Established in 1983, Macquarie University’s Centre for Environmental Law (CEL) is Australia’s longest-running environmental law centre, celebrating 40 years of transformative change across law reform, research and education.
Founded by Professor Ben Boer and Professor Donna Craig, CEL came to fruition at a time when environmental issues were at the forefront of community concerns. Professors Boer and Craig focused on small group teaching in environmental law as part of Macquarie’s innovative legal education programme, promoting environmental law offerings across the university, especially in the (then) Graduate School of the Environment. In addition to teaching in environmental law, the Centre began to engage in pioneering legal research and reform in First Nations land rights, self-determination, treaty making, sustainable development law, human rights and environmental law, alternative dispute resolution and heritage law.
Over the last 40 years, the Centre has maintained a strong interdisciplinary education focus across both undergraduate and postgraduate offerings while strengthening its focus on research excellence. With expertise across sustainable development, business and human rights, environmental law, climate change, ecocide, food systems, ocean governance and biodiversity law, CEL conducts cutting-edge research to address the triple planetary crisis: environmental pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss.
The CEL has celebrated many achievements over the decades including a plethora of research outputs and funding successes, international partnerships and collaborations, capacity-building projects including with the government of Bangladesh which resulted in the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals within Bangladesh, a growing HDR community and student volunteer program, significant member expansion, an annual flagship lecture and a number of additional events.
“Since its inception in 1983, CEL has been at the forefront of the environmental law movement not only in Australia but also in the Asia Pacific region. For four decades now, we have conducted path-breaking research, shaped environmental law and policy, fostered collaborations, built the capacity of decision makers in the Global South and nurtured the next generation of researchers,” says Professor Surya Deva, Director of CEL.
As it looks to the future, CEL will continue to provide a platform to facilitate cutting-edge research to grapple with the triple planetary crisis and strengthen collaborations with partners across Asia Pacific. The CEL recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific to conduct research, organise events and build capacity in the areas of climate change, human rights and sustainable development.
CEL marked its 40th anniversary with an international conference on 1-2 November 2023, bringing together leading scholars and practitioners to discuss pathways to just transitions.