Abstract

The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio Conference) heralded a new era of environmental law, with its purpose to formulate strategies to achieve sustainable development worldwide, recognising the interconnectedness of all systems on earth, and the need to protect them. The conference instruments recognise that the sustainability of the earth depends on national responses that are crafted with the fullest possible extent of public participation. Recent Australian policy for managing natural resources has sought to reflect the goals of sustainable development as enunciated by the Rio Conference and this article looks at two key features of this policy: the establishment of government/community partnerships to achieve ecologically sustainable natural resource management; and the numerous proposals by the Commonwealth and New South Wales governments that market-based instruments be used to address natural resource degradation.