Global Environmental Change And Innovation In International Law

Explores normative and institutional innovation in international law as a response to the challenges to global order posed by rapid environmental change.

This book takes a critical lens to humanity’s collective regulatory response to the existential threat of climate change. It explores those aspects of the international climate change regime that, albeit born of political dysfunction, demonstrate ingenuity, innovation and experimentation. This includes aspects relating to the legal form of instruments in the regime, the legal character of its provisions, as well as norm hybridity and mutation, and the nature, extent and evolution of differential treatment in the regime. This book argues that innovations and experiments in the international climate change regime have resulted in a highly sophisticated and nuanced legal regime – one that challenges the conceptual boundaries of international law, enriches the core of treaty law and practice and is likely to have an enduring impact on international law, legal practice and diplomatic intercourse.

'UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called Climate Change "the defining issue of our era". It presents international law and lawyers with a wide range of novel issues, practical as well as conceptual. These challenges are addressed in this volume with great authority by many of the leading international law scholars of our generation. It is an important and distinctive contribution to the burgeoning literature on an issue critical for the future of our planet.' – David Freestone, George Washington University, US Climate change will fundamentally affect every area of human endeavour, including the development of international law. This book maps the current and potential impacts of climate change on the norms, principles, rules and processes of international law. This timely study brings together a group of leading scholars in their respective fields of international law to examine the impacts of climate change, and our responses to it, on the whole spectrum of international legal regimes, including those dealing with everything from climate displacement, human rights, and international trade and investment, to the oceans, the environment, armed conflicts and the use of force, and outer-space. the volume also examines the impacts of climate change on the underlying principles and processes of international law including those relating to the making and enforcement of international law and to third party dispute resolution. the book shows that there is much more to dealing with climate change than negotiating one global climate change-specific regime. Other areas of international law can, and must, be included in the solution. In this way international law can maximise its coherence and its efficacy. This well-documented study will appeal to international lawyers, academics, policy makers, government employees, negotiators, practitioners, international legal theorists and anyone interested in climate change and how to maximise our international legal and policy responses to it.

This is one of the few books dealing with regime theory to be written from a legal point of view. Jurgielewicz's book is part of an effort to promote interdisciplinary research on the nature of the international legal order. Her work explores the concept of international regimes within the international legal order, utilizing the policy-oriented approach to international law. The study uses examples of global environmental change as models. By examining the general international law applicable to climate change and ozone layer depletion, the author attempts to explain the original need for regime formation in these areas. Next, Jurgielewicz looks at the role of regimes within international law, focusing on their formation, maintenance, source of legal obligation, and compliance mechanisms. The book concludes that regimes are present within the international legal order and play a vital role in maintaining that order. This book will appeal to students in law schools, graduate schools, or advanced undergraduate seminars covering international relations, international legal theory, international law, and international organizations.

Written by leading scholars and experts with extensive practice and teaching experience in the field, Comparative and Global Environmental Law and Policy offers a student-friendly approach to the study of a rapidly evolving and important area of law. Its multi-jurisdictional selection of judicial opinions and legal materials introduces students to the worldwide reach of environmental law. Through its substance, the book familiarizes students not only with governing and emerging legal principles but also demonstrates how legal norms are applied to specific issues and contexts, illustrating how law-on-the-books becomes law-in-action. Student understanding is reinforced by problem exercises and discussion questions. Professors and students will benefit from: A multi-jurisdictional selection of environmental law cases and regulatory materials from across the world, with many cases from the developing world and emerging economies. Separate chapters on rapidly evolving and critical topics such as rights of nature, sustainability, corporations and private environmental governance, human rights and the environment, and climate change. Presentation of basic background principles of environmental law, institutions, and governance and their operation in international, national and subnational systems, including indigenous governance systems. Emphasis across the book on issues of institutions and governance as well as enforcement and effectiveness. Judicial opinions providing an authoritative articulation of how legal principles are applied in various systems. Numerous problem exercises and discussion questions to introduce topics and reinforce concepts and materials. Integrated perspective on the relationship of international and transnational environmental law, national environmental law, environmental norms and principles in other settings such as in private environmental governance, and governance institutions.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 underscored the need to reform the current institutional framework for environmental governance. Chambers and Green, both affiliated with the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies in Japan, gather contributors to take up the question left unanswered at Johannesbur

An Ecological Approach to International Law shows that international environmental law is fundamentally flawed and not equipped to meet global challenges. The book examines international legal responses to global climate change by analysing key concepts such as the doctrine of state sovereignty, the law on state responsibility, environmental rights and common heritage of mankind.

It is now generally accepted that sustainable development has become a central objective of the international community. This text examines the politics and history of the term, before moving on to analyse relevant principles of international law in this context.