Transnational environmental law

In light of the urgent need for coastal adaptation policies and the impediments to their implementation, this article examines the early experience with coastal adaptation policies in the EU (in particular the Netherlands and the UK) and Australia, with a view to identifying the important features of an effective regulatory framework for coastal adaptation. We conclude that an integrated approach to coastal adaptation law is currently needed to lay the foundations for the required long-term strategy. Such an approach would establish processes by which adaptation objectives are agreed for each part of the coast, ensure land use planning that can accommodate future change and does not expose new communities to risk, integrate coastal adaptation with biodiversity and coastal zone policy, allocate regulatory responsibility in a way that promotes subsidiarity and consistency, and ensure that funds are available for future measures.

This article examines ‘essential use’ as a novel form of regulatory control. An essential use approach to the regulation of potentially hazardous chemicals has not been used extensively (if at all) in European Union (EU) regulatory law and warrants further consideration. Essential use, as initially proposed by scientists and later referred to in the EU 2020 Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, is a radical departure from the current method of regulating hazardous substances. The purpose of this article is to contribute to legal scholarship on essential use by (i) scoping its origins in United States law and subsequently in international law; (ii) noting its limited incorporation into the EU legal order over the past 30 years; (iii) analyzing how it could be further incorporated into the EU legal order; and (iv) considering the impact of such a move on the future regulation of hazardous substances in the EU.

The system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) found in over 3,000 bilateral investment treaties and numerous regional trade agreements has been criticized for interfering with the rights of sovereign states to regulate investment in the public interest, for example, to protect the environment and public health. This article argues that while much of the public debate around ISDS has focused on a small number of cases that have arisen over the regulation of tobacco packaging, there is a far greater threat posed by the potential use of ISDS by the fossil fuel industry to stall action on climate change. It is hypothesized that fossil fuel corporations will emulate a tactic employed by the tobacco industry – that of using ISDS to induce cross-border regulatory chill: the delay in policy uptake in jurisdictions outside the jurisdiction in which the ISDS claim is brought. Importantly, fossil fuel corporations do not have to win any ISDS cases for this strategy to be effective; th...

argues that the 'crafting of creative solutions to our global collective action problems' requires legal thought to acknowledge 'the importance of multilevel governance and enlist the participation of multiple governance actors' (p. 179), including subnational and non-state actors. Further, Lin's work exemplifies that this will require legal scholarship to go beyond strict doctrinal approaches and combine theoretical insights with empirical research methods. 16 The next step should be to analyze the climate governance practices developed by actors other than citiessuch as businesses, investors, and civil society groups. A better understanding of the activities of the various constituencies that seek to contribute to the global response to climate change is required to design a post-Paris governance architecture that builds on optimal partnerships between states, subnational, and non-state actors.

Juridical protection of the rights of nature is steadily emerging in several legal systems and in public discourse. Building on a recent publication in Transnational Environmental Law in which we interrogated Ecuador’s constitutional experiment with the rights of nature, we critically reflect in this contribution on Bolivia’s legal regime providing for the rights of Mother Earth. We do so, first, by sketching the juridical-political context within which these statutes were drafted and adopted, and then by analyzing the relevant constitutional provisions that provide the basis for the laws of Mother Earth. The third part forms the bulk of the discussion and details the background and the most relevant provisions of Bolivian statutes with a view to enabling a deeper critique in Part 4, in which we critically evaluate both the symbolic and the theoretical significance of the statutes as well as concerns related to their practical implementation. Insofar as the rights of nature paradigm...

There is growing interest in the use of market mechanisms, such as offsetting and payments for ecosystem services, to further the conservation of biodiversity. The specific needs of biodiversity mean that this approach faces significant challenges in terms of defining the units that can be the subject of the economic or market devices, of ensuring that such mechanisms do deliver conservation gains and of establishing appropriate governance arrangements. There are also ethical concerns that a market approach entails a commodification of nature which sacrifices some of the very elements which make nature valuable to us. The market-based schemes currently being operated and devised should be studied carefully to see how successfully these challenges can be met.

A widespread response to the pressures placed on the ecological condition of rivers is the design and implementation of environmental flow regimes in domestic regulatory frameworks for water. Environmental interests in water are not confined to hydrological functioning but include relationships between water resources and human cultural and economic livelihoods, including those of Indigenous communities. Since the mid-1980s there has been some provision for environmental flows in Chilean law. However, the legal and policy requirements are limited in scope and have been poorly implemented by regulatory institutions. In this article we critically examine the treatment of environmental flows in Chilean legal and policy frameworks. We argue that there is an urgent need for a comprehensive minimum flow regime in Chile to protect the environmental qualities of rivers, which must also reflect and provide for Indigenous water rights and interests. The developing constitutional crisis in Chi...

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a global problem, which threatens marine ecosystems in addition to putting food security and regional stability at risk. It is often linked to major human rights violations and even organized crime. Legal measures, such as introducing monitoring and surveillance systems or denying services to vessels engaged in IUU fishing, are often implemented at national and international levels to combat such practices. Academics and economists have suggested that IUU fishing might be discouraged equally well by taking the profit out of it. Building on this premise, this article analyzes the extent to which the availability of liability insurance contributes to the problem of IUU fishing. To this end, an empirical study has been carried out, which supports the contention that vessels suspected of involvement in IUU fishing have no serious difficulty in obtaining liability insurance from the market and insurance sector, thereby inadvertently fa...

Big Data is now permeating environmental law and affecting its evolution. Data-driven innovation is highlighted as a means for major organizations to address social and global challenges. We present various contributions of Big Data technologies and show how they transform our knowledge and understanding of domains regulated by environmental law – environmental changes, socio-ecological systems, sustainable development issues – and of environmental law itself as a complex system. In particular, the mining of massive data sets makes it possible to undertake concrete actions dedicated to the elaboration, production, implementation, follow-up, and adaptation of the environmental targets defined at various levels of decision making (from the international to the subnational level).This development calls into question the traditional approach to legal epistemology and ethics, as implementation and enforcement of rules take on new forms, such as regulation through smart environmental targ...

This seventh volume of Transnational Environmental Law arrives at a most unusual moment for environmental initiatives worldwide. On the one hand, popular support for environmental care seems strong and stable: substantial constituencies and forceful interest groups have lined up behind efforts to combat the causes and effects of climate change, and many among the world's political, social, and commercial leaders stand firmly, if not altogether enthusiastically, in support of various forms of environmental protection. On the other hand, however, one finds more ominous developments. Bombastic anti-regulatory rhetoric from President Trump, and the surprisingly voracious appetite for such talk, signal not only headwinds for new initiatives but retrenchment for existing ones. Deep social and political divisions are nothing new, but when aggravated they raise numerous issues worthy of scholarly inquiry. This issue of TEL features a number of articles that bear on, or even directly confront, the volatile legal environment portended by current events. A symposium gathers three articles that address the wave of rights-based litigation that challenges present understandings of background state liability for environmental protection in the context of climate change. Next, in an article sure to invite a great deal of discussion and response, Chris Hilson lays out the possible consequences for environmental law of the United Kingdom (UK) leaving the European Union (EU), often referred to as 'Brexit'. 1 Other articles address the climate regime and ongoing efforts to promote cooperation and efficacy in the management and protection of international fisheries. As always, these articles do much to advance TEL's mission of encouraging and presenting interdisciplinary research about the role of law, and especially law beyond the state, in confronting contemporary environmental problems.

In order to advance both the mapping and theorizing of transnational law, this article considers a range of tactics used by small-scale fisheries (SSFs) in Europe and North America to improve market access, political influence, and legal recognition. Trans-national law enables the framing of initiatives not only as implementation practices that occur as a result of international law, but also as transnational regulation in support of SSFs. The article uses the case study of SSFs to draw attention to the rise of 'trans-national localism'. This is defined as the reinforcement of local-specific approaches (reflecting local ecologies, values, and socioeconomic specificities) within a transnational structure that provides support and recognition. It offers an alternative to the view that globalization necessitates global, uniform regulatory solutions. Transnational localism challenges the fascination with large certification schemes such as that administered by the Marine Steward...

International environmental law (IEL) has been unable to respond effectively to the Anthropocene’s global socio-ecological crisis, which is critically existential and requires radical interventions and regulatory reform. This article explores the potential of the recent United Nations (UN)-backed initiative to adopt a Global Pact for the Environment as an opportunity to reform IEL. It does so by (i) reflecting on the Anthropocene’s demands for a constitutionalized form of IEL through the lens of global environmental constitutionalism; (ii) investigating the extent to which the Global Pact could contribute to such a vision; and (iii) suggesting ways in which to strengthen the constitutional potential of the Global Pact in this endeavour. To this end, the article revisits the World Charter for Nature of 1982, which seems to have slipped off the radar in academic as well as policy circles. A case is made for renewed support of the Charter – which already enjoys the backing of the major...

This contribution takes the form of an uncommon case report. It discusses an action brought to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) before the final decision has been rendered. The author believes this is justified because the innovative character of the procedural and substantive reasoning of the application could be of interest to a wider public. This may be the case even if the CJEU eventually dismisses the action as being inadmissible, leaving the substantive questions undecided. The applicants in Carvalho and Others v. European Union claim that European Union (EU) law does not limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as strictly as is required by EU human rights and international law. The case note explains the parties in the case, the acts being challenged, the relief being sought, and the content and application of the relevant procedural and substantive law. The case is illustrative of the high barriers for direct access to the CJEU, and suggests how they might be o...

Climate change has been a prime arena for the development of transnational environmental law. Because climate change involves global systems with complex local linkages, the governance regime mixes the local and the global. National governments have taken action unilaterally and have been joined by non-state actors, which include subnational governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). 1 Subnational governments have also entered into cooperation agreements with each other and with foreign nations. 2 Thus, climate change law has broken through the traditional boundaries of international law, requiring a shift to the new paradigm of transnational law. Moreover, because of the ubiquitous impacts of climate change, climate law intersects with many other legal regimes. Climate change is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), primarily from manufacturing and the energy sector, which are also two major causes of air and water pollution. Methods of addressing climate change are almost guaranteed to address air pollution issues by reducing reliance on combustion processes and the use of oil refineries, prime sources of pollution. Extraction, processing, and transportation of fossil fuels are implicated in a host of environmental problems from land disturbance to water pollution, all subject to regulation of various kinds. Other carbon emissions result from land-use change, particularly deforestation, and implicate that branch of environmental law. All of these activities are subject to their own legal regimes. Adaptation to climate change will involve yet further legal regimes. Thus, the climate issue involves an enormous range of human activities, most of which are subject to their own, often fragmented and complex legal regimes. Scholars are only beginning to map this evolving and complex landscape. In the light of the distinctive qualities of climate change and its relation to law, it is not surprising that this journal has been a particularly welcoming venue for new ideas surrounding climate change law. 3 As the Introduction to the first issue of Transnational Environmental Law (TEL)

The recognition of rivers and related ecosystems as legal persons or subjects is an emerging mechanism in transnational practice available to governments in seeking more effective and collaborative natural resource management, sometimes at the insistence of indigenous peoples. This approach is developing particularly quickly in Colombia, where legal rights for rivers and ecosystems are grasping onto, and evolving out of, constitutional human rights protections. This enables the development of a new type of constitutionalism of nature. Yet legal rights for rivers may obscure the rights of indigenous peoples and their role in resource ownership and governance. We argue that the Colombian river cases serve as a caution to courts and legislatures elsewhere to be mindful, in devising ecosystem rights, of the complex and interrelated rights, interests and tenures of indigenous peoples and local communities.

As international negotiations struggle to deliver timely, binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels, the environmental legal community has begun to contemplate the scope for climate governance 'beyond' the international climate change regime. Many see merit in a more decentralized, disaggregated approach, operating across multiple governance levels. This article examines the development of climate change law in an era of multi-level governance. It analyzes several case studies of current manifestations of multi-level governance in climate change law, including the fragmented global emissions trading system, developing arrangements governing forests and land-based sinks, the growth of climate litigation establishing transnational liability principles, efforts to ensure adaptation to unavoidable climate change, and the emergence in federal systems of a decentralized approach to climate change regulation. The article concludes by considering whether the emerging multi-level system of climate governance is adequate to meet broader international goals of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

This article investigates whether beauty in nature can provide a global language to inform environmental governance, such as by providing shared values and collaborative approaches across and within different cultures. Because art mediates how many people experience environmental aesthetics, such as through photography and music, this enquiry extends to the arts. As is the case for other aesthetic values, beauty is ultimately about relationships and ways of knowing our environment, and the law can best engage with such values through interpretive guidance and processes for participatory decision making. Prescriptive codification of beauty ‘standards’ is generally not a realistic goal for lawmakers. The article enriches our understanding of how aesthetics can contribute to human beings’ emotional empathy and ethical commitment to environmental stewardship, and identifies some conceptual and methodological difficulties that militate against beauty being a lingua franca for environment...

Cases involving climate change have been litigated in the courts for some time, but new directions and trends have started to emerge. While the majority of climate litigation has occurred in the United States and other developed countries, cases in the Global South are growing both in terms of quantity and in the quality of their strategies and regulatory outcomes. However, so far climate litigation in the Global South has received scant attention from the literature. We argue that climate litigation in the Global South opens up avenues for progress in addressing climate change in highly vulnerable countries. We first highlight some of the capacity constraints experienced in Global South countries to provide context for the emerging trend of strategic climate litigation in the area. In spite of significant constraints experienced, the strategies adopted by litigants push the climate litigation agenda forward as a result of their outward-looking objective of combating ongoing environ...

Domestic courts enjoy generous attention in international political and legal climate change literature. As a result of the reluctance of national governments to pursue climate protection measures, courts are called on to enforce international climate goals. This article assesses two domestic climate change cases (the Thabametsi Case and the Vienna Airport Case) in the light of Anthea Roberts' functional understanding of the role of domestic courts in international law. It argues that domestic courts play a pivotal role in linking international obligations of conduct with national obligations of result. This role depends on domestic contexts and, therefore, requires a comparative approach.

As this editorial is being written, the news of the day is filled with discussion of an unfolding environmental crisis: massive forest fires burning in the Amazon rainforest, potentially crossing a crucial 'tipping point' for the ecosystem, 1 and endangering global climate change mitigation efforts. 2 In August 2019, more than 27,400 fires were detected in the Amazon, burning on a scale not seen since 2010. 3 The deforestation that fuels the fires has been encouraged by the policies of the new Brazilian government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which has hobbled environmental law enforcement designed to control land clearing by farmers, loggers, and others. 4 Pledges of aid from the international community to fight the fires in Brazil have poured in, including from the G7 summit states convening in Biarritz (France), 5 as well as from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Earth Alliance co-funded by the high-1

argues that the 'crafting of creative solutions to our global collective action problems' requires legal thought to acknowledge 'the importance of multilevel governance and enlist the participation of multiple governance actors' (p. 179), including subnational and non-state actors. Further, Lin's work exemplifies that this will require legal scholarship to go beyond strict doctrinal approaches and combine theoretical insights with empirical research methods. 16 The next step should be to analyze the climate governance practices developed by actors other than citiessuch as businesses, investors, and civil society groups. A better understanding of the activities of the various constituencies that seek to contribute to the global response to climate change is required to design a post-Paris governance architecture that builds on optimal partnerships between states, subnational, and non-state actors.

In our previous editorial we commented on the tumultuous end of a decade and the environmental, social, and legal challenges that await. 1 During the first four months of 2020 a global pandemic caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which can lead to the potentially deadly 'coronavirus disease 2019' (COVID-19), stormed onto this already daunting list of challenges. The urgency and all-encompassing nature of the effects of the pandemic has led it to overtake and complicate most other challenges in unpredictable and unprecedented ways. Soon after the presumed start of the pandemic in the Chinese province of Wuhan in December 2019, the Chinese government took quarantine measures that many considered draconian and possible only in a centrally controlled country such as China. 2 At the time of writing, April 2020, similar measures have been adopted and political decisions have been taken all over the world in ways that long seemed unimaginable in peacetime. At the moment, Europeespecially Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK)and the United States (US) seem to be at the centre of the pandemic. However, cases are increasingly reported in the Middle East, Africa, and India, raising profound concerns regarding the ability of developed and less developed healthcare systems to cope with the severe adverse health effects of the virus. Mortality rates, also in countries with well-equipped and well-funded public health systems, have been disconcertingly high and infection rates difficult to lower without very invasive measures. The most common measures in place at the moment are various forms of 'lockdown', where freedom of movement is heavily curtailed, often allowing only those in 'essential' jobshealthcare, some parts of the food industry, postal servicesto work outside the home, and restricting other activities outside the home to sporadic exercise activities and essential activities such as shopping for groceries while

Certain periods in environmental law are characterized by the frenzied development of new norms and legal tools. The development of early domestic and international environmental law in the 1970s, the burst of activity surrounding the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, 1 the unveiling of the United States (US) Clean Power Plan in 2015, 2 and even the rapid negotiation and coming into force of the Paris Agreement 3 exemplify these moments of high-profile development. At other points, environmental law is pushed and pulled and evolves in a quieter and more incremental fashion. During these periods, the hard work of shaping systems of environmental governance continues. Treaties are amended, domestic regulatory regimes are shaped, litigation progresses, and local entities whittle away at a variety of energy and environmental challenges. At the time of writing, we are concluding a month of high-profile blows to existing systems of environmental law. In August 2018, President Trump took dramatic steps to reshape US climate change law; the United Kingdom (UK) government warned of the far-reaching impacts of a no-deal Brexit; the French environment minister resigned in frustration over climate inaction; and Australia failed to pass legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Less visibly, during the same month, the stock of e-cars sold in Europe reached one million; California's legislature adopted a new, more aggressive renewable energy mandate; the Trump administration faced multiple setbacks in court that impeded efforts to roll back domestic environmental laws; and a revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 4 was negotiated to include stronger environmental enforcement provisions. Amidst these legal challenges and incremental changes, China and Europe experienced record heat this summer;

In order to advance both the mapping and theorizing of transnational law, this article considers a range of tactics used by small-scale fisheries (SSFs) in Europe and North America to improve market access, political influence, and legal recognition. Transnational law enables the framing of initiatives not only as implementation practices that occur as a result of international law, but also as transnational regulation in support of SSFs. The article uses the case study of SSFs to draw attention to the rise of 'transnational localism'. This is defined as the reinforcement of local-specific approaches (reflecting local ecologies, values, and socioeconomic specificities) within a transnational structure that provides support and recognition. It offers an alternative to the view that globalization necessitates global, uniform regulatory solutions. Transnational localism challenges the fascination with large certification schemes such as that administered by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) in fisheries governance. It implies a need to reconcile transnational challenges with heterogeneous values and community approaches. To capture the simultaneous demand for the local and transnational within transnational law, this article proposes treating the described empowerment tactics within the scope of transnational standards. This requires a rethinking of standards away from fixed technical rules that are uniformly applicable across the globe.

This article starts by questioning the capacity of the concept of sustainable development to stabilize social reproduction and foster global justice. Based on interdisciplinary perspectives on global governance, it discusses the way in which global law fails to cope with the resonance of advanced capitalism in the world society and ecological systems. Our analysis focuses on the regulatory and institutional features of three interwoven functional regulatory regimes (global finance, energy and environmental protection) that demonstrate structural governance dysfunction at the expense of ecological integrity and justice in the global realm. The article further examines the capacity of global law to foster a 'compositive' and 'compensatory' contribution to global justice and the stability of the Earth System through global constitutionalism. In this context, it concludes that Neil Walker's global law approach provides a fertile analytical framework for describing the patterns of interaction between different species of global law but proves to be particularly 'slippery' in its normative propositions regarding the gap between global law and justice. Drawing from the Earth System approach, we argue in favour of a global material constitutionalism recognizant of eco-systemic boundaries and socioenvironmental impacts of the global socioeconomic metabolism. We consider that the gap between global law and global justice is best addressed by devising more deliberative patterns of transnational governance, as well as ecosystem and human rights approaches, in order to accommodate the fair and equitable internalization of material limits across global regulatory regimes that act as functionally differentiated economic constitutions of advanced capitalism.

The current global environmental law and governance regime has been designed primarily to attend to the worsening ecological crisis. Evidence, however, suggests that the regime is far from achieving its goal and it is failing in its efforts to solve what people perceive to be pervasive global environmental problems. There is little doubt that this regime is in need of urgent reforms and/or re-situation in a decidedly different paradigm. This article proposes that global constitutionalism, while no panacea, could contribute to these paradigm-shifting reforms by providing a new perspective through which to view the current deficient global environmental law and governance regime and, in real terms, ameliorating some of the deficiencies of the regime through a normative process of constitutionalization.

Few issue areas exemplify the centrifugal forces that have prompted the emergence of global law scholarship better than the environment. With its propensity to blur or transcend conventional distinctions between national and international, public and private, and formal and informal, environmental governance offers a consummate case study to test the promise and perils of global law. In this article we situate global environmental law in the broader debate about lawmaking and application beyond the nation state, tracing the evolution and elusive boundaries of this nascent field. Our survey allows us to identify conceptual ambiguities and missed opportunities in the literature on global environmental law, including challenges to its normativity and legitimacy. From there, however, we proceed to outline a twofold opportunity for the global environmental law project: (i) an opportunity to enrich environmental law with more diverse and inclusive practices; and (ii) an opportunity for co...

This article examines ‘essential use’ as a novel form of regulatory control. An essential use approach to the regulation of potentially hazardous chemicals has not been used extensively (if at all) in European Union (EU) regulatory law and warrants further consideration. Essential use, as initially proposed by scientists and later referred to in the EU 2020 Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, is a radical departure from the current method of regulating hazardous substances. The purpose of this article is to contribute to legal scholarship on essential use by (i) scoping its origins in United States law and subsequently in international law; (ii) noting its limited incorporation into the EU legal order over the past 30 years; (iii) analyzing how it could be further incorporated into the EU legal order; and (iv) considering the impact of such a move on the future regulation of hazardous substances in the EU.

What scholars referred to as a climate change litigation ‘explosion’ in 2015 has today become an established movement which is unlikely to stop in the near future: worldwide, over a thousand lawsuits have been launched regarding responsibility for the dangers of climate change. Since the beginning of this trend in transnational climate litigation scholars have warned that the separation of powers is threatened where judges interfere with the politically hot issue of climate change. This article uses Jürgen Habermas's political theory on deliberative democracy to reconstruct the tension between law and politics generated by these lawsuits. This reconstruction affords a better understanding of the implications of climate change litigation: while the role of the judiciary as such remains unchanged, the trend is likely to influence the democratic legitimacy of judicial lawmaking on climate change, as it indicates an increasing realization that a sound environment is a constitutional...

Environmental law remains grounded in a ‘one-world world’ paradigm. This ontological structure asserts that, regardless of variation in world-construing, all beings occupy one ‘real’ world of discrete entities. The resulting legal system is viewed as an independent set of norms and procedures regulating the ‘human’ use of the ‘environment’ by specifying allowable harm rather than adjudicating on mutually enhancing relations. This legal form fails to fulfil its purpose of prevention and remediation, and constitutes a significant barrier to overcoming world(s)-destroying conditions. As such, we take up the injunction for a ‘legal ontological turn’ so as to lay bare these assumptions, and to be able to move beyond their constraints into a renewed exploration at the intersection of vastly differing legalities. In dialogue with systems-grounded ecological jurisprudence(s), Indigenous legal thinking, and anthropological insight, we seek to ground future discussions towards building a truly earth-sustaining form of environmental law for all beings.

This article examines ‘essential use’ as a novel form of regulatory control. An essential use approach to the regulation of potentially hazardous chemicals has not been used extensively (if at all) in European Union (EU) regulatory law and warrants further consideration. Essential use, as initially proposed by scientists and later referred to in the EU 2020 Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, is a radical departure from the current method of regulating hazardous substances. The purpose of this article is to contribute to legal scholarship on essential use by (i) scoping its origins in United States law and subsequently in international law; (ii) noting its limited incorporation into the EU legal order over the past 30 years; (iii) analyzing how it could be further incorporated into the EU legal order; and (iv) considering the impact of such a move on the future regulation of hazardous substances in the EU.

Since the 1990s, a number of local and regional governments around the world have started to engage in a real international or ‘paradiplomatic’ climate agenda. While the multilevel governance approach has advanced the examination of the actors and levels involved in climate governance, there is within this body of literature a limited consideration of the legal capacity of non-state actors to act across scales. This article addresses this gap and examines the potential limitations imposed on subnational diplomacy by international and domestic legal orders. The article draws upon the example of Brazil where, despite constitutional limitations on the involvement of subnational governments in international relations, paradiplomacy has been termed ‘federative diplomacy’ and institutionalized within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and within the Presidency of the Republic. The article shows that the diplomatic activity of local and regional governments is still constrained by internation...

As this editorial is being written, the decade is drawing to an end. Or, perhaps more aptly, the decade is roiling to an end. Hong Kong and Chile are rocked by protests. 1 Australia and the Amazon are burning. 2 The President of the United States has been impeached. 3 The United Kingdom is tearing away from the European Union (EU). 4 India is debating its identity. 5 Egypt and Ethiopia are locked in protracted negotiations over the future of the Nile. 6 Children all over the world are skipping school and standing up to fight for a future where their world is not ravaged by unchecked climate change. 7 It has been an eventful period for the rule of law and for ongoing efforts to curb environmental degradation. It was the decade that saw the launch of Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) 8 in response to a growing panoply of global and transnational environmental problems that demanded innovative thinking, new modes of cooperation and, above all else, persistent legal development. As time progressed,

Environmental policy and law walk a tightrope between preserving present and future environmental resources while allowing for their exploitation in the interest of socioeconomic development. This raises fundamental and complex questions regarding the weight to be given to current and future economic gain, environmental protection, and the interests of different peoples affected by this interplay. At the transnational level, these challenges are compounded by the absence of clear and targeted political accountability for any trade-offs struck by an increasingly diversified range of decision makers operating at different scales of government. Depending on one's views regarding the balance between environmental exploitation and protection, this may be considered a very positive development; the rise of new actors within transnational environmental law means greater possibility for inclusion, representation and legitimacy. Moreover, it provides alternatives to processes that may have stalled as a result of political inertia or stand-offs at the national or international level. However, accommodating these processes within the existing legal and political framework presents its own difficulties. As transnational environmental law matures, our thoughts on these issues, and the processes that accompany them, continue to evolve accordingly. In this issue of TEL, two different ways of thinking about, and addressing, this changing reality and its challenges for the protection of the environment are presented. The first three articles by

This commentary considers the intellectual property (IP) system from a global environmental law perspective by exploring the extent to which patent-related treaties, such as the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and the World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Cooperation Treaty, can facilitate implementation of global environmental standards in the field of biodiversity law. It provides practical guidance to countries that wish to introduce patent disclosure-related mechanisms into their legal systems with a view to mainstreaming instances of global justice, fairness and equity, and raises awareness of the limitations arising from their extant IP obligations. Global environmental law standards have exercised an undeniable influence on the political discourse in international IP policy making in the field of patent disclosure. Still, many patent disclosure requirements that pre-date the Nagoya Protocol apply only to ge...

International nature protection law has developed without a coherent plan, with disparate governance instruments each largely evolving within their own separate sphere. Yet, many other issues are closely linked to the challenges of nature degradation, such as developmental challenges, climate change, food security and food safety, disease prevention, and rural poverty. These interconnections have partly been recognized in Agenda 21 and more recently in the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. This response commentary draws on and extrapolates further the conclusions of Patricia Farnese in 'The Prevention Imperative', published in this issue of Transnational Environmental Law, and argues for a more coherent approach and effective leadership in this area of global regulation, along with a more flexible and holistic approach to governance responses.

International nature protection law has developed without a coherent plan, with disparate governance instruments each largely evolving within their own separate sphere. Yet, many other issues are closely linked to the challenges of nature degradation, such as developmental challenges, climate change, food security and food safety, disease prevention, and rural poverty. These interconnections have partly been recognized in Agenda 21 and more recently in the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. This response commentary draws on and extrapolates further the conclusions of Patricia Farnese in ‘The Prevention Imperative’, published in this issue ofTransnational Environmental Law, and argues for a more coherent approach and effective leadership in this area of global regulation, along with a more flexible and holistic approach to governance responses.