Among participants at the ‘Wild Law’ conference are Profe...

Second Australian Conference on Wild Law and Earth Jurisprudence

The Second Australian Conference on Wild Law and Earth Jurisprudence was conducted at the University of Wollongong and the Sandon Point Aboriginal Tent Embassy from 22-25 July.

Alessandro Pelizzon, who has been involved in Indigenous rights over the past 15 years and is finishing his PhD at UOW on Native Title and Indigenous Sovereignty said the conference focused on questions such as:

• Is it possible to develop a new environmental awareness and embed it into current environmental law by comparing different cultural models, some of which have been structured around sustainable practices of steady-state economies for thousands of years?

• Is it possible to do so while advancing an economic discourse that combines sound economic practices and sustainable ethical approaches?

The conference titlewas “Keeping the Fire: Cultural Integrity, Wild Law and Economic Development”.

Among guests at the conference were the founder of the Wild Law Movement, Cormac Cullinan (participating via weblink) speaking on the “World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth” recently held in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Other participants included Professor Deborah Bird Rose (Macquarie University), John Seed (founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre), Daniel Zapata (founding member of Peabody Watch, Arizona), Professor Greta Bird (Southern Cross University), Professor Yih-ren Lin (Department of Human Geography, Providence University, Taiwan), Nequo Soqluman (Kalibuan community, Nantou Country, Taiwan), Ramsay Taum (founder of Lei of the Pacific, Hawaii) and Professor Freya Mathews LaTrobe University).

The conference featured the official launch of the permanent “Australian Network on Wild Law and Earth Jurisprudence”.

The conference was organised by Earth Laws – International Research Network on Earth Jurisprudence and Legan Ontologies in conjunction with the Legal Intersections Research Centre and the Faculty of Law at UOW, the Sandon Point Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the World Movement of the Schools of Ethics and Economics, the organisers of the First Australian Conference on Wild Law and Earth Jurisprudence and the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University.

See here for further information.