The Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law is a group of Australia's leading resources lawyers and it was set up in the 1990s. Western Australia is a global centre for the mining and petroleum industry. So for example, it's the leading world producer of iron ore and a leading producer of natural gas.
So it was quite natural for the Law School to have an interest in this area and for it to form a grouping of leading lawyers to maintain this expertise in this area. I'm a co-director of the Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law and my main area of expertise is climate change law. So within climate change my speciality is climate change displacement and it's very clear that over the next few decades climate change displacement with become both a legal and policy problem.
We see people being displaced now, mostly in the pacific island states but increasingly larger states will also be affected. There are no policy or legal mechanisms in place at the moment and so much of my research is focused on developing mechanisms to deal with displacement and how you can both prevent it and also deal with it once it's happened. So I'm a member of the Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law and my real focus is on natural resources and environmental law.
Natural resources mostly in the ocean such as fish and other marine resources and also environmental law more broadly but particularly ocean wildlife. I've lead a project for a number of years going back to 2010, working on how to balance shark conversation with the management of shark fisheries. Some sharks we catch and eat as important and valuable economic commercial species other sharks are conserved for their conservation value but increasingly there is attention being drawn to the value we can gain from sharks in non-consumptive ways in particular through tourism; diving and exploring sharks in their natural environment which can grow economic opportunities in many small island states.
One of the parts of the Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law that I really enjoy is working collectively with other colleagues and scholars and students who are working on different aspects of natural resources, both extraction and conservation and I play a small part in that. It is important I think to see the centre's work as a collaborative exercise we don't look at legal issues in a vacuum it is very important that they are relevant to the actual problems and policy issues faced by government and industry so we try to engage with those groups not only in formal seminars but in discussion groups but also bringing them into the Law School to teach on our workshops. And our aim is to make our research as current and practical as possible but also our teaching so we're really trying to deal with current issues and fact situations.
Please feel free to get in touch with the centre, we'd very much like to hear from you and any proposals you may have.
