Mark Shepheard
Adjunct Associate, Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law
Qualifications
B. App.Sc, Grad. Dip Sustainable Agriculture, M.Sc (Oxon), PhD (UNE)
Contact
| Email: | mark.shepherd@une.edu.au |
| Room: | Agricultural Economics 1 (W37) AgLaw Centre |
| Phone: | 02 6773 3551 (or +61 2 6773 3551 overseas) |
| Fax: | 02 6773 3602 |
Mark completed his MSc with the Environmental Change Institute at The University of Oxford in 2003. The focus of Mark’s study at Oxford was exploring the linkage between on-farm management practice and regional landscape health outcomes, which built on his interests developed during the Graduate Diploma in Sustainable Agriculture programme at The University of Sydney.
Since graduating from the University of Canberra in 1991 with a Bachelor of Applied Science, Mark pursued a career within NSW Government agencies associated with natural resource management. In 2005 Mark commenced a new role with CSIRO Land & Water at Griffith, in southern New South Wales. At CSIRO, Mark has been involved with a CRC for Irrigation Futures project to define a sustainability assessment framework for irrigation water providers in Australia.
Mark's PhD research concerns the application of the duty of care to farmers’ stewardship of natural resources. The research includes examining whether boundaries of responsibility between farmers and society are based on accountability or virtuous land stewardship performance. The research has reviewed statutory use of a duty of care for environmental protection and natural resource management in Australia. Interviews with stakeholders in the farming and environmental protection debate have provided a variety of views about application of a duty of care and its meaning. An innovative use of the moot court as an experiment has been used to test application of a hypothetical statutory duty of care using a judge and legal practitioners as moot participants. The moot features as one of many research highlights for UNE in 2008.
Mark is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management.