Golden Rules for Transboundary Pollution

This essay places transnational environmental law in an epistemological context. Starting from the general concept of 'transnational law' and the specific environmental dimension of 'international administrative law', four case histories are presented to illustrate the integrant approach of transnational environmental law. The casesall arising in the 1970sdeal with transboundary problems of aircraft noise, ocean dumping, river pollution, and marine protected areas. In addition to traditional aspects of public international law in the environmental field, they typically interface with questions of administrative law, private international law, criminal law, and human rights law. The essay advocates a new focus on mechanisms for participation by civil society in the operation and implementation of transnational environmental law.

Transnational Environmental Law, 2013

True to its mission, the second issue in volume two of Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) delves into the many and varied ways in which environmental governance is evolving beyond the state. The articles in this issue explore topics as diverse as: accountability in interpreting European Union (EU) framework norms; the role of third party actors in combatting transnational environmental crime; the rationales for socially responsible investing; the possibilities and pitfalls of using market-based tools to improve biodiversity conservation; and the need to develop a grundnorm premised on notions of planetary boundaries for our system of international environmental law. Yet, despite the range of topics and the depth of each of the individual articles, together they reveal an increasingly dominant set of questions in transnational environmental law. These questions concern the role that the market and market-based mechanisms can and should play in environmental protection and the varied ways in which non-state actors, whether in conjunction with or outside the parameters of the state, influence efforts to further environmental conservation and sustainability efforts. Secondary questions that arise within the context of exploring the influence of markets and non-state actors on environmental protection centre on questions of legitimacy and accountability. All of these inquires, however, are framed by two larger background questions: what is the underlying goal of international environmental law and concomitant systems of transnational environmental governance, and how can we go about creating governance systems that are more unified in their understanding of the baseline objectives and thus more symbiotic in their implementation? By engaging with questions about international environmental norms, the evolution of regional legal systems, and more overtly transnational governance challenges, this issue reminds us of the value of transnational environmental law as a framing mechanism for exploring the ways in which traditional and novel systems for environmental protection emerge, evolve, and intersect. In a world increasingly characterized by globalization and global environmental problems such as climate change, these intersections have become both more frequent and more intense, making it all the more important to find ways to conceptualize and respond to these challenges. The articles in this issue, in their individual and collective forms,

Transnational Environmental Law

Environmental challengesnotably climate changeare often characterized as 'wicked' problems: 1 societal in scope, such problems encompass countless stakeholders, defying consensus as to solution and even definition. 2 Wicked problems present as intractable and irreducible. Remedial action along one dimension may ramify in multiple sets of consequences downstreamsome helpful, some unhelpful, some disastrouswith no clear way in science or in politics to predict ex ante which will dominate, or if a given characterization can even secure accord among the relevant stakeholders. 3 In such cases the 'battle' is, in poet Amanda Gorman's memorable words to the United Nations, 'hard and huge'. 4 It might seem like certain environmental challenges are no longer quite so 'wicked'. In our previous editorial we noted several encouraging diplomatic and legislative developments in the field of environmental law: 5 for example, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly's recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, 6 and the US$1.2 trillion Infrastructure Act enacted into law by the Congress of the United States (US). 7 To this list we can now add two more such developments. At the 27 th Conference of the Parties (COP-27) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 8 in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt), a historic 1 F.

Transnational Environmental Law, 2021

The year 2020 has been one of extraordinary tumult and change. At the beginning of the year, few could have predicted how the COVID-19 pandemic would so radically pervade every aspect of human lives and livelihoods, with profound implications for how people live, love, move, work, and connect in our societies. 1 The pandemic has also vividly illustrated our global interconnectedness, as well as the ways in which an initially localized problem can come to transcend international boundaries, with national, provincial, and local implications. The various environmental challenges examined in this issuefrom climate change to biodiversity to persistent organic pollutantsare similarly cross-sectional in nature and effect. For example, like the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change is recognized as a truly global problem, yet one with myriad distinctive impacts and policy responses in different regions, countries, and localities. 2 The systemic nature and impacts of environmental problems are some of the features of environmental research that prompted the development of the new discipline of transnational environmental law. 3 Research in this area simultaneously requires a broader lens to take into account many different branches of law and policy, and a deepening of study to understand how problems manifest at multiple levels of governance. It is a mission to which this journal, as it enters its tenth cycle, is fully dedicated. Indeed, all contributors to this issue in their respective articles provide evidence of this simultaneous broadening and deepening in their exploration of the diverse compartments that make up the wider ecosystem of the study of transnational environmental law.

Transnational Environmental Law, 2012

Transnational Environmental Law

Academia Letters, 2022

The American Journal of International Law, 2013