Environmental law has aesthetic dimensions. Aesthetic values have shaped the making of environmental law, and in turn such law governs many of our nature-based sensory experiences. Aesthetics is also integral to understanding the very fabric of environmental law, in its institutions, procedures and discourses. The Art of Environmental Law, the first book of its kind, brings new insights into the importance of aesthetic issues in a variety of domains of environmental governance around the world, from climate change to biodiversity conservation. It also argues for aesthetics, and relatedly the arts, to be taken more seriously in the practice of environmental law so as to improve our emotional and ethical capacities to address the upheavals of the Anthropocene.

Benjamin J Richardson is a Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Tasmania. His international academic career has spanned law faculties in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and formerly he held the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Law at the University of British Columbia, and the Global Law Visiting Chair at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He practises environmental stewardship at his Tasmanian eco-sanctuary, Blue Mountain View.