Marine and coastal restoration projects need multiple permits from a range of government agencies spanning local, state and federal levels (Bell-James et al, 2025). The time, cost, and delay associated with this process has been well-documented, and has led to calls for law reform to streamline legal permitting processes (Shumway et al, 2021; Bell-James et al, 2023).
Because of how the legal permitting system is structured, projects have to be assessed by government agencies with mandates such as road or maritime safety, water and electricity infrastructure provision, and biosecurity. Our earlier research hypothesised that, the further a regulator’s primary mandate is removed from environmental protection, the more risk averse the regulator is likely to be – resulting in potential permit refusal, or onerous conditions including in perpetuity liability (Bell-James et al, 2023). In turn, this has the ability to undermine ambitious global and national restoration goals.
Here we present the findings from an empirical study conducted as part of the National Environmental Science Program project ‘De-risking nature repair activities in Australian marine and coastal ecosystems’. We interviewed regulators from a range of government agencies to better understand and quantity their perceptions of risk, which is a necessary precursor to environmental law reform. In short, our study revealed that the better equipped regulators are with knowledge as to how to mitigate restoration risk, the more likely they are to perceive projects as less risky.
Finally, this presentation will outline how this work is informing an ARC Discovery Project commencing in July 2026 titled 'Predicting the benefits of legal reform for marine and coastal restoration'.
References:
Justine Bell-James, Phillipa McCormack, Nicole Shumway, Alexandra Wawryk, ‘Opportunities for targeted, small-scale reform in marine and coastal restoration’ (2025) Restoration Ecology e70147
Justine Bell-James, Rose Foster, Nicole Shumway, ‘The permitting process for marine and coastal restoration: a significant barrier to achieving global restoration targets?’ (2023) 5 Conservation Science and Practice e 13050
Nicole Shumway, Justine Bell-James, James A Fitzsimons, Rose Foster, Chris Gillies and Catherine E Lovelock, ‘Policy solutions to facilitate restoration in coastal marine environments’ (2021) 134 Marine Policy 104789