Global law and the environment is an increasingly prominent and rapidly evolving area of scholarship. In confronting global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, freshwater scarcity, and other symptoms of planetary breakdown, critical scholars from different intellectual traditions are questioning the traditional approach taken within environmental law which has, so far, only managed to save “some trees” but failed to keep “the forest”. These dominant legal interactions often use the law to address “problems” after they arrive. However, the law plays a key role also in constituting these “problems” by incentivizing certain harmful activities, upholding socio-political-economic structures, and through the limited framing of the issues it claims to solve. It is becoming increasingly clear that we live in a “legally constituted world”. Against this background, there is a need for further critical reflection on the role of the law in preventing, addressing, and even driving the entangled socio-ecological-economic crises of modernity. Through interrogating the assumptions that underlie environmental law, critical scholars have exposed, challenged, and put forward alternative visions to its neo-colonial and gendered biases; its exclusion of indigenous perspectives and voices; its construction upon problematic representations of “the environment” that centres an anthropocentric worldview; and a neoliberal economic order that fosters vast environmental damage.

全球法律和环境是一个日益突出和迅速发展的学术领域。在应对气候变化、生物多样性丧失、淡水稀缺和其他行星崩溃症状等全球挑战时，来自不同知识传统的批判性学者正在质疑环境法中采用的传统方法，这种方法迄今为止只能拯救“一些树木” ”但未能保住“森林”。这些占主导地位的法律互动通常在它们到达后使用法律来解决“问题”。然而，法律通过激励某些有害活动、维护社会-政治-经济结构以及通过对其声称要解决的问题的有限框架，在构成这些“问题”方面也发挥着关键作用。越来越清楚的是，我们生活在一个“合法构成的世界”。在此背景下，需要进一步批判性地反思法律在预防、解决甚至推动现代性错综复杂的社会-生态-经济危机方面的作用。通过对构成环境法基础的假设的质疑，批判性学者已经揭露、挑战并提出了替代其新殖民主义和性别偏见的愿景；它排斥土著的观点和声音；它建立在以人类为中心的世界观的“环境”的有问题的表征上；以及造成巨大环境破坏的新自由主义经济秩序。通过对构成环境法基础的假设的质疑，批判性学者已经揭露、挑战并提出了替代其新殖民主义和性别偏见的愿景；它排斥土著的观点和声音；它建立在以人类为中心的世界观的“环境”的有问题的表征上；以及造成巨大环境破坏的新自由主义经济秩序。通过对构成环境法基础的假设的质疑，批判性学者已经揭露、挑战并提出了替代其新殖民主义和性别偏见的愿景；它排斥土著的观点和声音；它建立在以人类为中心的世界观的“环境”的有问题的表征上；以及造成巨大环境破坏的新自由主义经济秩序。