Lost in time: the missing temporality of environmental law

Historic environmental damage impedes moving society towards sustainable development, yet Australian environmental law is curiously almost silent on the need to repair such historic losses. They are, from a legal perspective, essentially lost in time. Our laws are preoccupied with managing current and future impacts, with any attention given to remediation of past impacts largely confined to small, discrete areas associated with rehabilitation obligations at former mines or quarries and clean up of contamination obligations at brownfield sites. The much larger challenge of restoring entire ecosystems or landscapes is neglected.