Contemporary issue: conflict between the demand for resources and global environmental protection: HSC Legal Studies

What this dot point is asking

Legal responses to conflict between the demand for resources and global environmental protection is the second contemporary issue that must be studied. You must identify and investigate the issue and evaluate the effectiveness of legal and non-legal responses, although the issue's own wording puts the focus on legal responses.

NESA's feedback on 2024 Question 26(b) is the best guide: better responses showed a clear relationship between the demand for resources and environmental protection, explained the environmental issues that resource demand causes, and used a wide range of legal responses with evidence (for example the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, the Climate Change Act 2022 (Cth) and the courts). Vague descriptions were marked down. The best way to meet that standard is to build three or four detailed case studies, each showing the conflict, the legal response and its outcome.

The answer

Identifying the conflict

Demand for resources comes from population growth, rising living standards and the energy transition itself. Coal, oil and gas still supply most of the world's energy; minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt are needed for batteries and renewable energy; forests, fisheries and water are used for food and industry.

The conflict has three layers:

1. Environmental. Extraction and use produce greenhouse gas emissions, habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, water depletion and pollution.
2. Between states. A state gains the economic benefit (royalties, jobs, exports) while the environmental cost is global. Developing states argue they have a right to use their resources to develop, as rich states did.
3. Between generations. Resources used now are not available later, and the harm (such as warming) persists for centuries.

Why the law struggles. International law recognises permanent sovereignty over natural resources (UNGA resolution 1803, 1962). Stockholm Principle 21 and Rio Principle 2 add a responsibility not to damage other states' environments, and ESD requires economic and environmental considerations to be integrated. But the law mostly leaves the decision whether to exploit a resource to the state, and regulates how.

Case study 1: fossil fuels and climate change

The conflict

Australia is one of the world's largest exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas, and fossil fuel exports contribute significantly to government revenue and regional employment. The emissions from burning exported fuel (scope 3 emissions) are counted in the importing country's inventory, not Australia's.

International legal responses

The Paris Agreement commits parties to NDCs consistent with well below 2°C, and the COP28 global stocktake (2023) called for "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems". Neither expressly limits production. The ICJ advisory opinion (23 July 2025) went further than any previous authority: a state's failure to protect the climate system, "including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies", may constitute an internationally wrongful act. It is not binding, but it strengthens arguments in domestic courts and negotiations.

Domestic legal responses

• Targets and caps. The Climate Change Act 2022 (Cth) (43 per cent by 2030; net zero by 2050) and the reformed Safeguard Mechanism (baselines for the largest emitters falling 4.9 per cent a year to 2030) apply to domestic emissions, including from gas processing, but not to emissions from exported fuel.
• Project approvals. The EPBC Act requires approval for actions significantly affecting matters of national environmental significance, but there is no climate trigger. On 12 September 2025, Environment Minister Murray Watt gave final approval to extend Woodside's North West Shelf gas project, one of Australia's largest, to 2070, with 48 conditions including emission reduction requirements and measures to protect the nearby Murujuga rock art, which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in July 2025. In October 2025 the Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of Australian Rock Art filed separate Federal Court challenges, the ACF arguing that the Minister wrongly weighed economic benefits and failed to properly consider climate change effects. As at September 2026 the Federal Court had not yet decided them.
• Courts. Results depend on the court and the statute:
  • Gloucester Resources v Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7 (Rocky Hill). Preston CJ refused an open-cut coal mine near Gloucester, finding that its greenhouse gas emissions, together with its visual and social impacts, meant it was "in the wrong place at the wrong time". It was the first Australian case to refuse a coal mine partly on climate grounds.
  • Waratah Coal v Youth Verdict (Queensland Land Court, 2022) recommended refusing Clive Palmer's Galilee Basin coal project, partly because of the human rights impact of its emissions.
  • Environment Council of Central Queensland v Minister for the Environment and Water [2024] FCAFC 56 (Living Wonders). The Full Federal Court held that the Minister was not required to treat the climate harm from burning coal from two NSW mine expansions as an impact on matters of national environmental significance; the High Court refused special leave in August 2024.

Evaluation. Legal responses have raised the cost and scrutiny of new fossil fuel projects and set declining limits on domestic industrial emissions, but they have not resolved the conflict: the approval decision remains a discretionary balance in which economic benefits often prevail, and emissions from exports fall outside Australia's targets. The ICJ opinion and the pending North West Shelf challenges make this a live question in 2026.

Case study 2: whaling

The conflict

Whale meat is a food resource with cultural significance in some states; whales are also a migratory, shared resource that was hunted close to extinction.

Legal responses

The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (1946) set up the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling from the 1985-86 season. Japan continued taking whales in the Southern Ocean under the Convention's scientific research exception. Australia, supported by New Zealand, brought Whaling in the Antarctic to the ICJ, which held on 31 March 2014 that Japan's JARPA II permits were not "for purposes of scientific research" and must be revoked.

Outcome

Japan ended JARPA II but launched a new program in 2015, and in 2019 withdrew from the IWC to resume commercial whaling in its own waters, while stopping its Antarctic hunt. The law therefore achieved a partial environmental outcome (the end of Southern Ocean whaling) but showed that a state can escape a regime by leaving it.

Case study 3: deep-sea mining

The conflict

The deep seabed holds polymetallic nodules rich in nickel, cobalt and manganese, minerals in demand for batteries. Scientists warn that mining could cause irreversible damage to little-understood ecosystems.

Legal responses

Under UNCLOS Part XI, the seabed beyond national jurisdiction (the Area) and its resources are the common heritage of mankind (art 136), managed by the International Seabed Authority. The ISA has issued exploration contracts but has not finalised a mining code for commercial exploitation, and dozens of states support a precautionary pause or moratorium. In 2025 the United States, which is not a party to UNCLOS, began a unilateral path: an executive order in April 2025 directed its agencies to expedite permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act 1980, and in 2026 its regulator advanced an application by a company seeking to mine the Pacific seabed.

Evaluation

Precaution has so far delayed commercial mining under international law, but the unilateral US path shows how resource demand and sovereignty can bypass a multilateral regime.

Case study 4: fisheries

The conflict

Overfishing is driven by demand for seafood and supported by government subsidies that keep excess fishing fleets at sea.

Legal responses

UNCLOS and the UN Fish Stocks Agreement (1995) require conservation of fish stocks, and regional fisheries bodies set catch limits. The WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, adopted in 2022, entered into force on 15 September 2025 after two-thirds of WTO members accepted it. It prohibits subsidies to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, to fishing overfished stocks without rebuilding measures, and to unregulated high seas fishing. It is the first WTO agreement focused on environmental sustainability.

Evaluation

It uses trade law, which has a binding dispute settlement system, to limit a driver of resource overuse, but it does not yet cover the broader subsidies that cause overcapacity; negotiations on those continue.

Case study 5: water in the Murray-Darling Basin

The conflict

Irrigated agriculture depends on the Murray-Darling river system, while over-extraction has damaged wetlands (several listed under the Ramsar Convention), fish populations and downstream communities. The mass fish deaths at Menindee in 2019 and 2023 drew national attention.

Legal responses

The Water Act 2007 (Cth), supported by referrals of power from the basin states and relying in part on the external affairs power to implement Ramsar and the CBD, established the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (2012), which sets sustainable diversion limits. The Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Act 2023 (Cth) extended the deadline for recovering an additional 450 gigalitres of environmental water to 2027 and lifted the cap on water buybacks.

Evaluation

The Plan shows cooperative federalism can reallocate a resource from use to protection, but targets have repeatedly been delayed and conflict between irrigators and environmental interests continues.

Non-legal responses

• NGOs campaign and litigate: the ACF's North West Shelf challenge; the Living Wonders cases; campaigns against new coal and gas.
• Media coverage of fish kills, coral bleaching and rock art damage shapes public opinion.
• Markets and investors are withdrawing finance from coal, and companies face pressure to disclose climate risks (mandatory climate-related financial reporting for large entities from 2025).
• Indigenous traditional owners hold rights and interests in many resource areas; their consent and cultural heritage are increasingly central (Murujuga).

Evaluating legal responses

Judgement. Legal responses address the conflict between resource demand and environmental protection to a limited extent. They are good at managing how resources are extracted, through assessment, conditions, quotas and caps, and courts sometimes refuse the worst projects (Rocky Hill). They are weak at deciding whether resources should be extracted at all, because sovereignty over resources, discretionary approvals and economic dependence (Australia's gas and coal exports) keep that decision political. The ICJ's 2025 opinion, the pending North West Shelf challenges and the new National Environmental Protection Agency may shift that balance, but in 2026 demand for resources still usually wins.

In one sentence

Legal responses manage the conflict between resource demand and environmental protection through sovereignty with responsibility, ESD, approvals with conditions and targeted treaties, and they have succeeded at the margins (Rocky Hill, the whaling judgment, the WTO fisheries agreement), but because the decision to exploit resources remains a sovereign and discretionary one, projects such as the North West Shelf extension to 2070 still go ahead.

Try this

Q1. Outline the conflict between the demand for resources and global environmental protection. (3 marks)

• What the marker wants. Resource demand, environmental cost, and why costs and benefits fall on different states or generations, with an example.

Q2. Explain the role of courts in resolving conflict over fossil fuel projects in Australia. (6 marks)

• What the marker wants. Rocky Hill, Living Wonders and Waratah Coal, the difference between merits and judicial review, and a limitation.

Q3. To what extent are legal responses effective in addressing conflict over natural resources? (15 marks)

• What the marker wants. At least two detailed case studies, international and domestic law, and a sustained judgement.