Ten Years On: Rethinking Transnational Environmental Law

Abstract

This issue brings to a close the first full decade of Transnational Environmental Law (TEL). It is sobering to consider the shape of the world in 2011 and to remember our ignorance of the events to come. The global stage is always a roiling mix of disparate forces, but between the ascendance of the populist right, COVID-19, Brexit, the rise and decline (and rise?) of ISIS, and the ongoing escalation of climate-related emergencies, it seems thatTEL’s initial ten years witnessedmore than their share of global turmoil. In strictly legal terms there were unexpected developments that became core areas of relevance to this journal. The emergence of environmental litigation in China, for example, has been a striking shift, the magnitude of which could not easily have been foreseen at TEL’s inception. The ‘rights of nature’ as a feature of legislation and constitutional law, though emergent in the 2000s, has bubbled to the surface in additional jurisdictions over the last decade, and the Paris Agreement marked a significant departure from earlier approaches to climate change under international law.