{"title":"Loss and Damage, Climate Victims, and International Climate Law: Looking Back, Looking Forward","authors":"Patrick Toussaint","doi":"10.1017/s2047102523000237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102523000237","url":null,"abstract":"<p>After more than three decades of negotiations, the international response to climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) appears to have come full circle. At COP27, parties to the UNFCCC agreed to establish a multilateral fund to address loss and damage from global temperature rise, an idea that was initially put forward by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in the early 1990s. Employing a historical critique, which draws upon archival and doctrinal research and interviews with key informants who participated in the early days of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change, this article examines the AOSIS proposal in its wider historical context, and provides reflections for the renewed endeavour to negotiate a multilateral fund on loss and damage, in particular with a view to achieving justice for climate victims.</p>","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":" 17","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138481096","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, Leonie Reins
{"title":"The Quest to Close the Accountability Gap in Environmental Law","authors":"T. Etty, Josephine A. W. van Zeben, C. Carlarne, Leslie‐Anne Duvic‐Paoli, Bruce R. Huber, Leonie Reins","doi":"10.1017/S2047102523000225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102523000225","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"11 1","pages":"461 - 468"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139291903","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":"A Conceptual Model for Climate Change Mainstreaming in Government","authors":"Alice Bleby, Anita Foerster","doi":"10.1017/s2047102523000158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102523000158","url":null,"abstract":"‘Mainstreaming’ climate change by embedding climate change considerations in government policies, processes, and operations can bolster the realization of climate mitigation and adaptation goals and reduce risks of counter-productive actions. Some climate laws around the world now contain explicit mainstreaming duties, in parallel with emissions reduction targets and adaptation planning requirements. This article proposes a conceptual model for climate change mainstreaming in government, with two pillars. Firstly, it defines objectives of climate mainstreaming, emphasizing that mainstreaming activities occur along a spectrum of ambition towards a goal of ‘mature mainstreaming’. Secondly, it proposes three complementary pathways to mature mainstreaming – regulatory, institutional, and capacity and capability-building pathways – to classify mainstreaming activities, and barriers to and enablers of mainstreaming. Grounded in empirical insights from a leading jurisdiction (Victoria, Australia), the model can assist governments to clearly articulate mainstreaming objectives and to identify, prioritize, and monitor mainstreaming initiatives to help in achieving their climate policy goals.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"114 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71507373","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":"Transboundary Implications of China's Weather Modification Programme","authors":"Manon Simon, Jan McDonald, Kerryn Brent","doi":"10.1017/s2047102523000146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102523000146","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent years, China has expanded its national weather modification programme to exploit climatic resources and adapt to climate change. The unprecedented scale of China's weather modification programmes has raised concerns over potential environmental impacts, including transboundary impacts. This article analyzes the domestic governance of weather modification in China and the extent to which this legal framework satisfies China's obligations under customary international law to minimize risks of significant transboundary harm. We find that existing arrangements do not satisfy procedural obligations under customary international law; nor do they adequately address the risks of environmental impacts associated with the increased use of weather modification. Procedures for transboundary environmental impact assessment (EIA) and engagement with regional neighbours are needed for China to comply with international law and promote stability in the region.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136112887","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":"Comparing Legal Disciplines as an Approach to Understanding the Role of Law in Decarbonizing Societies","authors":"Kaisa Huhta, Seita Romppanen","doi":"10.1017/s204710252300016x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s204710252300016x","url":null,"abstract":"Law plays an important role in reshaping and enforcing governance efforts in radical shifts and can function as a catalyst for transitioning governance towards sustainability. This article assesses the capacity of law to facilitate decarbonization as a radical societal shift. It argues that decarbonization demands fundamental and systemic restructuring in law and legal thinking. This should also be reflected in legal scholarship and, most importantly from the point of view of this article, in the methodological choices and approaches that legal scholarship relies on to study societal challenges. To that end, the article develops a new methodological approach (<jats:italic>disciplinary comparison</jats:italic>) through which to study law's capacities in respect of decarbonization as a radical societal shift. Disciplinary comparison can be used to gain information on both the friction and the synergies between legal disciplines. This new methodological approach will contribute to increasing insight into law's capacities for the radical, cross-sectoral change necessitated by the need to decarbonize societies.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"114 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71507374","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":"City-Level Law and Action for Climate-Resilient Development in Southern Africa","authors":"Anél du Plessis, Nicolene Steyn, John Rantlo","doi":"10.1017/s2047102523000134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102523000134","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies eight cities in four countries in the southern African region (Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Botswana) to explore whether and how local governing authority has been channelled towards local climate-resilient development. The authors undertook a desk-based identification and review of available primary and secondary legal sources and normative documents while also drawing on scientific papers and policy documents for statistics and information about urbanization, climate change, politics, and governance in the selected countries. The analysis is interested in the law but is not strictly of a legal nature in the sense that the authors did not aim for a critical analysis of the regulatory detail in the relevant legal instruments. Instead, the article provides an evaluation of the political, de facto choices made by selected local governments as to how and to what extent to utilize their governing authority (legislative and executive) towards climate-resilient development. The authors explore if and how local government powers in the four southern African countries are currently leveraged for local climate action, and comment on the possible reasons for the status quo by comparing the four jurisdictions.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"114 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71507372","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}
S. Kingston, Edwin Alblas, Mícheál Callaghan, Julie Foulon
{"title":"Empowering Through Law: Environmental NGOs as Regulatory Intermediaries in EU Nature Governance","authors":"S. Kingston, Edwin Alblas, Mícheál Callaghan, Julie Foulon","doi":"10.1017/s2047102523000109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2047102523000109","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Private ‘bottom-up’ enforcement has been central to the efforts of the European Union (EU) to promote effective compliance with its ambitious environmental laws. This approach is strengthened by the EU's implementation of the Aarhus Convention, which aims to democratize environmental enforcement by conferring citizens and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) with legal rights of access to environmental information, rights of public participation, and rights of access to justice (the so-called ‘Aarhus mechanisms’). This article empirically assesses the extent to which the Aarhus mechanisms empower ENGOs to take an active role in the private enforcement of the EU Habitats and Birds Directives. Based on 75 surveys and 30 interviews with ENGOs from three Member States (France, Ireland, the Netherlands), we apply regulatory intermediary theory to show how European ENGOs play a vital role in intermediating between (i) EU Member States and their citizens, (ii) the EU and individual citizens, and even (iii) the EU and its Member States. We bring new empirical insights into the role of law as an enabler of regulatory intermediaries, and its potential as a tool for orchestrating regulatory intermediaries.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42167389","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, L. Reins
{"title":"The Methodologies of Transnational Environmental Law Scholarship","authors":"T. Etty, Josephine A. W. van Zeben, C. Carlarne, Leslie‐Anne Duvic‐Paoli, Bruce R. Huber, L. Reins","doi":"10.1017/S2047102523000122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102523000122","url":null,"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","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"12 1","pages":"235 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46386008","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":"An Unlikely Duet: Public-Private Interaction in China's Environmental Public Interest Litigation","authors":"Ying Xia, Yueduan Wang","doi":"10.1017/S2047102523000055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102523000055","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Increasing research has been devoted to examining collaborations between public and private actors in environmental regulation under neoliberal democracies. However, this public-private interaction in authoritarian regimes remains understudied. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature through an empirical examination of the interaction between environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and procuratorates in China's environmental public interest litigation. We find emerging complementarity: NGOs focus on new issues and target high-profile defendants to increase the socio-legal impact of their civil litigation, whereas procuratorates increasingly engage in administrative litigation against government agencies. This complementarity is shaped by the different legal opportunities for Chinese NGOs and procuratorates, as well as their respective institutional objectives and capacities. Their divergent regulatory preferences have also fostered synergy between these two actors, allowing them to collaborate on legal experimentation and innovation.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"12 1","pages":"396 - 423"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41884023","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":"How Ecuador's Courts Are Giving Form and Force to Rights of Nature Norms","authors":"Craig M. Kauffman, Pamela Martin","doi":"10.1017/S2047102523000080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102523000080","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 2008, Ecuador recognized rights of nature (RoN) in its Constitution. Since then, RoN have been relied upon in judicial decisions 55 times in Ecuador. Following years of ad hoc treatment of RoN by Ecuador's government and courts, its Constitutional Court selected various cases to establish binding jurisprudence in respect of RoN. In doing so, the Constitutional Court and various provincial courts in Ecuador have clarified the content of RoN, including specific criteria for determining RoN violations and the relationship between RoN and other constitutional rights, including community and economic rights related to development. Moreover, the courts are imposing sanctions on RoN violators, including the state and powerful commercial sectors. This article shows how Ecuadorian court decisions are changing RoN from a vague, abstract concept into a set of specific standards for how to balance RoN with various human rights and existing environmental law in order to implement sustainable development in an integrated and holistic manner that does not sacrifice ecosystem functioning. In doing so, the article contributes to the emerging literature on how new environmental law norms are constructed as they are put into practice, as well as the important role that judges play as norm entrepreneurs.","PeriodicalId":45716,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Environmental Law","volume":"12 1","pages":"366 - 395"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46011824","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}