The Methodologies of Transnational Environmental Law Scholarship

Abstract

concept into specific standards on how to ‘implement sustainable development in an integrated and holistic manner that does not sacrifice ecosystem functioning’. To evaluate the material impact that rights of nature have on the Ecuadorian legal system, the authors’ research relies on an original dataset of 55 rights of nature cases decided by Ecuadorian courts between 2009 and 2022, as well as on interviews with judges and stakeholders. Their combination of a thorough textual analysis of the cases with insights from legal practitioners enables Kauffman and Martin to understand how the Constitutional Court is transforming rights of nature into a concrete tool able to balance different public policy priorities for sustainable development. Their textual and empirical analysis allows them to offer important insights into howEcuadorian judges are acting as norm entrepreneurs by giving rights of nature legal content. The next article in this section also uses empirical methods to enhance our understanding of legal processes. In ‘An Unlikely Duet: Public-Private Interaction in China’s Environmental Public Interest Litigation’, Ying Xia and Yueduan Wang study collaborations between public and private actors in an environmental context in authoritarian regimes, andmore specifically in the interactions between environmental NGOs and procuratorates in China’s environmental public interest litigation. To examine the evolution of public interest litigation, they take ‘a relational and process-based approach’, which relies on qualitative research to understand themotivations and constraints of NGOs and procuratorates, and their interactions. Their qualitative data consists of 49 semi-structured interviews conducted across China between 2020 and 2022 with procuratorates and employees of environmental NGOs. On that basis, they find emerging complementarity between Chinese procuratorates and environmental NGOs. Their empirical investigation evidences a strategic division of labour between the two actors, with procuratorates focusing on administrative litigation against governmental agencies and NGOs targeting high-profile defendants. They conclude by explaining this complementarity in the context of China’s authoritarian environmentalism, driven both by ‘the state’s desire to strengthen its political legitimacy by incorporating imperatives such as ecological civilization and law-based governance’ and ‘the generally shrinking political space for civic activism’. 56 L.J. Kotzé & P. Villavicencio Calzadilla, ‘Somewhere between Rhetoric and Reality: Environmental Constitutionalism and the Rights of Nature in Ecuador’ (2017) 6(3) Transnational Environmental Law, pp. 401–33. 57 Kauffman & Martin, n. 4 above, p. 367. 58 Ibid., p. 367. 59 Ibid., pp. 374–6. 60 Xia & Wang, n. 5 above. 61 Ibid., p. 399. 62 Ibid., p. 399. 63 Ibid., p. 406. 64 Ibid., p. 423. 65 Ibid., p. 423. Thijs Etty & Josephine van Zeben, et al. 241