The importance of ecological restoration is now firmly embedded in international legal frameworks. The declaration of the United Nations Decade on Restoration (UN General Assembly 2019) placed restoration at the forefront of international discussions, and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework saw almost 200 countries agree to have at least 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030 (Convention on Biological Diversity 2022).
As part of National Environmental Science Project Marine and Coastal Hub’s Project 3.7, CPF's Dr Nicole Shumway, UQ's Professor Justine Bell-James and colleagues, did a deep dive into permitting frameworks in four Australian states for two project types. This study presents the results of an analysis of selected legal frameworks for marine and coastal restoration in Australia to demonstrate how small-scale, targeted law reform can be utilised to find levers within existing legislative frameworks to remove some of the barriers to implementing ecological restoration.
