Does environmental law work?

Many laws exist to protect our environment but research into the effectiveness of these laws is rare. The complexity of the environment and the laws themselves makes evaluating the effectiveness of an environmental legal system a Herculean, multi-disciplinary task requiring the integration of environmental science and law. Without a clear conceptual and analytical framework this task is practically impossible and the communication of any results of such research for policy improvement is severely hampered. This book aims to address these issues with particular emphasis to evaluating the effectiveness of the response to climate change, the most complex and difficult environmental issue currently faced by society. It uses the pressure-state-response method of State of the Environment Reporting, originally developed by the OECD and now widely used worldwide, to evaluate the effectiveness of laws protecting the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. This book will be of particular interest to policy-makers and others interested in creating and implementing effective environmental laws.