Objectives:
This course examines the relationship between corporate environmental strategy and competitive advantage. It considers how business responds to the pressures of regulation, markets, financial institutions, consumers and NGOs, and how it can best design and implement proactive strategies that meet both short-term legal requirements and the long-term goal of sustainable business practice. The course complements Laws 8111, examining environmental strategy from a business perspective and its interactions with civil society and public and regulatory policy.

Content:
Environmental concerns have a powerful (but within Australia, little understood) impact on business success. To maintain their competitive advantage, corporate managers must stay ahead of the curve, shifting their focus from environmental management to environmental strategy. This course is concerned with how business can and should respond to environmental challenges. New technologies, untapped markets and regulatory innovations all present business opportunities to be seized by companies with foresight. The question is how to turn environment to a strategic advantage. The course explores the effects of environmentalism on corporate management, examining recent thinking on the role of environment in business, how environmental forces are driving change, how best to respond to external pressures, and how business managers can think about environmental issues in a strategic way. In particular, how can business can best respond to the pressures of regulation, markets, financial institutions, consumers and NGOs? The course will be of particular value to business managers at all levels, to government officials, policymakers and regulators, to corporate environmental lawyers, to environment consultants, NGOs and to a variety of other environmental stakeholders.

A participant who has successfully completed this course should be able:

• to explain the relationship between legal underpinnings, economic incentives, organisational structure, non-legal policy tools and decision-making processes;
• to describe and analyse key policy tools and processes relevant to environmental management and performance in the private sector; and
• to explore the role of organisational issues and key business strategies for engaging with environmental issues.
• To describe the importance to reputation-sensitive business of social licence and the inter-relationship between business and civil society, including business-NGO partnerships.

Students must rely on the Approved Assessment which will be posted to the course homepage on the ANU Law website, prior to the commencement of the course.

26 Contact Hours (Intensive Delivery)

Click here for the 2010 timetable

NOTE: This course will be offered in Melbourne in 2010, students who wish to enrol require a permission code which can be obtained from pgadmin.law@anu.edu.au

LAWS8189 Fundamentals of Environmental Law (non-lawyers)