Environmental Groups And Legal Expertise

Environmental Groups and Legal Expertise explores the use and understanding of law and legal expertise by environmental groups. Rather than the usual focus on the court room, it scrutinises environmental NGO advocacy during the extraordinarily dramatic Brexit process, from the referendum on leaving the EU in June 2016 to the debate around the new Environment Bill in the first half of 2020. There is generally a weak understanding of both the complexity and the potential of legal expertise in the environmental NGO community. Legal expertise can be more than a tool for campaigners, and more than litigation: it provides distinctive ways of both seeing the world and changing the world. The available legal resource in the sector is not just a practical limit on what can be done, but spills into the very understanding of what should be done, and what resource is needed. Mutually reinforcing links between capacity, understanding, culture and investment affect legal expertise across the board. There are, however, pockets of sophisticated legal expertise in the community, and legal expertise was heavily and often effectively used in the anomalously law-heavy Brexit-environment debate. The ability to call on thinly spread legal expertise in a crisis was in part due to effective NGO collaboration around Brexit-environment.

Environmental Groups and Legal Expertise explores the use and understanding of law and legal expertise by environmental groups. Rather than the usual focus on the court room, it scrutinises environmental NGO advocacy during the extraordinarily dramatic Brexit process, from the referendum on leaving the EU in June 2016 to the debate around the new Environment Bill in the first half of 2020. There is generally a weak understanding of both the complexity and the potential of legal expertise in the environmental NGO community. Legal expertise can be more than a tool for campaigners, and more than litigation: it provides distinctive ways of both seeing the world and changing the world. The available legal resource in the sector is not just a practical limit on what can be done, but spills into the very understanding of what should be done, and what resource is needed. Mutually reinforcing links between capacity, understanding, culture and investment affect legal expertise across the board. There are, however, pockets of sophisticated legal expertise in the community, and legal expertise was heavily and often effectively used in the anomalously law-heavy Brexit-environment debate. The ability to call on thinly spread legal expertise in a crisis was in part due to effective NGO collaboration around Brexit-environment.

Of serious and persistent concern to most Canadians, environmental protection is governed by a complex and controversial legal regime that is affected by constitutional division of jurisdiction, corporate and taxation laws, international trade law, and traditional private law doctrines such as torts and contract law. Statutes and regulations that are specifically designed to protect the environment, and the institutional frameworks within which they operate, are often the subject of competing political agendas. This authoritative book describes the evolution and current practice of environmental law and policy in Canada. It will be of interest to concerned individuals, environmental groups, corporate officials, technical and scientific experts, public servants, and legal professionals whose practice is increasingly affected by environmental considerations.

This book assembles the revised papers of an international conference and thus offers a comprehensive comparative overview of the participation and litigation rights of environmental associations in Europe. This is supplemented by a compilation of the relevant statutory law in force. Besides the legal background, the focus of interest is above all on "practical experience" with participation and litigation rights "from the point of view of the environmental associations." The contributions show that the effectivity of group actions is extremely high. In none of the analysed countries were there the slightest indications of any undue strain being placed on the judicial system by this instrument. There can be no doubt that the participation and litigation rights of environmental organizations are important instruments in reducing the enforcement deficit in environmental protection. With a view to the fact that Europe is growing more and more into one entity, the need of participation of environmental NGO's on the European level becomes a pressing necessity.

A proposal for a philosophical foundation and a realistic deliberative mechanism for creating a transnational common law for the environment. In Global Democracy and Sustainable Jurisprudence, Walter Baber and Robert Bartlett explore the necessary characteristics of a meaningful global jurisprudence, a jurisprudence that would underpin international environmental law. Arguing that theories of political deliberation offer useful insights into the current “democratic deficit” in international law, and using this insight as a way to approach the problem of global environmental protection, they offer both a theoretical foundation and a realistic deliberative mechanism for creating effective transnational common law for the environment. Their argument links elements not typically associated: abstract democratic theory and a practical form of deliberative democracy; the legitimacy-imparting value of deliberative democracy and the possibility of legislating through adjudication; common law jurisprudence and the development of transnational environmental law; and conceptual thinking that draws on Deweyan pragmatism, Rawlsian contractarianism, Habermasian critical theory, and the full liberalism of Bohman, Gutmann, and Thompson. Baber and Bartlett offer a democratic method for creating, interpreting, and implementing international environmental norms that involves citizens and bypasses states—an innovation that can be replicated and deployed across a range of policy areas. Transnational environmental consensus would develop through a novel model of juristic democracy that would generate legitimate international environmental law based on processes of hypothetical rule making by citizen juries. This method would translate global environmental norms into international law—law that, unlike all current international law, would be recognized as both fact and norm because of its inherent democratic legitimacy.

International law governing the settlement of disputes through law-based forums, such as courts, tribunals and arbitral tribunals, is fraught with limitations that are becoming especially apparent with respect to disputes that involve the protection of the environment. However despite the deficiencies of the law, international courts and tribunals have issued judgements in disputes involving the protection of the environment. At the global level the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) have handed down decisions in relevant cases. In addition other legal forums can also be called upon to decide cases involving international environmental law. Such forums include the Environmental Chamber of the ICJ and the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) under its general facilities and under the Environmental Facility that it is planning to establish. Similarly, special bodies, such as the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), may decide on cases. Moreover, regional forums such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Community (ECJ) have ruled on cases involving international environmental law. Despite these developments, calls for the establishment of an international environmental court at the global level persist. Several arguments have been advanced to justify the establishment of an international environmental court, for example the very many pressing environmental problems that exist today and the need for a bench consisting of experts in international environmental law to consider theseproblems, the need for individuals and groups to have access to environmental justice at the international level, the need to enable international organizations to be parties to disputes related to the protection of the environment and the need for dispute settlement procedures that enable the common interest in the environment to be addressed. Arguments against the establishment of an international environmental court have been advanced as well. These arguments include the following: the proliferation of international courts and tribunals would result in the fragmentation of international law, existing courts and tribunals are, or can be, well equipped to consider cases involving environmental issues and disputes involving international environmental law also involve other aspects of international law. This publication explores the arguments for and against the establishment of an international environmental court, examining topics such as the definition of an international environmental dispute and the concomitant expertise required on the bench, fragmentation and its root causes, access to justice and the representation of community interests. The author argues that the establishment of an international environmental court is not the most desirable option and she suggests that it might be more fruitful if we consider developments in environmental law, as well as in other relevant areas of international law, from a different perspective, namely, that of administrative law and reassess the relationship between international and national law. Such an approach, she argues is warranted if, "inter alia," viable means for resolving environmental disputes that may arise are to be identified.

'Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples offers the most comprehensive resource for advancing our understanding of one of the least coherently developed of climate change policy realms – legal protection of vulnerable indigenous populations. The first part of the book provides a tremendously useful background on the cultural, policy, and legal context of indigenous peoples, with special emphasis on developing general principles for climate change mitigation and adaptation solutions. The remainder of the volume then carefully and thoroughly works through how those general principles play out for different regional indigenous populations around the globe. All of the contributions to the volume are by leading experts who bring their insights and innovative thinking to bear on a truly complex subject. Whether as a novice's starting point or expert's desktop reference, I cannot think of a more useful resource for anyone interested in climate policy for indigenous peoples.' – J.B. Ruhl, Vanderbilt University Law School, US 'In Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples, editors Randy Abate and Elizabeth Kronk have assembled a truly comprehensive and informative look at the special issues that indigenous peoples face as a result of climate impacts and an overview of the law – international and domestic, climate change and human rights, substantive and procedural – that applies to those issues. One of the great strengths of the book is that no group of indigenous people is made to stand proxy for all the others; instead, after exploring the general issues facing all indigenous peoples and the general legal strategies they use, the book focuses most of its attention on the specific climate change issues that confront particular groups – South American indigenous peoples; the various tribes of Native Americans in the US; the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, collectively as well as in respect to particular Arctic countries; Pacific Islanders; indigenous peoples in Asia; the various groups of Aborigines and Torres Islanders in Australia; the Maori on New Zealand; and several tribes in Kenya, Africa. For people interested in climate change and climate change adaptation, this book provides a unique overview of the special vulnerabilities and plights of indigenous peoples, issues that must be considered as the world works to formulate effective and protective climate change adaptation policies. For people interested in indigenous peoples and international human rights, this book paints a grim picture of the various ways in which climate change threatens this very diverse group of cultural entities and the deep knowledge of place that they usually possess, while at the same time offering hope that the law can find ways to keep them from disappearing – and, indeed, that indigenous peoples might just help the rest of us to survive, as well.' – Robin Kundis Craig, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, US 'It is one of the world's cruelest ironies that some of the earliest effects of climate change are being felt by indigenous populations around the world, even though they contributed no more than trivial amounts of the greenhouse gases that are at the root of much of the problem, and they are so politically and economically powerless that they played no role in the decisions that have led to their plight. At the same time, many of these populations are victimized by certain actions designed to reduce emissions, such as land clearing for biofuels cultivation, and restrictions on forest use. Professors Abate and Kronk have assembled a formidable collection of experts from around the world who demonstrate the diversity of challenges facing these indigenous peoples, and the opportunities and challenges in using various international and domestic legal tools to seek redress. This book will be an invaluable resource for all those examining the legal remedies that may be available, either now or as the law develops in the years to come.' – Michael B. Gerrard, Columbia Law School, US This timely volume explores the ways in which indigenous peoples across the world are challenged by climate change impacts, and discusses the legal resources available to confront those challenges. Indigenous peoples occupy a unique niche within the climate justice movement, as many indigenous communities live subsistence lifestyles that are severely disrupted by the effects of climate change. Additionally, in many parts of the world, domestic law is applied differently to indigenous peoples than it is to their non-indigenous peers, further complicating the quest for legal remedies. The contributors to this book bring a range of expert legal perspectives to this complex discussion, offering both a comprehensive explanation of climate change-related problems faced by indigenous communities and a breakdown of various real world attempts to devise workable legal solutions. Regions covered include North and South America (Brazil, Canada, the US and the Arctic), the Pacific Islands (Fiji, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia), Australia and New Zealand, Asia (China and Nepal) and Africa (Kenya). This comprehensive volume will appeal to professors and students of environmental law, indigenous law and international law, as well as practitioners and policymakers with an interest in indigenous legal issues and environmental justice.

The Book takes the approach of a critique of the prevailing international environmental law-making processes and their systemic shortcomings. It aims to partly redesign the current international environmental law-making system in order to promote further legislation and more effectively protect the natural environment and public health. Through case studies and doctrinal analyses, an array of initial questions guides the reader through a variety of factors influencing the development of International Environmental Law. After a historical analysis, commencing from the Platonic philosophy up to present, the Book holds that some of the most decisive factors that could create an optimized law-making framework include, among others: progressive voting processes, science-based secondary international environmental legislation, new procedural rules, that enhance the participation in the law-making process by both experts and the public and also review the implementation, compliance and validity of the science-base of the laws. The international community should develop new law-making procedures that include expert opinion. Current scientific uncertainties can be resolved either by policy choices or by referring to the so-called „sound science.“ In formulating a new framework for environmental lawmaking processes, it is essential to re-shape the rules of procedure, so that experts have greater participation in those, in order to improve the quality of International Environmental Law faster than the traditional processes that mainly embrace political priorities generated by the States. Science serves as one of the main tools that will create the next generation of International Environmental Law and help the world transition to a smart, inclusive, sustainable future.