The meanings of transnational environmental law

Abstract

Human pressures on the environment increase continuously and thresholds critical to the stability of the life-support functions of the planet have been, or are on the verge of being, exceeded.1 In this context, environmental lawyers have started to reflect on how inadequate legal systems have contributed to global environmental crises while, at the same, nurturing the hope that new legal forms will provide solutions to the sustainability challenges we are facing. As a relatively new field of law, environmental law is still maturing, which means that it remains faced with significant methodological questions and is prone to existential anxieties.2 In addition to trying to make sense of itself as an established yet still somewhat fluid legal discipline, environmental law must operate in a context of significant legal transformation arising from the need to respond to an increasingly complex society, which brings about significant intellectual as well as practical challenges for the legal field. Certainly, the nature of environmental challenges profoundly disturbs existing legal institutions.3 As a result, the traditional foundations of ‘law’ have found themselves challenged by new modes and structures of governance, acting in synergy, but also sometimes in opposition, with existing structures.4 The relativization of boundaries has led to the emergence of a variety of theoretical frameworks seeking to explain these phenomena.5 Amongst them, transnational law has developed into a discipline which offers a theoretical framework able to identify and explain the normative complexities arising from intensifying cross-border activities. Such promise has attracted a number of scholars and educators, eager to better understand processes that their own field of enquiry – ranging from commercial law