Transnational Environmental Law最新文献

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 to understanding the role and nature of subnational government-led clubs in transnational climate governance and lawmaking through qualitative case studies of the Western Climate Initiative and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. I identify the distinguishing characteristics that these clubs manifest in their membership and functions, as formalized through legal arrangements. I demonstrate that these clubs have the potential to increase structural stability, withstand political changes, and enhance the legitimacy and efficacy of climate action. They do so by functioning not only as organizations that create incentives for committing to legal norms and mechanisms for deterring free riding but also as communities of practice that generate shared understandings, resources, and norms to sustain club cooperation in pursuing a shared commitment to climate action. As such, each club applies a mix of rationalist approaches to benefit generation and constructivist approaches to community building.

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) as an alternative or additional pathway for tackling marine GHG emissions. The article focuses on the challenges in identifying polluters, which is the key issue that must be addressed before the PPP can be applied. Specifically, the article presents an analytical framework and examines various approaches to identifying marine GHG emissions polluters. Firstly, it identifies the polluter from a general perspective, using three approaches: examining the issue broadly, reviewing international conventions and European Union initiatives that incorporate the PPP, and analyzing selected domestic legislation reflecting the PPP. The article then focuses on maritime shipping, considering specifically two types of contract of affreightment – charterparties and bills of lading – while highlighting key factors in identifying the polluter. In conclusion, the assessment of causal links, along with operational and management decisions regarding the vessel, attribute the status of primary polluter to the shipowner, demise charterer, and time charterer.

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 argument, focusing on a product group that is highly relevant to the EU’s green transition: aviation fuels. We argue that the increasing hardness and ambition of the EU’s environmental policy instruments on the sustainability of aviation fuels contributes to a trend of ‘unilateralization’ in EU trade policy. Our analysis further illustrates how the complementary qualities of hardness and ambition in the multi-, bi-, and unilateral EU instruments lead to their flexible combination in the EU trade policy mix. Based on these findings, we propose to describe and critically analyze the EU’s current approach as ‘flexilateralism’. The EU has changed from prioritizing multilateralism to a more pragmatic, flexilateral approach, rather than for fully fledged bilateralism or unilateralism. This is what the EU’s more assertive ‘strategic autonomy’ may be about: a flexilateral approach to better address issues such as environmental sustainability with the most useful combination of instruments available.

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 particular, concerning the determination of the significance of a project’s climate effect and the assessment of indirect effects. Lastly, this article assesses how states have addressed these issues and identifies good practices. In doing so, the article illustrates the potential of functionalist comparative analysis in advancing our understanding of climate law and suggesting policy-relevant conclusions.

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 First Nations as sovereign. The investigation is focused primarily on the planning law system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, while being guided by interpretations and applications of the rights of First Nations peoples by courts in Canada. It is argued that state planning law in NSW fails to give effect to ethical responsibility because its operation continues to dominate and marginalize Aboriginal legal culture by eroding the necessary ontological and epistemic relationships with land. However, there is potential for change. Opportunities to disrupt settler colonialism have emerged through bottom-up litigation, which has promoted interpretations, applications, and implementation of law that can be performed in ways that resonate with Canadian case law. While the absence of treaty or constitution-based rights protection in NSW and Australia means that the transplant is not seamless, the article argues that laws should not be interpreted and applied in ways that perpetuate settler colonialism where alternative interpretations can lead to a different outcome.

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 responsibility, which are often characteristic of environmental litigation in the global south. This article analyzes the significance of the Indian Supreme Court's reliance on established constitutional rights principles as well as settled environmental jurisprudence, and highlights the relevance of this judicial pronouncement for climate litigation in the global south.

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 on the Horizon-funded project ‘PrecisionTox’, by deploying the concept of epistemic communities developed by Haas, as well as the learning modes of epistemic communities as presented and adapted by Dunlop. The overarching goal of PrecisionTox is to advance the safety assessment of chemicals by establishing a new, cost-effective testing paradigm built from evolutionary theory, which entails reduction, replacement, and refinement of mammalian testing (the 3Rs). The study shows that EU-funded projects can provide an excellent platform for building epistemic communities and forging alliances with EU policymakers, especially when novel technologies may be unlocked and socialized. This study also explores the early interaction of policymakers with epistemic communities through different forms of learning to better understand the complexities surrounding these new technologies in order to set an agenda for policy interventions.

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 (1900 London Convention) in its legal-scientific historical context. Most of the scholarship on this topic draws on historian John M. MacKenzie's groundbreaking analysis of what he called ‘the hunting cult’ and its role in the imperial advance into India, Africa, and elsewhere. When viewed through the dual lens of legal history and the history of science, the late 19th and early 20th centuries represented a period of transition during which a new science-based perspective advanced by evolutionary biologists was embraced by science-minded policymakers, and expressed in domestic law and foreign policy aimed at the preservation of endangered species and the protection of biodiversity. The 1900 London Convention is an early example of a modern TEL instrument informed by science and by values that today most recognize as being critically important and universal. The new history in this article also resonates as an example of how polarizing political narratives can delay law reform and the importance of maintaining focus on collaborative problem solving and science-based regulation of complex transnational environmental issues.

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 climate lawsuits, with a particular focus on those that involve future generations. It highlights the need to craft narratives that foreground entanglement and relationality rather than notions of competing interests. We offer recommendations for strategically using storytelling and framing techniques to build public engagement, spur equitable climate action and transform legal systems.

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 legal and other qualities that are often not captured within the standard justiciability-enforceability frame of analysis. Our aim here is to broaden the context for examining the Act and other ‘aspirational’ legislation like it. To that end, we identify three sets of questions that help to bring out different ideas around the Act's varied enforceability, its possible constitutional status, and its potential role as a bearer of hope.