Legal Issues arising from the Principle of Sustainable Development: Australia, Canada and New Zealand

Abstract

Editor's Note: This is designed as the first of a series of articles which, we hope, will treat from different national standpoints the issues, and in particular the legal issues, posed for the energy and natural resource industries by the principle of sustainable development. Not only has the principle been embraced with different degrees of enthusiasm by different national governments; its impact and implementation may vary considerably according to the nature of the legal and political structure in different countries, and of their situation in terms of energy production and use. In this first article, the authors look at three countries whose government and legal systems stand firmly in the Anglo Saxon tradition, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, of which the first two are resource rich countries with a federal structure, while the third presents the case of a unitary regime without much present resource export capability. Future articles in this series will, we hope, look at the situation in developing countries (India), in the highly developed but resource-poor economies of Europe, and in the United States, at once a voracious consumer and prolific producer of energy and natural resources. At the conclusion of the series we hope to publish a comparative review by Professor Hunt, with commentary by an energy law practitioner.