Transnational environmental regulation and the normativisation of global environmental governance standards

Purpose This paper aims to propose a legal characterisation of the recent proliferation, across the broad range of global environmental good governance initiatives and practices, of a diverse mix of regulatory environmental standards, many of which are informal in origin insofar as they are neither State-driven nor State-centred. It examines the novel conception of legal order posited by Twinning and Walker, to determine whether it encompasses the myriad rules and standards emerging in the field of environmental governance. Design/methodology/approach Surveying the rapidly developing montage of formal and informal rules and standards associated with global environmental governance, this paper uses the analytical framework provided by scholars of “global administrative law” to reconcile the complementary roles of formal and informal sources of legal rules, and to explain their increasing convergence around a set of good governance principles and standards commonly used in national administrative law systems. Findings The paper concludes that the emerging regulatory framework for global environmental governance comprises an almost endless variety of forms of novel transnational regulatory activity, many succeeding in having a profound impact on environmental outcomes. Yet all appear to be founded upon and guided by a discrete set of good governance standards and principles of an administrative law character – including transparency, participation, legality, rationality, proportionality, reviewability and accountability – which serve to enhance the credibility and legitimacy of each regulatory mechanism. Research limitations/implications It appears that new and informal forms of environmental regulatory activity enjoy a complex symbiotic relationship with formal systems of environmental law. In addition to filling lacunae and addressing deficiencies in such systems, owing, for example, to the transnational character of much of today’s trade, informal regulatory systems are increasingly influencing the evolution of formal legal frameworks and, in so doing, are improving the responsiveness, flexibility and accessibility of this new environmental “legal order”. Practical implications At a practical level, viewing the wide range of new forms of environmental regulatory activity through the prism of global administrative law (or global environmental law) brings unity to this diverse field and, in so doing, makes available to all the actors involved in this “community of practice” a wealth of established practice and principle which can help to inform the elaboration and interpretation of rules and standards of environmental governance through a process of cross fertilisation of ideas and approaches. Social implications Recognition of the legal character and significant role of the wide range of novel forms of environmental regulatory activity lends further credibility and legitimacy to such mechanisms, which often comprise the only truly relevant and applicable environmental controls or truly accessible mode of redress and accountability. The challenges of realising sustainability are immense and, as one leading commentator has noted, “all normative means are useful to this end”. Originality/value This paper attempts to characterise the legal nature of the range of novel forms of environmental regulation which (can) play such an important role in modifying the behaviour of many of the key environmental actors globally – actors who have largely been unaffected by more formal legal frameworks. For this reason, it seeks to encourage a fundamental shift in the way we think about environmental law and legal authority.