Gates Cambridge alumna wins prestigious award for her book on how international law should address overfishing.
A Gates Cambridge alumna has been awarded a prestigious prize by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Academy of Environmental Law for her book on the role of international law in addressing overfishing.
Margaret Young [2003], now an associate professor at Melbourne Law School, won the IUCN’s Junior Scholarship Prize, which goes to a scholar with less than 10 years of academic experience, for her recent publication, Trading Fish, Saving Fish: The Interaction between Regimes in International Law. The book has its origins in the research she did as part of her PhD in Law at the University of Cambridge with the support of a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.
The IUCN Academy of Environmental Law is a global network of more than 110 universities from 35 countries dedicated to building environmental law education and promoting the development of environmental law.
In awarding the prize, the reviewers stated that Trading Fish, Saving Fish had made a significant contribution to the understanding of international environmental regimes and their interaction.
“It is a beautifully written work based on extremely thorough research which effectively opens a new area of scholarship to the academe… Anyone interested in the issues of fragmentation, coherence and interaction in international law must read this book and many will wish to pick up the research themes outlined in it in their own research,” stated the Academy’s reviewers.
Margaret specialises in trade law, environmental law and climate change law. Her book, which was published by Cambridge University Press last year, examines the role of international law in addressing the over-exploitation of global fish stocks, and draws on her professional experience at the World Trade Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the United Nations.
“It is an honour to have my empirical and theoretical work recognised by leaders of the environmental law discipline”, she said.
“Global problems like fisheries depletion are impacted by a number of different legal regimes, and it is important to understand how they overlap and interact. Such inquiries also provide insight into the international legal system and its legitimacy.”
