Catalyzed by the surge in climate litigation worldwide, this article examines the tension between the moral imperatives of intergenerational justice and the operational constraints of positivist legal frameworks. It hypothesizes that while positivist doctrine prima facie challenges judicial application of intergenerational justice principles, reconciliation is possible through contextually attuned

The international community has consistently emphasized the importance of protecting the Amazon rainforest as a global carbon reservoir and climate regulator. Basin states have historically responded by rejecting the ‘internationalization of the Amazon’, arguing that they have sovereign rights to exploit the area under their own development plans. By reaffirming their sovereignty rights over international

Predominant climate club research emphasizes state-centric clubs that alter the incentive structure and bargaining context for climate cooperation. This focus on national governments, however, leaves climate clubs vulnerable to political turbulence afflicting individual club members. Subnational governments are an important yet often overlooked type of actor in the club literature. This article contributes

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shipping contribute meaningfully to climate change. Despite significant efforts of the International Maritime Organization over recent decades, existing measures are still inadequate for achieving net-zero GHG emissions in the shipping sector and multilateral negotiations hold little promise for improvement. This article considers the polluter pays principle (PPP)

Over the past 20 years, the European Union (EU) has shifted the emphasis of its trade policy from multilateral agreements towards bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and, more recently, to unilateral policy instruments. In this article we analyze the EU’s growing ambitions in promoting environmental sustainability in the context of these shifts. We advance an analytical and a conceptual

This article analyzes the application of environmental impact assessment as a tool for climate change mitigation from a global comparative perspective. It firstly confirms that, despite persistent resistance in a few jurisdictions, climate effect assessment is now widely applied on a global scale. Yet the article also shows that this practice has faced recurrent practical and conceptual issues, in

This article investigates whether environmental planning law can demonstrate ethical responsibility for its role in settler colonialism. Planning law contributes to settler colonialism by diminishing, excluding, and eliminating alternative views of land that are fundamental to First Nations culture, philosophy, and law/lore. The article adopts a transnational legal frame that recognizes and promotes

The Supreme Court of India's judgment in Vedanta Ltd v. State of Tamil Nadu and Others, affirming the closure of Vedanta's copper smelting plant in Tuticorin in southern India, concludes a long and contentious chain of litigation. The plant's troubled history and the ensuing litigation reflect contestations between economic development, environmental and social devastation, human well-being, and corporate

The interface of science and law is a territory frequently occupied by policymakers. In facilitating this interface, epistemic communities have become significant influencers in policymaking, especially at the European Union (EU) level, as a result of its complex multilevel governance system. In this article we assess the quality and nature of interactions between epistemic communities and EU stakeholders

Historiographic studies of transnational environmental law (TEL) are increasingly relevant as scholars and practitioners search for ways in which to deliver more quickly and efficiently effective regulation that is responsive to global environmental issues. This article uses new and original archival research to better locate the Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa

Storytelling is essential in climate litigation. The narratives that are told in and around legal cases shape public discourse and our collective imagination regarding the climate crisis. The stories that plaintiffs and their lawyers choose to highlight hold immense power to either reinforce or challenge dominant assumptions and worldviews. This article analyzes how storytelling has been utilized in

The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is a landmark piece of sustainable development legislation and marks a significant development in the emerging legal identity of Wales. Despite the Act's significance and ambition, it has been criticized as merely ‘aspirational’ – as ‘non-law-bearing’ and unenforceable by legal means. The Act is not without difficulties. However, it also has notable

The expansion of soybean cultivation in South America has created substantial economic prosperity but has also raised a series of unsustainable land-use issues. Considering the telecoupling system (a system of socio-ecological interactions between distant places) between South America and its soybean trade partners, transnational governance could play an important role in addressing these issues. To

The scope of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) has traditionally been limited to on-site effects. This approach faces limitations when dealing with intricate value chains. Particularly for projects involving biomass-to-energy facilities, the primary environmental impacts often originate from off-site biomass production. This article considers the resulting limitations of EIAs by using two legal

Awareness of agricultural climate impacts is growing. In the European Union (EU), the agricultural sector is responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to receive considerable EU budgetary support. A large share of agricultural emissions is linked to livestock husbandry, a sector the direct and indirect climate impacts of which the EU's ‘green’ agricultural policies have

The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is one of the best-known and most controversial of the international investment treaties. The energy transition necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement climate target will require large and sustained flows of investment capital. Scholars, environmentalists, industry representatives, and governmental officials have intensively debated the modernization of the ECT. The

Climate change litigation is developing rapidly and pervasively, emerging as a space for legal innovation. Until now, this process has occurred mainly in national courts. The result is a decentralization of the interpretation of human rights relating to climate change. This article argues that such decentralization could, in principle, have a destabilizing impact on claims to the universality of human

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the number of cases being brought before national courts addressing the constitutional rights of children and future generations (FG) in the context of environmental protection. These cases have required courts to devote increasing attention to a wide-ranging and complicated array of constitutional rights claims involving the short- and longer-term impacts

States have long been understood to have an obligation to protect the international legal rights and interests of others, consistent with the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas (use what is yours in such a manner as not to injure that of another). As the world's population becomes more interdependent, this no harm obligation becomes more significant. Further, as knowledge increases about the

The rationale behind state support for, and obedience to, normative rules and obligations has long been a topic of international law scholarship discourse. What has yet to be fully established, however, is why virtually all states have agreed to adhere to a seemingly novel global paradigm with ambitious yet non-binding objectives – the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This

Climate policies are often evaluated using criteria that are heterogeneous and misaligned with the stated aims of these policies. By combining legal research methods with insights from economic theory, we systematically map and analyze the legal objectives of the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS), a key climate policy instrument. We find that the EU ETS is shaped by a nuanced internal

In civil law jurisdictions, plants have traditionally been classified as ‘objects’ (or ‘things’) under private law, reflecting an age-old tendency, certainly in the Western world, to underestimate and undervalue plants. Recent legal debates increasingly acknowledge the special nature of plants. Perhaps the most eye-catching debate in this context is the one on Rights of Nature, which have much potential

This article maps the shared legal anatomy of climate and environmental lawsuits, in which plaintiffs claim protection for future generations before domestic or international courts. By closely analyzing the litigation strategies of plaintiffs and the inquiry of courts, the article argues that these proceedings revolve around structurally similar legal standards across domestic and international jurisdictions

Floods are not merely ‘natural’ disasters; rather, they emerge as socio-natural phenomena shaped by political, social, and economic processes. Law plays a pivotal role in producing and sustaining these processes and contributes to the creation of unjust environments. Drawing on political ecology and environmental history, this article analyzes the role of law and its interactions with colonialism and

This article asks whether the abandonment of drifting fish aggregating devices (dFADs) is illegal under international marine pollution law. To answer this question, it provides a brief overview of the general international legal framework for the protection of the marine environment as well as specific legal regimes, namely the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes

Climate change uniquely affects those who are at the intersection of several inequalities simultaneously, such as those based on gender, age, and disability. This makes them ‘directly affected’ by climate change, which is crucial in establishing ‘victim status’ under Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights. At the same time, as a result of unequal power relations, intersectional victims

Reflexive environmental law (REL) enables an understanding of how law builds potential for private company reflexivity. Reflexivity helps to avoid lock-in, and enhances learning and self-organization to resolve complex sustainability challenges. Thus far, REL theory has excluded traditional command-and-control regulation as a form of REL. This limits the potential of REL to understand how legislation

Carbon leakage – the increase of greenhouse gas emissions in foreign jurisdictions following the introduction of domestic or regional climate mitigation measures – raises key questions in the climate change debate. This includes whether carbon leakage constitutes a threat to the environmental integrity of climate policies and, if so, how this could be mitigated. Through the use of four hypothetical

This article argues that the Rights of Nature (RoN) framework is compatible with various ideological outlooks and political options. As a result, those initiatives may translate into extremely diverse institutional implementations with contrasted outcomes in terms of power distribution. The institutional design of RoN has deep political implications for various social groups who hold conflicting claims

This article examines how carbon dioxide (CO2) removal credits can be integrated into the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS), focusing on questions of permanence and climate liability. It identifies challenges within the integration process and analyzes approaches from practice and literature to cultivate learning. These approaches apply different strategies to address the issue of

This article systematically evaluates whether, how, and to what extent twelve prominent forestry and fisheries certification schemes address human rights in their standards. In line with the broader cross-fertilization of the fields of international human rights and environmental law and policy, our results demonstrate that human rights norms and considerations – primarily Indigenous, labour, and procedural

In recent years, some scientists have called for research into and potential development of ‘solar geoengineering’ technologies as an option to counter global warming. Solar geoengineering refers to a set of speculative techniques to reflect some incoming sunlight back into space, for example, by continuously spraying reflective sulphur aerosols into the stratosphere over several generations. Because

In both Sweden and Finland, water law has traditionally provided strong protection for hydropower operations by issuing permanent environmental licences. This national protection has started to erode as a result of the requirement of the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) for permit reviews to improve the ecological status of rivers. In the light of this dynamic between European and

The Paris Agreement, related intergovernmental decisions, and transnational climate change governance initiatives mobilize data as a means of measuring, managing, and addressing changing climatic conditions. At the same time, the Paris Agreement formally acknowledges the human rights implications of the unfolding climate crisis. Given the reliance on data and rights in climate change governance, the

Over the course of 2021, several local councils across the island of Ireland introduced motions recognizing the ‘Rights of Nature’. To date, little research has been conducted into these nascent Rights of Nature movements, even though they raise important questions about the philosophical, cultural, political, and legal drivers in pursuing such rights. Similarly, much remains unclear as to the implications

Based on an original database of 49 rights-based biodiversity (RBB) lawsuits filed around the world, this article hypothesizes that rights-based norms and institutions are becoming increasingly important in legal challenges aimed at biodiversity protection. We explain retrospectively the antecedents and characterize early RBB litigation by constructing a typology of cases and legal arguments that litigants

This article offers a comprehensive analysis of rights-based climate litigation aimed at addressing climate change-induced loss and damage, underlining its potential as a transformative force amid the minimal progress towards a coordinated global response on this topic. It builds on literature highlighting the potential of rights-based climate litigation to fill the gap in accountability for climate

Against the backdrop of failing environmental governance, rights of nature (RoN) are lauded as the paradigm shift needed to transform law's approach to nature. RoN have been increasingly proclaimed at the domestic level but remain mostly absent from international law. As examined in this article, this is notably as a result of some profound incompatibilities between international law and RoN, including

After more than three decades of negotiations, the international response to climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) appears to have come full circle. At COP27, parties to the UNFCCC agreed to establish a multilateral fund to address loss and damage from global temperature rise, an idea that was initially put forward by the Alliance of Small Island States

‘Mainstreaming’ climate change by embedding climate change considerations in government policies, processes, and operations can bolster the realization of climate mitigation and adaptation goals and reduce risks of counter-productive actions. Some climate laws around the world now contain explicit mainstreaming duties, in parallel with emissions reduction targets and adaptation planning requirements

Law plays an important role in reshaping and enforcing governance efforts in radical shifts and can function as a catalyst for transitioning governance towards sustainability. This article assesses the capacity of law to facilitate decarbonization as a radical societal shift. It argues that decarbonization demands fundamental and systemic restructuring in law and legal thinking. This should also be

This article studies eight cities in four countries in the southern African region (Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Botswana) to explore whether and how local governing authority has been channelled towards local climate-resilient development. The authors undertook a desk-based identification and review of available primary and secondary legal sources and normative documents while also drawing

Private ‘bottom-up’ enforcement has been central to the efforts of the European Union (EU) to promote effective compliance with its ambitious environmental laws. This approach is strengthened by the EU's implementation of the Aarhus Convention, which aims to democratize environmental enforcement by conferring citizens and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) with legal rights of access

In 2008, Ecuador recognized rights of nature (RoN) in its Constitution. Since then, RoN have been relied upon in judicial decisions 55 times in Ecuador. Following years of ad hoc treatment of RoN by Ecuador's government and courts, its Constitutional Court selected various cases to establish binding jurisprudence in respect of RoN. In doing so, the Constitutional Court and various provincial courts

Recent geopolitical and environmental events have created a new urgency for a just energy transition and a socially inclusive modernization of the energy sector. This article critically evaluates the extent to which Article 194(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), as the competence provision of EU energy law, is congruent with the energy justice framework emerging from

The rapid and widespread establishment of domestic environmental courts and tribunals raises important questions regarding their implications for international environmental law and global environmental governance. I use an interdisciplinary, multi-method approach to consider the capacity of domestic environmental courts to identify and apply norms and principles of international environmental law

In recent years, a number of jurisdictions have recognized diverse ecosystems and other-than-human organisms as legal persons. From national constitutions and legislation to subnational judicial decisions and ordinances, these legal experiments have extended legal personality to riverine and terrestrial ecological communities, including vast geographical areas and the beyond-human beings that inhabit

The environmental assessment literature has neglected the distorting effect of cognitive and unconscious motivational biases (CUMB) in environmental assessment processes. This is problematic because CUMB are present in most, if not all, decision-making situations and can significantly distort decision-making processes. This article assesses how debiasing techniques are, or should be, incorporated in

In Indonesia, swidden practices have been part of traditional rice farming for centuries. Swidden agriculture is a fundamental part of all remaining large tropical forests and provides a critical form of biodiversity-friendly agriculture. Meanwhile, peatland degradation and land conversion for oil palm plantation and agriculture have created an annual transboundary environmental disaster in Southeast

Plastic litter is introduced into the oceans from land-based sources located in many countries around the world. Marine plastic pollution may therefore be attributable to multiple states, resulting in shared state responsibility. This article discusses the issue of shared state responsibility for land-based marine plastic pollution by examining (i) primary rules of international law concerning the

Since the Escazú Agreement entered into force in 2021, many have looked forward to the realization of its goal of further entrenching environmental democratic rights and enabling sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. The severe environmental and related human rights challenges in the region have caught global attention, and the Agreement is most timely in its pursuit

Law – through regulation, criminalization and litigation – provides key mechanisms for mitigating the harmful effects of oil disasters. At the same time, these mechanisms also enable the perpetuation of oil disasters under an extractivist imperative. This disaster tolerance is the point of departure for this article's examination of the legal response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster over the

The Rights of Nature concept not only breaks with the anthropocentrism of existing (environmental) law; it also recognizes that nature has private interests, in addition to being of public interest. That is, whereas in classic sustainability thinking, the use of certain resources is allowed as long as public interests are not systematically/systemically harmed, rights of nature facilitate the protection

The Rights of Nature movement has recently achieved significant successes in using legal personhood as a tool for environmental protection. Perhaps most famously, the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand was accorded legal personhood in 2017. These kinds of development have attracted plenty of scholarly interest, but few have scrutinized a foundational underlying question: Can natural areas, such

This article traces the various legal incarnations of the intergenerational equity principle. Despite its silent proliferation in international and constitutional laws over the past five decades, the principle dwelled mostly at the margins of inquiry and practice. Recent efforts to counteract global warming have allowed intergenerational claims to gain new traction. Building on a comparison of ten

Most modern-day environmental issues are caused by the complex aggregation and interaction of numerous actions contributing to large-scale problems, from biodiversity loss to climate change. Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) consider how projects contribute to these cumulative environmental problems. This article firstly evaluates the theoretical importance of cumulative effects concepts for

Ownership has been a key tool in the exploitation of nature for centuries. However, ownership could also shield natural entities from extraction and pollution if it were vested in them, rather than in humans or corporations. Through a case study of German constitutional property law, this article examines the normative content of this constitutional right. It argues that in owning themselves, natural

Despite the growing prominence and use of Rights of Nature (RoN), doubts remain as to their tangible effect on environmental protection efforts. By analyzing two initiatives in post-colonial societies, we argue that they do influence the creation of institutionalized bridges between differing land-ownership regimes. Applying the methodology of inter-legality, we examine the Ecuadorian Constitution

This article argues that banks should adopt animal welfare policies in the light of the growing acceptance of the need for ‘responsible banking’, which incorporates environmental, social, and governance analysis into credit risk and due diligence processes. The responsibility of banks for animal welfare is underscored by the drive towards greater investment in animal agribusiness, and the vicious cycle

Climate change mitigation calls for the limitation and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across all sectors. However, limiting GHG emissions from aviation has proven to be problematic for technical reasons (e.g., lack of low-carbon alternatives) as well as legal reasons (e.g., international aviation does not readily fall within any one state's jurisdiction). Relevant initiatives have followed