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1 results

  • 4 - Conceptualization

  • Rebecca Nelson, University of Melbourne
  • Book:
    Regulating a Thousand Cuts
    Published online:
    27 September 2025
    Print publication:
    09 October 2025, pp 74-101
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  • Summary

    At the core of regulating cumulative environmental impacts is understanding and articulating what and who we want to protect or restore from conditions of unacceptable cumulative harm. This central thing being protected or restored is the "matter of concern." Rules have an important role to play in articulating and formalizing the matter of concern. This chapter begins by analyzing how matters of concern vary, from an individual species, to a sacred site, to environmental justice, and how this variation affects how difficult it is to conceptualize the matter of concern. Addressing cumulative environmental problems requires rules to help in conceptualization by providing for articulating the environmental and human aspects of the matter of concern; describing its spatial boundaries; specifying cumulative threshold conditions, any further change from which would be unacceptable; and providing for adapting these things while avoiding "shifting baselines" that mask cumulative harm.