Degrees Held
David holds degrees of LLB Lond, LLM Col, DipCrim Camb, Barrister NSW

Publications on RIS

David Farrier is Professor of Law and a member of the Institute for Conservation Biology and Law at the University of Wollongong. He has previously taught law in universities in England, Africa and Australia. In 2002, he was made a lifetime Honorary fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia for his work on the Environmental Law Handbook; Planning and Land Use in New South Wales, now in its 4th edition.

He teaches and researches in the areas of environmental law, natural resources law and criminal law. He is joint author (with D Brown, S Egger and L McNamara) of Criminal Laws (4th ed., 2006) and co-editor (with P Stein) of the 4th edition of the Environmental Law Handbook: Planning and Land Use in New South Wales (2006).

He has carried out research, supported by ARD Discovery Grants on:

• The implementation of Australia's International Obligations Relating to Nature Conservation (1996-8, with Professor Martin Tsamenyi) and
• Intersections between Science and Law: the Implementation of Threatened Species Legislation in Australia (2003-2006, with Professor Rob Whelan, an ecologist).

Other research interests include:

• integrated land and water management
• the development of policy instruments for biodiversity conservation, to achieve an appropriate balance between reserve and off-reserve conservation;
• environmental crime;
• economic instruments as an alternative to command and control regulation.
  

In 1994, he was Visiting Research Fellow at the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado, where he carried out research on policy instruments for conserving biodiversity on private land, subsequently published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. This was judged by the Land Use and Environment Law Review to be one of the best thirty articles on land use and environmental law published in the US in 1995.

He chairs the Editorial Committee of the Australasian Journal of Natural Resources Law and Policy.

Significant publications include:

• Farrier D, "Policy Instruments for Conserving Biodiversity on Private Land" in Bradstock RA, Auld TD, Keith DA, Kingsford RT, Lunney D and Sivertsen DP, Conserving Biodiversity: Threats and Solutions, Surrey Beatty and Sons (1995), 337-359.
• Farrier D, "Conserving Biodiversity on Private Land: Incentives for Management or Compensation for Lost Expectations" (1995) 19(2) Harvard Environmental Law Review 303-408.
• Bond M and Farrier D, "Transferable Water Allocations - Property Right or Shimmering Mirage" (1996) 13(3) EPLJ 213-224.
• Kelly A and Farrier D, "Local Government and Biodiversity Conservation in New South Wales" (1996) 13(5) EPLJ 374-389.
• Farrier D, "Implementing the In-situ Conservation Provisions of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity" (1996) 3(1) Australasian Journal of Natural Resources Law and Policy 1-24.
• Farrier D, and Tucker L, "Beyond a Walk in the Park: The Impact of International Nature Conservation Law on Private Land in Australia (1998) 22(3) Melbourne University Law Review 564-591.
• Farrier D, "Factoring Biodiversity Conservation into Decision-MakingProcesses: The Role of the Precautionary Principle" in Harding R and Fisher E, Perspectives on the Precautionary Principle, Federation Press (1999), 99-121.
• Farrier D, "Water Allocation Policy in Australia" in Napier T, Napier S M and Tvrdon J, Soil and Water Conservation Policies: Successes and Failures (1999), 567-584 .
• Farrier D, and Tucker L, "Wise Use of Wetlands under the Ramsar Convention: A Challenge for Meaningful Implementation of International Law" (2000) 12 Journal of Environmental Law 21-42.
• Farrier D, and Tucker L., "Access to Marine Bioresources: Hitching the Conservation Cart to the Bioprospecting Horse" (2001) 32 Ocean Development and International Law 213-239.
• Mooney C. and Farrier D.,"A micro case study of the legal and administrative arrangements for river health in the Kangaroo River (NSW)" (2002) 45(11) Water Science and Technology, Special River Symposium Edition, 161-168.
• Farrier D., "Fragmented Law In Fragmented Landscapes: The Slow Evolution of Integrated Natural Resource Management Legislation In New South Wales" (2002) 19 Environmental and Planning Law Journal 89-108.
• Farrier D., Whelan R. and Brown C., "Addressing Scientific Uncertainty in Local Government Decision-Making Processes" (2002) 19 Environmental and Planning Law Journal 429-444.
• Farrier D., "Emerging Patterns in Environmental Legislation in Pacific Island Countries" (2003) 7 University of the South Pacific Law Journal at http://law.vanuatu.usp.ac.fj/jspl/2003%20Volume7Number1/farrier/view
• Tucker L. and Farrier D., "Conserving Biodiversity via Access to Bioresources: a Natural Selection" in Stoianoff, N, Accessing Biological Resources: Complying with the Convention on Biological Diversity, Kluwer Law International (2004), 167-185.
  

He is currently chair of the Environmental Consultative Committee, Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales.  Between 2002 and 2004 he was chair of the Southern Water Management Committee, and between 2003 and 2007 he was a legal advisor to the Legislation Review Committee of the Parliament of NSW.  He was a memeber of the NSW Water Advisory Council between 1996 and 2004, and a member of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Visions for the New Millennium Review Steering Committee and the NSW Expert Working Group of Ecologically sustainable Forest Management between 1997 and 1998.

He has worked on consultancies in the past for: the Resource Assessment Commission (private forests), the Bureau of Resource Sciences (ecologically sustainable forest management), the South Pacific Regional Environment Program (environmental legislation review), the Tasmanian Forests and Forest Industry Council (conservation on private land), AusAID (land management in Kiribati), the NSW Western Lands Review (Legal and Administrative Framework of the Western Division of New South Wales, with Abel, Tatnell and Mooney), and the Land and Water Resources Research and Development Corporation (Social, Economic, Legal, Policy and Institutional R&D for Natural Resource Management, with Dovers, Mobbs, Lockwood and Ross) and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (Regulation of Activities Impacting on Native Vegetation: Its Effects on Grain Growers, with CSIRO).  In 2001-2002 he was a consultant to the Asian Development Bank and the Government of Samoa (Capacity Building for Urban Planning and Management, with the Virtual Consulting Group).

Teaching Commitments
LLB130 Criminal Law and Process A, teaching for the Centre for Natural Resources Law and Policy and supervising PHD students.