This chapter asks whether the Sustainable Development Goals have advanced planetary ecological integrity, that is, strengthened policies towards the preservation of global commons at various levels of governance. We start with a brief account of the concept of planetary integrity, before engaging in a theoretical debate about the potential role of the Sustainable Development Goals in advancing planetary integrity, drawing on a literature survey. Finally, we assess the transformative potential of the goals for planetary integrity by focusing on governance interventions at international, regional, local and transnational levels. Our research shows that while the Sustainable Development Goals have raised concern about environmental protection, they do not motivate transformative change towards planetary integrity. Specifically, the literature raises doubts about the actual steering effects of the goals owing to their poor additionality with respect to existing environmental agreements, their inherent contradictions, and their weak ambition when it comes to planetary integrity.

Introduction

Property is both a concept and a legal institution. A lot of what is explored in this book concerns the latter – property as invoked in law and the property that relates to relations in Australian society. But in order to understand what is happening in property law it is necessary to understand a bit about the concept of property. Indeed, the two dimensions of property are inseparable and the concept is continually informing, justifying and reinforcing the institution.

This chapter contains two parts. The first presents a legal–philosophical analysis into the question: what is property? Here, property is described as an indeterminate concept that escapes ridged or fixed definition. Focusing predominately on real property, the part contends that property is about things; legal rights; evolves with respect to social relationships; and has a spatial dimension.

Following this, it is noted that property can be organised in three distinct ways: public property, common property and private property. While all societies promote a mixed property system, the most important in Western society is private property. However, despite the ubiquity of private property, it is rare for lawyers to consider the extra-legal or moral justifications for our possessions. For this reason, the second part of the chapter outlines four prominent justifications for private property. Those justifications relate to property derived from labour; human development and flourishing; economic efficiency; and natural or environmental use. While each has merits, this chapter also seeks to problematise and unsettle the theoretical basis for each justification.

What is property?

Introduction

In Australian universities, property law is often taught in a way that excludes Indigenous perspectives of the land. This exclusion can even occur during weeks dedicated to native title. For this reason, it is important to stress that the law of native title is not the same thing as Indigenous land law or the law that was practised by Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation in 1788. Rather, native title is a peculiar body of Western jurisprudence that was first articulated in Australia by seven non-indigenous High Court judges in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (‘Mabo (No 2)’) and subsequently refined by the federal government in the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) and the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (Cth). The linguistic anthropologist Peter Sutton makes this point as follows:

One of the key organising ideas in this chapter is the tension between traditional land law and native title. This tension is examined through accounts of traditional law, drawing on both Indigenous accounts and anthropological evidence. Following this, is a description of the English law in Australia and some of the early attempts in Australian law to recognise the prior ownership of Aboriginal people. This narrative highlights the early land rights legislation and the social and political context that gave rise to the recognition of common law native title Mabo (No 2). After considering some of the reactions to Mabo (No 2), the chapter looks at the way native title was defined in the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) and how the Act represents a further movement away from traditional law and provides successful claimants with very limited rights.

The next issue examined is whether native title has equal or lesser status to Western property rights. This discussion encompasses a close look at pastoral leases and the decision in Wik Peoples v Queensland.

ABSTRACT

In the past, single-population approaches have dominated ecology and evolutionary biology. However, populations are not isolated either in time or space, but are connected by among-population processes such as migration and gene flow. While this concept is not new, until recently, there have been relatively few studies that have explicitly investigated the effects of spatial structure on demographic and genetic processes in the context of conservation. The metapopulation framework explicitly recognises and provides a conceptual tool for dealing with the interactions of within- (e.g. birth, death, competition) and among-population processes (e.g. dispersal, gene flow, colonisation and extinction). The ever-growing diversity of empirical and theoretical studies that demonstrate the importance of spatial structure in determining ecological and evolutionary trajectories also indicates that long-term conservation programmes need to focus on regional rather than local within-population persistence. In this regard, it is important to realise that ultimately all populations are ephemeral, and therefore colonisation processes must also be preserved. Clearly, not all species whose populations have undergone fragmentation fit the definition of a metapopulation. Nevertheless, a metapopulation approach to conservation biology is likely to provide a useful tool for developing management strategies as it addresses genetic, species and community effects of fragmentation in a single framework, thereby making explicit questions regarding extinction, population connectedness, species behavioural patterns and the survival of coevolved systems. In essence, a metapopulation perspective ensures a processoriented, scale-appropriate approach to conservation that focuses attention on among-population processes critical for persistence of many natural systems.

THEMETAPOPULATION PARADIGM: AN INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, ecological studies of natural systems have been dominated by a focus on single populations, or several populations sampled at a single point in time.