Dr Emma Carmody presents at annual Legalwise Water Law Symposium

Dr Emma Carmody presented at the annual Legalwise Water Law Symposium in Sydney on the 27^th February 2026. Her presentation focused on NSW environment, planning, water and related laws applicable to blue carbon wetland restoration and the challenges that proponents face when dealing with this highly complex and ill-suited web of laws.

In her presentation, Dr Carmody highlighted that the framework was never intended to apply to nature restoration projects and as such was not only unnecessarily complex but often ambiguous, resulting in confusion and delay within responsible agencies. This was not only a problem for blue carbon projects, but for other nature restoration projects in the coastal zone or involving waterways. As noted by Dr Gerry Bates, it is easier to get a permit to destroy nature than to restore it.

Dr Carmody and her colleagues at Restore Blue have thought and written extensively about possible reform options. On this basis – and drawing on the excellent work of Professor Justine Bell-James – she outlined a number of potential amendments to state environment laws, planning laws and water laws which would be more appropriately adapted to coastal restoration projects, and which would accordingly incentivise, rather than obstruct, this vital work.

Finally, she noted that the 30 by 30 biodiversity restoration targets that Australia has signed up to under the Convention on Biological Diversity will not be met by 2030 if our governments do not address legal barriers to nature restoration. She made it clear that this is a resolvable problem but that it needed to be prioritised by government.