The development of an international substantive environmental right on a global level has long been a contested issue. To a limited extent environmental rights have developed in a fragmented way through different legal regimes. This book examines the potential for the development of a global environmental right that would create legal duties for all types of decision-makers and provide the bedrock for a new system of international environmental governance. Taking a problem solving approach, the book seeks to demonstrate how straightforward and logical changes to the existing global legal architecture would address some of the fundamental root causes of environmental degradation. It puts forward a draft global environmental right that would integrate duties for both state and non-state actors within reformed systems of environmental governance and a rational framework for business and industry to adhere to in order that those systems could be made operational. It also examines the failures of the existing international climate change regime and explains how the draft global environmental right could remedy existing deficits. This innovative and interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to policy-makers, students and researchers in international environmental law, climate change, environmental politics and global environmental governance as well as those studying the WTO, international trade law, human rights law, constitutional law and corporate law.
Written by leading scholars and experts with extensive practice and teaching experience in the field, Comparative and Global Environmental Law and Policy offers a student-friendly approach to the study of a rapidly evolving and important area of law. Its multi-jurisdictional selection of judicial opinions and legal materials introduces students to the worldwide reach of environmental law. Through its substance, the book familiarizes students not only with governing and emerging legal principles but also demonstrates how legal norms are applied to specific issues and contexts, illustrating how law-on-the-books becomes law-in-action. Student understanding is reinforced by problem exercises and discussion questions. Professors and students will benefit from: A multi-jurisdictional selection of environmental law cases and regulatory materials from across the world, with many cases from the developing world and emerging economies. Separate chapters on rapidly evolving and critical topics such as rights of nature, sustainability, corporations and private environmental governance, human rights and the environment, and climate change. Presentation of basic background principles of environmental law, institutions, and governance and their operation in international, national and subnational systems, including indigenous governance systems. Emphasis across the book on issues of institutions and governance as well as enforcement and effectiveness. Judicial opinions providing an authoritative articulation of how legal principles are applied in various systems. Numerous problem exercises and discussion questions to introduce topics and reinforce concepts and materials. Integrated perspective on the relationship of international and transnational environmental law, national environmental law, environmental norms and principles in other settings such as in private environmental governance, and governance institutions.
"Science Advice and Global Environmental Governance" examines expert committees established to provide advice on science to multilateral environmental agreements. By focusing on how these institutions are sites of coproduction of knowledge and policy, this work brings to light the politics of science advice and details how these committees are contributing to an emerging global environmental constitutionalism. Grounded in participant observation, elite interviews and document analysis, this book uses the lenses of the body of experts, body of knowledge and institutional body to focus on three treaties: the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
Over the past 40 years, countries throughout the world have similarly adopted human rights related to environmental governance and protection in national constitutions. Interestingly, these countries vary widely in terms of geography, politics, history, resources, and wealth. This raises the question: why do some countries have constitutional environmental rights while others do not? Bringing together theory from law, political science, and sociology, a global statistical analysis, and a comparative study of constitutional design in South Asia, Gellers presents a comprehensive response to this important question. Moving beyond normative debates and anecdotal developments in case law, as well as efforts to describe and categorize such rights around the world, this book provides a systematic analysis of the expansion of environmental rights using social science methods and theory. The resulting theoretical framework and empirical evidence offer new insights into how domestic and international factors interact during the constitution drafting process to produce new law that is both locally relevant and globally resonant. Scholars, practitioners, and students of law, political science, and sociology interested in understanding how institutions cope with complex problems like environmental degradation and human rights violations will find this book to be essential reading.
The unprecedented degradation of the planet's vital ecosystems is among the most pressing issues confronting the international community. Despite the proliferation of legal instruments to combat environmental problems, conflicts between rich and poor nations (the North-South divide) have compromised international environmental law, leading to deadlocks in environmental treaty negotiations and noncompliance with existing agreements. This volume examines both the historical origins of the North-South divide in European colonialism as well as its contemporary manifestations in a range of issues including food justice, energy justice, indigenous rights, trade, investment, extractive industries, human rights, land grabs, hazardous waste, and climate change. Born out of the recognition that global inequality and profligate consumerism present threats to a sustainable planet, this book makes a unique contribution to international environmental law by emphasizing the priorities and perspectives of the global South.
Reflecting a global trend, scores of countries have affirmed that their citizens are entitled to healthy air, water, and land and that their constitution should guarantee certain environmental rights. This book examines the increasing recognition that the environment is a proper subject for protection in constitutional texts and for vindication by constitutional courts. This phenomenon, which the authors call environmental constitutionalism, represents the confluence of constitutional law, international law, human rights, and environmental law. National apex and constitutional courts are exhibiting a growing interest in environmental rights, and as courts become more aware of what their peers are doing, this momentum is likely to increase. This book explains why such provisions came into being, how they are expressed, and the extent to which they have been, and might be, enforced judicially. It is a singular resource for evaluating the content of and hope for constitutional environmental rights.
This book examines how the EU can be a more proactive actor in the promotion of the principles of sustainability and fairness from a legal environmental perspective. The book is one of the results of the research activity of the Jean Monnet Chair in EU Environmental Law (2017-2020) funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ programme. The European Union and Global Environmental Protection: Transforming Influence into Action begins with an introduction of the key EU competences, instruments and mechanisms, as well as the current international challenges at the EU level. It then explores case study examples from four regulated fields: climate change, biodiversity, multilateral trade, unregulated fishing, and access to justice; and four unregulated areas: mainstreaming of the Sustainable Development Goals in EU policies, and environmental justice, highlighting the extent to which the EU might align with international environmental regimes or extend its normative power. This volume will be of great relevance to students, scholars, and EU policy makers with an interest in international environmental law and policy.
There is persuasive evidence suggesting we are on the brink of human-induced ecological disaster that could change life on Earth as we know it. There is also a general consensus among scientists about the pace and extent of global ecological decay, including a realisation that humans are central to causing the global socio-ecological crisis. This new epoch has been called the Anthropocene. Considering the many benefits that constitutional environmental protection holds out in domestic legal orders, it is likely that a constitutionalised form of global environmental law and governance would be better able to counter the myriad exigencies of the Anthropocene. This book seeks to answer this central question: from the perspective of the Anthropocene, what is environmental constitutionalism and how could it be extrapolated to formulate a global framework? In answering this question, this book offers the first systematic conceptual framework for global environmental constitutionalism in the epoch of the Anthropocene.
With the rapid destabilization, escalation and convergence of various environmental crises, global environmental politics is facing extreme turbulence. Tracing the causes, consequences and dangers of planetary turbulence, this essential book identifies the emerging opportunities to improve governance in environmental politics and transition the world order toward greater equity, justice and sustainability.
Environmental rights, also known as the human rights or constitutional rights that are used for the protection of the environment, have proliferated over the last forty-five years. However, the precise levels of protection that they represent has since been a major question associated with this phenomenon. Environmental Rights: The Development of Standards systematically investigates this question by analyzing the emerging standards of environmental protection that are associated with such rights and the way that those associations are becoming formalized. It covers all of the relevant human rights treaties to illustrate how environmental rights standards are emerging in this dynamic area. Bringing together an elite group of scholars, this book discusses significant new insights into the way that environmental rights are developing, the standards of protection that they confer, and the way that standards in the field of environmental rights can potentially be further developed in the future.
Misiaszek examines the (dis)connection between critical global citizenship education models and ecopedagogy which is grounded in Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. Exploring how concepts of citizenship are affected by globalization, this book argues that environmental pedagogues must teach critical environmental literacies in order for students to understand global environmental issues through the world’s diverse perspectives. Misiaszek analyses the ways environmental pedagogies can use aspects of critical global citizenship education to better understand how environmental issues are contextually experienced and understood by societies locally and globally through issues of globalization, colonialism, socio-economics, gender, race, ethnicities, nationalities, indigenous issues, and spiritualties.
