Climate Change, Coastal Erosion and Local Government in New South Wales, Australia: Old and New Law and Old Bar
RIS ID
117461
Abstract
Concern, if not apprehension, over global sea level rise and coastal erosion is scarcely recent. Durrant (2010) emphasises a series of reports from the Inter-national Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC's fifth report was issued in 2014, including Church et al.'s (2013) chapter entitled "Sea Level Change". This gives firsthand detail on "[o]cean thermal expansion and glacier melting" as the "dominant contributors to 20th century global mean sea level rise" (ibid.: 1139). There is also Australia's key Garnaut Climate Change report (2008), which emphasises the particular environmental vulnerability of Australia (see also Macintosh 2009; Durrant 2010). Despite professional divergence regarding the extent and time lines of coastal damage, there is widespread acceptance of increasing sea levels leading to the destruction of public and private land.
Publication Details
A. H. Kelly & J. Brown, 'Climate Change, Coastal Erosion and Local Government in New South Wales, Australia: Old and New Law and Old Bar' in F. Van Straalen, T. Hartmann & J. Sheehan(eds), Property Rights and Climate Change Land use under changing environmental conditions (2017) 149-164.