Environment regulation, management and policy
Phone: +61 (0)2 6125 3397
Fax: + 61 (0)2 6125 0746
E-mail: Neil.Gunningham@anu.edu.au

Neil Gunningham has degrees in law and criminology from Sheffield University, UK, is a Barrister and Solicitor (ACT) and holds a PhD from ANU. Although initially trained in law, his subsequent post-graduate work was in interdisciplinary social science, and for the last ten years he has applied that training principally in the area of environment, with a focus on regulation and governance. He joined the Fenner School (formerly SRES) in January 2002. Previously he was Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Environmental Law at ANU.

Professional Activities

My research and teaching interests focus on environmental regulation, governance and policy. One strand of my research has been to identify the contribution that broader, innovative forms of regulation can make to environmental law. This includes the potential roles of community participation, information based strategies, environmental partnerships and various forms of co-regulation. I have also sought to explain the interrelation between such mechanisms; and to identify the comparative advantage of different instrument combinations in different contexts. A second strand examines a far reaching alternative to traditional natural resource management strategies: the New Collaborative Environmental Governance. I and my collaborators aim to assess and critique the new governance and to develop principles enabling its mobilization in an effective and democratically acceptable manner. A third strand focuses on climate change governance, examining how individual states and key actors within them, international institutions and key non-state actors, perceive the challenges for climate change governance and their negotiating possibilities and options. I and my colleagues aim to gain a deeper understanding of the key obstacles to co-operation between states and means to overcome them. This will enable us to develop strategies that will increase levels of cooperation and in doing so, to make a contribution to climate change policy analysis and action.

I am on the editorial Board of the international journals Law and Policy and Regulation and Governance, an editor of the Environmental and Planning Law Journal, a regular keynote speaker at international conferences, a past consultant to the OECD, UNEP and other international organizations and hold a number of major research grants.

Academic Highlights

Fulbright Senior Scholar, University of California, Berkeley. Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences.

Selected Publications

Books:

Gunningham, N Kagan R and Thornton, D 2003. Shades of Green: Business, Regulation and Environment, Stanford University Press, USA.

Gunningham, N and Sinclair D 2002. Leaders and Laggards: Next Generation Environmental Regulation, Greenleaf, UK.

Gunningham, N. and Grabosky, P. 1998. Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental Regulation, Oxford University Press, UK.

Articles:

Motivating Management: Corporate Compliance in Environmental Protection (with D Thornton and R Kagan) Law and Policy, Vol 27 No 2, April 2005; 89-316;

Corporate Environmental Responsibility: Law and the Limits of Voluntarism: in McBarnett, D, Voicelescu, A and Campbell T The New Corporate Accountability, Cambridge UP 2007.