The theme of the 2022 Colloquium is ‘Recovery • Resilience • Regeneration: Re-imagining Environmental Law’. This theme invites participants to imagine new ecological possibilities, modes of operation and action, and governance structures; and in that process to help environmental law norms and governance mechanisms to develop and respond more effectively to an increasingly uncertain future. While the protection and conservation of nature has traditionally been at the forefront of environmental law developments, there is an increasing recognition that our efforts are not sufficiently responsive to emerging threats and current consumption patterns. The tendency to resign ourselves to inaction may have more to do with how we imagine alternative possibilities and modes of action rather than a failure to work within current institutions and structures.

For this conference, we have drawn particularly on the concepts of recovery, resilience and regeneration as prompts for re-imagining new possibilities for environmental law. In an era of unpredictable and unstable environmental change, how can environmental law and governance evolve to keep pace with ecological realities? What drivers and intellectual frameworks exist or need to be created to facilitate a collective re-imagining? Do certain specific problems and challenges require that law and governance innovations are imagined in more equitable and just ways?

We anticipate that this theme will invite intellectually rich contributions from across the global membership of the Academy, including developed and developing nations. Our hope is also to draw from a wider range of academics interested in environmental issues and encourage some cross-disciplinary connections to be made amongst environmentally concerned researchers. 

We welcome submissions focused on the broad theme of the Colloquium, as well as on any other topics relevant to environmental law.