UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Nature positive? Commodification, speciesism, abjection in Australia’s environmental law reform

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1111/1745-5871.70014

Authors

Jane Palmer · Jennifer Carter

Reported year

2025

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:16:39.541995+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:16:39.541995+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

University of Southern Queensland · University of the Sunshine Coast

Documentary abstract — original language

Abstract Proposed “nature positive” revisions to the Australian Government’s environmental legislation would further entrench an anthropocentric conception of nature as a commodity able to be metricised, traded, and/or replaced. The proposed legislation also manifests a form of speciesism, focusing on threatened species at the expense of other animals whose habitat would continue to be destroyed, and fails to account for future likely changes in the survivability of various species. Moreover, it takes little account of the suffering of individual animals nor the agential role of animals, plants, rocks, and mountains in more‐than‐human world‐making, thus placing those nonhumans in abjection—that is, accorded no moral considerability. Using the Australian case to anchor our discussion, we conclude that truly “nature positive” approaches to the environment require a shift in emphasis from principally enabling “sustainable” exploitation of resources by humans, toward a focus on sustaining the multitude of context‐specific, intensely relational networks of humans‐other‐than‐humans. These relations engender a responsibility on the part of humans, when intervening through legislation, policy or practice, to pay deep attention to the specifics of nonhuman standpoints, subjectivities and relations with place—ground truthing—so that greater knowledge and critical, less anthropocentric thinking can underpin more ethical regulatory frameworks.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W4410575491

DOI

10.1111/1745-5871.70014

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

article

Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources

AU

Natural entities mentioned

Mountain · Species

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.70014
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W4410575491

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w1587291259 · CITES
• openalex:w1882877695 · CITES
• openalex:w1936341065 · CITES
• openalex:w1992215317 · CITES
• openalex:w2007574830 · CITES
• openalex:w2042389345 · CITES
• openalex:w2052165330 · CITES
• openalex:w2063380764 · CITES
• openalex:w2081952789 · CITES
• openalex:w2092418241 · CITES
• openalex:w2103970770 · CITES
• openalex:w2117101942 · CITES
• openalex:w2132441771 · CITES
• openalex:w2139992037 · CITES
• openalex:w2207809855 · CITES
• openalex:w2315638584 · CITES
• openalex:w2517985917 · CITES
• openalex:w2568527087 · CITES
• openalex:w2598701004 · CITES
• openalex:w2756363726 · CITES

0 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.