{"title":"Children and Youth in Strategic Climate Litigation: Advancing Rights through Legal Argument and Legal Mobilization","authors":"Elizabeth Donger","doi":"10.1017/S2047102522000218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102522000218","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Children and young people constitute more than one quarter of all plaintiffs in rights-based strategic climate litigation cases filed globally up to 2021. This article examines the implications of this development for children's environmental rights inside and outside the courtroom, relying on the analysis of case documents, media coverage, and the broader literature on strategic climate litigation and children's rights. The article finds that children are well placed to make powerful arguments for intergenerational justice. Conversely, children's rights arguments that address their current-day grievances are under-utilized. More consistent inclusion of these types of claim could strengthen children's environmental rights, clarifying and enforcing legal obligations towards children in the context of the climate crisis as it unfolds. The involvement of children in strategic climate litigation, moreover, can advance the critical role of this demographic as stakeholder in climate solutions. However, the participation of children also raises ethical and practical dilemmas, which are currently poorly understood and only haphazardly addressed.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"263 - 289"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57390241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Achieving Groundwater Governance: Ostrom's Design Principles and Payments for Ecosystem Services Approaches","authors":"W. Nsoh","doi":"10.1017/S2047102522000164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102522000164","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Groundwater is a largely unseen common pool resource. Yet, driven by strong economic incentives, whether or not encouraged by existing policies, and the difficulty to exclude others, groundwater users are competing with each other to extract as much as possible, with devastating consequences for its sustainability. The challenges faced for sustainably managing such common pool resources, on which people have established de facto individual rights, are manifold. However, creating a market for trades of some kind in ecosystem services associated with groundwater could actually enhance the protection of this critical resource on the basis that protection can benefit individual groundwater users economically as well as provide a broader public good. This article uses Elinor Ostrom's design principles as an analytical tool to examine how market-based approaches such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) fit with some of the governance models that could be used to protect and enhance groundwater as a common pool resource. It argues that while there are specific design challenges to be overcome, PES as an institutional tool can align with Ostrom's ideas for the governance of groundwater.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"381 - 406"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48677134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transition rather than Revolution: The Gradual Road towards Animal Legal Personhood through the Legislature","authors":"Eva Bernet Kempers","doi":"10.1017/S2047102522000139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102522000139","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is sometimes assumed that, in order for animals to be adequately protected by the legal system, their status first needs to change from property to person in one fell swoop. Legal personhood is perceived as the necessary requirement for animals to possess legal rights and become visible in law, distinguished from legal things. In this article I propose an alternative approach to animal legal personhood, which construes the road towards it as a gradual transition rather than a revolution. According to this alternative approach, animals become increasingly visible in law when their existing simple rights are shaped to function more like the rights of humans. Instead of a condition for the possession of rights, legal personhood should then be regarded as a (potential) consequence of growing animal rights.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"581 - 602"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41928239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Duty of Care of Fossil-Fuel Producers for Climate Change Mitigation","authors":"B. Mayer","doi":"10.1017/S2047102522000103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102522000103","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract On 26 May 2021, the District Court of The Hague (The Netherlands) passed an innovative judgment in Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell. The Court interpreted Shell's duty of care towards the inhabitants of the Netherlands as requiring it to mitigate climate change by reducing the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from its global operations by at least 45% by 2030, compared with 2019. This case comment salutes the identification of a corporate duty of care for climate change mitigation but expresses scepticism regarding the Court's interpretation of this duty. The Court's reading of global climate mitigation objectives and climate science, which form the basis of its determination of Shell's requisite level of mitigation action, is plagued with inconsistencies. It is argued here that, in order to determine the standard of care applicable to Shell, the Court should have relied not only on a ‘descending’ reasoning as to what ought to be done, but also on an ‘ascending’ reasoning accounting for industry practices.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"407 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49597619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Softness in the Law of International Watercourses: The (E)merging Normativities of China's Lancang-Mekong Cooperation","authors":"David J. Devlaeminck","doi":"10.1017/S2047102522000097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102522000097","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The law of international watercourses consists mainly of a series of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and global agreements that establish binding rules through which state parties jointly manage transboundary water resources. China similarly manages its shared freshwaters through a series of bilateral agreements. Increasingly, however, it relies on non-binding soft law instruments to manage these resources with its riparian neighbours. An important example of this is the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, a branch of the Belt and Road Initiative. Its use of soft instruments, which recognize international law and promote projects, displays evidence of merging and emerging normativities, ensuring that it is capable of playing both a supporting and a developmental role in the law of international watercourses.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"357 - 380"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45888768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. Etty, Josephine A. W. van Zeben, C. Carlarne, Leslie‐Anne Duvic‐Paoli, Bruce R. Huber, Anna Huggins
{"title":"Crossing (Conceptual) Boundaries of Transnational Environmental Law","authors":"T. Etty, Josephine A. W. van Zeben, C. Carlarne, Leslie‐Anne Duvic‐Paoli, Bruce R. Huber, Anna Huggins","doi":"10.1017/S2047102522000115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102522000115","url":null,"abstract":"The case comment reflects on the 2019 decision of the Constitutional Court of Basel-Stadt, which ruled that citizens should be allowed to vote on whether to ‘expand the circle of rights holders beyond the anthropological barrier’,23 and the subsequent decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court to uphold the validity of the citizens’ initiative.24 Blattner and Fasel explain why including rights for non-human primates in a cantonal constitution could add value to their protection in comparison with the traditional animal welfare protection measures.25 While acknowledging that the change of law advocated by the initiative might have limited practical implications, they posit that the mere symbolism of the initiative is worthwhile.26 These two decisions form part of a recent judicial trend of challenging the absence of basic rights for non-human beings.27 However, it emerges from the case comment that these decisions are particularly original in three ways. [...]the courts addressed, possibly for the first time, the relationship between animal rights and federalism in order to evaluate whether the primate rights initiative would be inconsistent with federal law. The courts responded in the negative, finding that while the Swiss Civil Code precludes animals from having fundamental rights, the initiative sought to reform Swiss public law to alter the relationship between individuals and the state: as a result, cantons were free to extend rights to non-human animals.28 Secondly, the decision of the Federal Supreme Court departed from existing animal rights scholarship, which concentrates on the overlaps between human and animal rights. [...]it declared that the initiative ‘does not aim to extend existing human constitutional rights to animals, but instead seeks to create special fundamental rights for non-human primates’.29 Thirdly, the case resulted in an important opportunity for citizens to participate in lawmaking processes as it paved the way for ‘the first ever direct democratic vote on whether some non-human animals should be granted basic rights to life and to bodily and mental integrity’.30 While the two contributions adopt a different starting point – one grounded in a theoretical exercise, the other in the commentary of a judicial decision – they nevertheless converge in their claims that our legal systems need to be reconceptualized to better account for the non-human in our worlds. 3.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"1 - 11"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43355749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Protecting the Third Pole: Transplanting International Law, by Simon Marsden Edward Elgar, 2019, 328 pp, £95 hb ISBN 9781786437402 hb","authors":"M. Khan","doi":"10.1017/S2047102522000024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102522000024","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"218 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43273862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}