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An Apology Leading to Dystopia: Or, Why Fuelling Climate Change Is Tortious Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-06-14 Laura Burgers
This invited response commentary engages with Benoit Mayer's case comment, published in this issue of Transnational Environmental Law, on the recent landmark decision by the District Court of The Hague (The Netherlands) of May 2021 in Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell. The Court ordered the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell to reduce at least 45% of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with 2019
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Children and Youth in Strategic Climate Litigation: Advancing Rights through Legal Argument and Legal Mobilization Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-06-14 Elizabeth Donger
Children and young people constitute more than one quarter of all plaintiffs in rights-based strategic climate litigation cases filed globally up to 2021. This article examines the implications of this development for children's environmental rights inside and outside the courtroom, relying on the analysis of case documents, media coverage, and the broader literature on strategic climate litigation
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Judicial Interpretation of Tort Law in Milieudefensie v. Shell: A Rejoinder Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-06-14 Benoit Mayer
In her response to my case comment in this issue of Transnational Environmental Law, Laura Burgers purports to disagree with my analysis on two points. Firstly, she suggests that we disagree on the method that a court should use to interpret the duty of care of corporations on climate change mitigation. Secondly, she disagrees with each of the four inconsistencies that I identify in the decision by
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Achieving Groundwater Governance: Ostrom's Design Principles and Payments for Ecosystem Services Approaches Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-05-17 Walters Nsoh
Groundwater is a largely unseen common pool resource. Yet, driven by strong economic incentives, whether or not encouraged by existing policies, and the difficulty to exclude others, groundwater users are competing with each other to extract as much as possible, with devastating consequences for its sustainability. The challenges faced for sustainably managing such common pool resources, on which people
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Transition rather than Revolution: The Gradual Road towards Animal Legal Personhood through the Legislature Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-04-13 Eva Bernet Kempers
It is sometimes assumed that, in order for animals to be adequately protected by the legal system, their status first needs to change from property to person in one fell swoop. Legal personhood is perceived as the necessary requirement for animals to possess legal rights and become visible in law, distinguished from legal things. In this article I propose an alternative approach to animal legal personhood
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The Duty of Care of Fossil-Fuel Producers for Climate Change Mitigation: Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell District Court of The Hague (The Netherlands) Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-04-07 Benoit Mayer
On 26 May 2021, the District Court of The Hague (The Netherlands) passed an innovative judgment in Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell. The Court interpreted Shell's duty of care towards the inhabitants of the Netherlands as requiring it to mitigate climate change by reducing the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from its global operations by at least 45% by 2030, compared with 2019. This case comment
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Protecting the Third Pole: Transplanting International Law, by Simon Marsden Edward Elgar, 2019, 328 pp, £95 hb ISBN 9781786437402 hb Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Mehran Idris Khan
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Crossing (Conceptual) Boundaries of Transnational Environmental Law Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Thijs Etty,Josephine van Zeben,Cinnamon Carlarne,Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli,Bruce Huber,Anna Huggins
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The Ecological Constitution: Reframing Environmental Law, by Lynda Collins Routledge, 2021, 140 pp, £44.99 hb, £16.99 ebk ISBN 9780367228729 hb, 9780429277320 ebk Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Hannah Blitzer
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Towards a Methodology for Specifying States’ Mitigation Obligations in Line with the Equity Principle and Best Available Science Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-02-18 Violetta Ritz
This article argues that an improved legal methodology is needed to ensure that states’ greenhouse gas emissions mitigation obligations are specified in line with best available science and the equity principle. In this vein, the article explores the extent to which the ‘meta-equity assessment’ of states’ emissions by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) can contribute to this aim. The article finds that
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Re-imagining the Making of Climate Law and Policy in Citizens’ Assemblies Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli
In recent years, climate citizens’ assemblies – randomly selected representative citizens gathered to make policy recommendations on greenhouse gas emissions targets – have gained in popularity as a potential innovative solution to the failure of governments to design and adopt ambitious climate change laws and policies. This article appraises the process and outcomes of three climate citizens’ assemblies
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Making Climate Policy Work, by Danny Cullenward and David G. Victor Polity, 2020, 256 pp, £55 hb, £15.99 pb, £14.99 ebk ISBN 9781509541799 hb, 9781509541805 pb, 9781509541812 ebk Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Amelia Reiver Schlusser
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Environmental Law as a Transnational Ecosystem Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Veerle Heyvaert
This editorial marks the tenth anniversary of Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) and the culmination ofmy time as one of its founding Editors-in-Chief. I am grateful for the opportunity to reflect on key developments in environmental law, on the impressive expansion of transnational environmental legal scholarship, and on the significance and strength of our community of environmental legal scholars
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Conceptualizing the Transnational Regulation of Plastics: Moving Towards a Preventative and Just Agenda for Plastics Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-09-02 Hope Johnson, Zoe Nay, Rowena Maguire, Leonie Barner, Alice Payne, Manuela Taboada
This article categorizes and evaluates how regulatory regimes conceptualize plastics, and how such conceptualizations affect the production, consumption, and disposal of plastics. Taking a doctrinal and policy-oriented approach, it identifies four ‘frames’ – that is, four distinct and coherent sets of meanings attributed to plastics within transnational regulation – namely, plastics as waste to be
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From Bushfires to Misfires: Climate-related Financial Risk after McVeigh v. Retail Employees Superannuation Trust Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Esmeralda Colombo
The year 2020 proved to be a clarion call for global society. There is no longer doubt that increasingly we are experiencing unpredictable events, known as ‘black swans’, ranging from pandemics to financial meltdowns. One of the ’climate black swans’ against which experts have cautioned is the financial crisis caused by climate change. In this context, the Australian case of McVeigh v. Retail Employees
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The Swiss Primate Case: How Courts Have Paved the Way for the First Direct Democratic Vote on Animal Rights Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 Charlotte E. Blattner, Raffael Fasel
A citizens’ initiative was launched in 2016 in the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt, demanding that the rights catalogue in the Cantonal Constitution be complemented by a fundamental right to life and a right to bodily and mental integrity for non-human primates. This initiative became the subject of a three-year legal dispute that ended with a decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in September 2020
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Fighting Deforestation in Non-International Armed Conflicts: The Relevance of the Rome Statute for Rosewood Trafficking in Senegal Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-08-11 Pauline Martini, Maud Sarliève
This article examines rosewood trafficking in the Casamance region of Senegal to determine whether acts of massive deforestation committed in the context of a non-international armed conflict can be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court (ICC) as war crimes of pillage and destruction of property under Article 8(2)(e)(v) and (xii) of the Rome Statute, respectively. It examines two of the
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Mind the Compliance Gap: How Insights from International Human Rights Mechanisms Can Help to Implement the Convention on Biological Diversity Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-08-09 Niak Sian Koh, Claudia Ituarte-Lima, Thomas Hahn
Humanity is at a crossroads in addressing biodiversity loss. Several assessments have reported on the weak compliance with the Aichi Biodiversity Targets by the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). To address this lack of compliance, the challenges in implementing and enforcing CBD obligations must be understood. Key implementation challenges of the CBD are identified through a
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Private Processes and Public Values: Disciplining Trade in Forest and Ecosystem Risk Commodities via Non-Financial Due Diligence Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-07-29 Enrico Partiti
This article takes stock of the many private and public instruments enacted transnationally to tackle the pressing problem of deforestation, ecosystem conversion, and associated human rights violations caused by international demand for and trade in agricultural commodities. The article argues that non-financial due diligence based on no-conversion criteria, and in line with the United Nations Guiding
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Steps Towards a Legal Ontological Turn: Proposals for Law's Place beyond the Human Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-07-21 Emille Boulot, Joshua Sterlin
Environmental law remains grounded in a ‘one-world world’ paradigm. This ontological structure asserts that, regardless of variation in world-construing, all beings occupy one ‘real’ world of discrete entities. The resulting legal system is viewed as an independent set of norms and procedures regulating the ‘human’ use of the ‘environment’ by specifying allowable harm rather than adjudicating on mutually
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The Law of Energy Transition in Federal Systems Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-07-01 Johannes Saurer,Jonas Monast
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Human Rights and the Environment: Legality, Indivisibility, Dignity and Geography, edited by James R. May & Erin Daly Edward Elgar, 2019, 616 pp, £215 hb, £172 ebk ISBN 9781788111454 hb, 9781788111461 ebk Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-07-01 Evelyn Li Wang
Human rights and the environment are intertwined and interdependent. As Ken Siro-Wiwa declared, ‘[t]he environment is man’s first right. Without a clean environment, man cannot exist to claim other rights, be they political, social, or economic’. However, the application of the human rights framework to protect the environment is never straightforward. James May and Erin Daly’s edited collection, Human
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Energy Transition in a Transnational World Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-07-01 Thijs Etty,Veerle Heyvaert,Cinnamon Carlarne,Bruce Huber,Jacqueline Peel,Josephine van Zeben
On 6 January 2021 the US suffered one of the greatest contemporary threats to its democracy when insurgents stormed the Capitol.3 Humanitarian and refugee crises deepened in Yemen, Venezuela, Myanmar, and along the southern border of the US.4 Catastrophic rains and floods inundated New South Wales (Australia),5 and devastating fires swept across Cape Town (South Africa),6 while President Jair Bolsonaro
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Addressing Climate Change through International Human Rights Law: From (Extra)Territoriality to Common Concern of Humankind Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-06-24 Vincent Bellinkx, Deborah Casalin, Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Werner Scholtz, Wouter Vandenhole
International human rights law (IHRL) offers potential responses to the consequences of climate change. However, the focus of IHRL on territorial jurisdiction and the causation-based allocation of obligations does not match the global nature of climate change impacts and their indirect causation. The primary aim of this article is to respond to the jurisdictional challenge of IHRL in the context of
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Strengthening the Paris Agreement by Holding Non-State Actors Accountable: Establishing Normative Links between Transnational Partnerships and Treaty Implementation Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-05-18 Charlotte Streck
While the intergovernmental climate regime increasingly recognizes the role of non-state actors in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement (PA), the normative linkages between the intergovernmental climate regime and the non-state dominated ‘transnational partnership governance’ remain vague and tentative. A formalized engagement of the intergovernmental climate regime with transnational partnerships
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Federalism and Mitigating Climate Change: The Merits of Flexibility, Experimentalism, and Dissonance Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-05-11 Johannes Reich
Federalism is ostensibly misplaced to mitigate climate change as a global public concern as it is prone to import the inadequate incentive structures existing at the international level into the domestic domain. Drawing from the legal structures and procedures of Swiss federalism, this article attempts to provide a more nuanced assessment of the relationship between laws designed to mitigate climate
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Energy Transition in the European Union and its Member States: Interpreting Federal Competence Allocation in the Light of the Paris Agreement Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-04-23 Michael Fehling
Energy transition in the European Union (EU) and its Member States involves questions of federalism, which are subject to various perspectives. The distribution of powers cannot be properly understood using classical legal methodology alone because Articles 192 to 194 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) contain too many ambiguous political compromises. On the one hand, Article
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Environmental Protection Meets Security of Electricity Supply Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-04-16 Ilina Cenevska
This case comment explores the relationship between two intertwined objectives – ensuring security of electricity supply and environmental protection – in the context of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Inter-Environnement Wallonie ASBL and Bond Beter Leefmilieu Vlaanderen ASBL v. Conseil des ministres. The analysis focuses on the application of the Environmental Impact
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The Australian Energy Transition as a Federalism Challenge: (Un)cooperative Energy Federalism? Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-03-05 Anne Kallies
The law and regulation of the energy sector in Australia is subject to overlapping responsibilities of both federal and state governments. Crucially for energy transition efforts, neither energy, environment nor climate is mentioned in the Australian Constitution. Australia has a tradition of creative cooperative federalism solutions for responding to problems of national importance. In the energy
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Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform: An International Law Response, by Vernon J.C. Rive Edward Elgar, 2019, 320 pp, £90 hb ISBN 9781785360886 Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Harro van Asselt
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The Concept of Essential Use: A Novel Approach to Regulating Chemicals in the European Union Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Kathleen Garnett, Geert Van Calster
This article examines ‘essential use’ as a novel form of regulatory control. An essential use approach to the regulation of potentially hazardous chemicals has not been used extensively (if at all) in European Union (EU) regulatory law and warrants further consideration. Essential use, as initially proposed by scientists and later referred to in the EU 2020 Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, is
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A Just Energy Transition and Functional Federalism: The Case of South Africa Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-02-26 Tracy-Lynn Field
The traditional concern of federalism literature has been both descriptive and prescriptive. How do federalist systems allocate powers among central, regional, and even local governments? How can these powers be divided in a manner that allows for unity and diversity in policymaking and law? These questions are given greater pertinence by the seriousness of climate change and the need for a just transition
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Of Ebbs and Flows: Understanding the Legal Consequences of Granting Personhood to Natural Entities in India Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-01-15 Stellina Jolly, K.S. Roshan Menon
A study of the rights regime for environmental protection in India indicates that such protections overlap with constitutional rights guaranteed primarily to citizens or persons under the law. Contemporary jurisprudence has aggressively developed this intersectionality, declaring natural entities to be living persons with fundamental rights analogous to those of human beings. This article explores
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Of Markets and Subsidies: Counter-intuitive Trends for Clean Energy Policy in the European Union and the United States Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2021-01-07 Felix Mormann
The United States (US) is frequently portrayed as a nation with a deep distrust of big government and a strong commitment to markets and competition. In contrast, the prevailing image of the European Union (EU) is that of a highly bureaucratized polity favouring interventionist economic governance over free market capitalism. In the context of clean energy, however, these roles appear to be somewhat
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Renewable Energy Federalism in Germany and the United States Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-12-23 Johannes Saurer, Jonas Monast
The Federal Republic of Germany and the United States (US) have adopted different models for energy federalism. Germany allocates more authority to the federal government and the US relies on a decentralized cooperative federalism model that preserves key roles for state actors. This article explores and compares the relevance of federal legal structures for renewable energy expansion in both countries
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Harnessing Local and Transnational Communities in the Global Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-12-22 Josh B. Martin
‘Communities’ – whether local, regional, or transnational – can provide an essential force in the protection of our global underwater cultural heritage (UCH). As an issue of low political concern, with its protection vulnerable to externalities and compliance weaknesses, UCH forms an ideal test case for exploring governance solutions without reliance on the state. It is also an area where communities
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Indigenous Water Rights in Comparative Law Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-17 Elizabeth Macpherson
At the end of the 2015 Academy Award-winning film The Big Short, which explores the origins of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, a caption notes that the Wall Street investor protagonist of the film who predicted the collapse of the United States (US) housing market would now be ‘focused on one commodity: water’. Water is sometimes described in popular culture as ‘the new oil’ or ‘more valuable than
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River Co-governance and Co-management in Aotearoa New Zealand: Enabling Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-17 Karen Fisher, Meg Parsons
Legislation emerging from Treaty of Waitangi settlements provide Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, with new opportunities to destabilize and decolonize the colonial knowledge, processes and practices that contribute towards negative material and metaphysical impacts on their rohe [traditional lands and waters]. In this article we focus our attention on the Nga Wai o Maniapoto (Waipa
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Why Protect Ancient Woodland in the UK? Rethinking the Ecosystem Approach Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-17 Jona Razzaque, Claire Lester
Sites of ancient woodland in the United Kingdom (UK) are diminishing rapidly and the multifunctional forest management system with its fragmented approach fails effectively to protect such woodland. In the face of reports on the destruction of ancient woodland, the HS2 High-Speed train project in the UK signifies the extent of trade-offs among the key stakeholders. Such large infrastructure projects
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The Normative Nature of the Ecosystem Approach: A Mediterranean Case Study Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Guillaume Futhazar
The purpose of this article is to explore the normative nature of the Ecosystem Approach in international environmental law. To do so, the article examines the implementation of this approach in two Mediterranean regimes: the Barcelona Convention and the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean. As these two regimes have implemented the Ecosystem Approach by taking into account the experiences
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Indigenous Rights Amidst Global Turmoil Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Thijs Etty,Veerle Heyvaert,Cinnamon Carlarne,Bruce Huber,Jacqueline Peel,Josephine van Zeben
The year 2020 cannot end quickly enough.We enter the final quarter of a year in which cataclysmic fires erupted across Australia and the United States (US) west coast, devastating floods swept across Sudan, a pandemic ravages the lives of millions while bringing the global economy to a virtual standstill, and acts of profound injustice have acted as a startling reminder of the systemic racism that
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Towards a Holistic Environmental Flow Regime in Chile: Providing for Ecosystem Health and Indigenous Rights – CORRIGENDUM Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Elizabeth J. Macpherson,Pia Weber Salazar
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Charting Environmental Law Futures in the Anthropocene, edited by Michelle Lim Springer, 2019, 245 pp, €124.79 hb, €96.29 ebk ISBN 9789811390647 hb, 9789811390654 ebk Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Phillipa McCormack
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The Implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, edited by Vesselin Popovski Routledge, 2020, 316 pp, £120 hb, £36.99 pb, £40.49 ebk ISBN 9780415791236 hb, 9780367481483 pb, 9781315212470 ebk Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Vidya Ann Jacob
onmental laws. In seeking to achieve so many diverse and ambitious goals, the editor faced a challenging task in drawing its chapters together into a cohesive collection. As such, the volume is an exceptional achievement. It showcases novel ideas, detailed analyses, and thoughtful reflections on a more hopeful future. It also emphasizes the importance of elevating the voices of ‘the lawyers of the
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Making Infrastructure ‘Visible’ in Environmental Law: The Belt and Road Initiative and Climate Change Friction Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-10-30 Sanja Bogojević, Mimi Zou
Infrastructure is often viewed through global and promotional lenses, particularly its role in creating market connectivity. However, infrastructure is heavily dependent on and constitutive of local spaces, where ‘frictions’, or disputes, emerge. Drawing on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a case study, we examine in detail two cases of BRI-related climate change litigation – one in Pakistan,
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Stop Burying the Lede: The Essential Role of Indigenous Law(s) in Creating Rights of Nature Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-10-02 Erin O'Donnell, Anne Poelina, Alessandro Pelizzon, Cristy Clark
The rapid emergence of rights of Nature over the past decade across multiple contexts has fostered increasing awareness, recognition, and, ultimately, acceptance of rights of Nature by the global community. Yet, too often, both scholarly publications and news articles bury the lede – namely, that the most transformative cases of rights of Nature have been consistently influenced and often actually
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Towards a Holistic Environmental Flow Regime in Chile: Providing for Ecosystem Health and Indigenous Rights Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-10-02 Elizabeth J. Macpherson, Pia Weber Salazar
A widespread response to the pressures placed on the ecological condition of rivers is the design and implementation of environmental flow regimes in domestic regulatory frameworks for water. Environmental interests in water are not confined to hydrological functioning but include relationships between water resources and human cultural and economic livelihoods, including those of Indigenous communities
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Recognizing the Martuwarra's First Law Right to Life as a Living Ancestral Being Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-09-14 Martuwarra RiverOfLife, Anne Poelina, Donna Bagnall, Michelle Lim
Traditional custodians of the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) derive their identity and existence from this globally significant river. The First Laws of the Martuwarra are shared by Martuwarra Nations through a common songline, which sets out community and individual rights and duties. First Law recognizes the River as the Rainbow Serpent: a living ancestral being from source to sea. On 3 November 2016
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Rights of Nature, Legal Personality, and Indigenous Philosophies Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-08-20 Mihnea Tănăsescu
This article investigates the relationship between legal personality for nature and Indigenous philosophies by comparing two cases: the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 and the 2014 Te Urewera Act of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Through these case studies the article considers the nature of Indigenous relations with the concept of rights of nature, arguing that this relation is primarily strategic, not genealogical
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Of Harm, Culprits and Rectification: Obtaining Corrective Justice for Climate Change Displacement Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-08-13 Fanny Thornton
In light of the accelerating nature of climate change and its effect, it is unsurprising that various entities increasingly resort to courts and tribunals to seek to address the many harms and wrongs that clearly stem from climate change. This article discusses the opportunities in this context for those who face displacement by the effects of climate change, an issue that is not necessarily at the
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Science and Law in Environmental Law and Policy: The Case of the European Commission Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-07-10 Aleksandra Čavoški
This article draws on empirical research conducted with European Commission officials in three Directorates-General and its other services on their perception of how the legislative and policy-making process facilitates the interaction of science and environmental law. This article deploys Sheila Jasanoff's theoretical framework of co-production as an important lens to examine how the European Commission
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Constitutional Law, Ecosystems, and Indigenous Peoples in Colombia: Biocultural Rights and Legal Subjects Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-07-08 Elizabeth Macpherson, Julia Torres Ventura, Felipe Clavijo Ospina
The recognition of rivers and related ecosystems as legal persons or subjects is an emerging mechanism in transnational practice available to governments in seeking more effective and collaborative natural resource management, sometimes at the insistence of indigenous peoples. This approach is developing particularly quickly in Colombia, where legal rights for rivers and ecosystems are grasping onto
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Climate Change and the Voiceless: Protecting Future Generations, Wildlife, and Natural Resources, by Randall S. Abate Cambridge University Press, 2019, 245 pp, £84.99 hb, £26.99 pb, $28.00 ebk ISBN 9781108480116 hb, 9781108703222 pb, 9781108571876 ebk Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-07-01 Lisa Benjamin
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Paving the Way for Rights of Nature in Germany: Lessons Learnt from Legal Reform in New Zealand and Ecuador Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-06-09 Laura Schimmöller
This article examines the concept of granting legal rights to nature as a strategy for more effective environmental protection in the era of the Anthropocene. Following decades of debate over the possibility and consequences of natural objects becoming legal rights holders, a number of countries have recently implemented rights of nature laws in their national legal systems. Comparing two of these
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Transnational Environmental Law in a Transformed Environment Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-05-21 Thijs Etty, Veerle Heyvaert, Cinnamon Carlarne, Bruce Huber, Jacqueline Peel, Josephine van Zeben
Many of the profound economic and social impacts of the pandemic, and our attempts to limit its spread, have been immediate, with many economies coming to a virtual standstill overnight 6 Unemployment has soared to record heights in the US and the price of crude oil has dropped below zero for the first time in history 7 These effects are expected to be long-lasting and profound, with many industries
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Calculative Practices in International Environmental Governance: In (Partial) Defence of Indicators Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-05-19 Jaye Ellis
The role of calculative practices such as goals and indicators in international environmental governance causes concern among many observers, who view them as promoting a reductivist approach to the non-human world and privileging economic understandings of environmental governance above all others. Yet they possess enormous potential to provide insights into the non-human world that could be of great
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Lessons from a Distorted Metaphor: The Holy Grail of Climate Litigation Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Kim Bouwer
This article examines the complex risks, costs and rewards of large-scale private law climate litigation – the climate litigation ‘holy grail’. It argues that while these cases undoubtedly have heroic aspects, their impacts can be complex or difficult to understand. It uses overlapping theories of metaphor and narrative in law, and theories of private law, to make some critical observations about these
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Transnational Corporate Liability for Environmental Damage and Climate Change: Reassessing Access to Justice after Vedanta v. Lungowe Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Samvel Varvastian, Felicity Kalunga
On 10 April 2019 the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom delivered judgment in the case of Vedanta v. Lungowe, which concerned the liability of an English company for environmental damage caused by its subsidiary in Zambia. The decision confirms that English parent companies can owe a duty of care to foreign claimants affected by operations of their subsidiaries abroad and that the English courts may
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Non-Judicial, Advisory, Yet Impactful? The Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee as a Gateway to Environmental Justice Transnatl. Environ. Law (IF 3.925) Pub Date : 2020-04-30 Gor Samvel
In accordance with Article 15 of the Aarhus Convention, the first meeting of the parties to this Convention established a non-judicial and consultative Compliance Committee to consider, among other matters, individual cases concerning compliance by parties with their obligations. The Committee is traditionally viewed as a non-judicial, soft mechanism and its rulings as non-binding, soft law. In recent