Reading Group 2023: Ocean, Climate and the Law

Reading Group 2023
Sittwe harbor (Bay of Bengal), Rakhine State, Myanmar, Lauren Nishimura (2015)

The global ocean is in a state of emergency. The United Nations and other bodies are currently seeking advice from international courts and tribunals about the obligations of states to protect the climate system. This year, the IILAH reading group will explore overlapping social, scientific and legal problems relating to climate change, fisheries, trade, seabed mining, and marine biodiversity. It will explore whether systemic integration is possible and even useful.

The reading group will be co-convened in Semester 2, 2023 by Professor Margaret Young and Dr Lauren Nishimura. If you do not have a University of Melbourne login but would like to join a session, please email Lauren Nishimura for a copy of the readings. Meetings will be held in-person, at Melbourne Law School. Sessions will commence Wednesday 23 August 2023, 1 – 2pm, with fortnightly Wednesday meetings to follow.

Semester 2

Wednesday 23 August 2023
Room 920

David Freestone and Millicent McCreath, ‘Climate Change, the Anthropocene and Ocean Law: Mapping the Issues’, in Jan McDonald, Jeffrey McGee and Richard Barnes (eds), Research Handbook on Climate Change, Oceans and Coasts (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020) 49-80

Available through the library here.

Wednesday 6 September 2023
Room 920

Justin Alger, ‘The Political Economy of Protected Area Designations: Commercial Interests in Conservation Policy’ (2023) 23 Global Environmental Politics 54-7

Available through the library here.

Wednesday 20 September 2023
Room 920

International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), Request for an Advisory Opinion Submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (Case No 31), Written Statement of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) – World Commission on International Law, Ocean Law Specialist Group (13 June 2023) 15-66

Available online here.

For background to the ITLOS Advisory Opinion proceedings, please see here and here.

For related work, see ILC, Draft guidelines on the protection of the atmosphere (2021) pp 39-46.

Wednesday 4 October 2023
Room 920

Margaret A Young, ‘Fisheries’ in Daniel Bethlehem and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Trade Law (2nd edition) (Oxford University Press 2022) 817-837

Available through the library here.

Wednesday 18 October 2023
Room 920

Vito De Lucia, ‘Regime Interaction through Concepts: The BBNJ Process as a Critical Juncture in the Relation between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Law of the Sea’ in Nele Matz-Lück, Øystein Jensen and Elise Johansen (eds), The Law of the Sea: Normative Context and Interactions with other Legal Regimes (Routledge 2022) 4

Available through the library here.

Wednesday 1 November 2023
Room 920

Surabhi Ranganathan, ‘Decolonization and International Law: Putting the Ocean on the Map’ (2020) 23 Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international 161-183

Available via Open Access here

Tiffany Morrison et al, ‘Radical interventions for climate-impacted ecosystems’ (2020) 12 Nature Climate Change 1100-1106

Available via Open Access here.