scholarly journals Contagious Environmental Lawmaking

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-212
Author(s):  
Natasha Affolder

Abstract It is rare to find an environmental law development or ‘innovation’ announced or celebrated without some discussion of its transferability. Discourses of diffusion are becoming increasingly central to the way that we develop, communicate and frame environmental law ideas. And yet, this significant dimension of environmental law practice seems to have outgrown existing conceptual scaffolding and scholarly vocabularies. The concept, and intentionally unfamiliar terminology, of ‘contagious lawmaking’ creates a space for both fleshing out, and problematizing, the phenomenon of the dynamic and multi-directional transfer of environmental law ideas. This article sets the stage for further study of the global diffusion of environmental law. It does so by identifying the phenomenon of contagious lawmaking and by making explicit some of the terminological and methodological challenges implicated in its study. The article draws on narratives of the ‘global’ diffusion of environmental impact assessment, cited as ‘the most widely adopted environmental management tool in the world’.

2019 ◽  
pp. 693-742
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fisher ◽  
Bettina Lange ◽  
Eloise Scotford

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) and other related forms of assessment require decision-makers to take into account the environmental implications of an activity before making a decision about those acitvities. EIA is a feature of most environmental law systems of the world. This chapter is an overview of the Environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) legal regimes in the EU and how they have been implemented into English law. It provides an overview of the distinctive legal nature of both EIA and SEA, the main legal features of each directive, and how they have been implemented into national law. A significant feature of this chapter is that it provides an overview of the case law of the CJEU and UK courts concerninig these regimes.


World ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-378
Author(s):  
Farshad Amiraslani

Despite the paramount role of drylands in supporting people’s livelihoods and rendering ecosystem services, legislation on Environmental Impact Assessment has been introduced belatedly after several decades. By exemplifying Iran, the author proposes two main reasons for such a delayed action. First, drylands are misleadingly considered as barren lands where biodiversity is relatively low. In one classification, deserts are even categorized along with rocks. Second, the author emphasizes that drylands have been subjected to unprecedented changes due to the expansion of infrastructure and urbanization that started in the 1970s. These growing pressures have been beyond the ecological resilience of drylands and have not been monitored, assessed, and modified correctly. Further scrutiny regarding EIA undertakings in drylands and the way they can be improved is now needed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (20) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Vincent Onyango ◽  
Henri Wiman

Indigenous peoples’ participation in public policy and planning is ascribed in numerous international and national legal instruments as essential to the realisation of their self-determination. This study examines how the Akwé: Kon guidelines (AK) can promote effective indigenous peoples participation in environmental management, especially during environmental impact assessment (EIA). Special focus is drawn on the Finnish context, home of the Sámi indigenous people. The study applies an effectiveness review package by Lee and Colley (1999), supplemented by interview and questionnaire surveys, to analyse how effective the AK have been. It was found that although they were useful in promoting further interaction of the Sámi with authorities, the AK did not address their most fundamental political and legal grievances. This leaves room for EIA policy and practice, in Finland and all other jurisdictions with indigenous peoples, to consider how they can more effectively harness the potentialities in AK.


Author(s):  
T Murombo

One of the key strategies for achieving sustainable development is the use of the process of evaluating the potential environmental impacts of development activities. The procedure of environmental impact assessment (EIA) implements the principle of integration which lies at the core of the concept of sustainable development by providing a process through which potential social, economic and environmental impacts of activities are scrutinised and planned for. Sustainable development may not be achieved without sustained and legally mandated efforts to ensure that development planning is participatory. The processes of public participation play a crucial role in ensuring the integration of the socio-economic impacts of a project into the environmental decision-making processes. Public participation is not the only process, nor does the process always ensure the achievement of sustainable development. Nevertheless, decisions that engage the public have the propensity to lead to sustainable development. The public participation provisions in South Africa’s EIA regulations promulgated under the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 show a disjuncture between the idea of public participation and the notion of sustainable development. The provisions do not create a framework for informed participation and leave a wide discretion to environmental assessment practitioners (EAPs) regarding the form which participation should assume. In order for environmental law, specifically EIA laws, to be effective as tools to promote sustainable development the laws must, among other things, provide for effective public participation. The judiciary must also aid in the process by giving content to the legal provisions on public participation in the EIA process.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Warren ◽  
Agung Wardana

Bali faces serious environmental crises arising from overdevelopment of the tourism and real estate industry, including water shortage, rapid conversion of agricultural land, pollution, and economic and cultural displacement. This article traces continuities and discontinuities in the role of Indonesian environmental impact assessment (EIA) during and since the authoritarian ‘New Order’ period. Following the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, the ‘Reform Era’ brought dramatic changes, democratizing and decentralizing Indonesia's governing institutions. Focusing on case studies of resort development projects in Bali from the 1990s to the present, this study examines the ongoing capture of legal processes by vested interests at the expense of prospects for sustainable development. Two particularly controversial projects in Benoa Bay, proposed in the different historical and structural settings of the two eras—the Bali Turtle Island Development (BTID) at Serangan Island in the Suharto era and the Tirta Wahana Bali Internasional (TWBI) proposal for the other side of Benoa in the ‘Reform Era’—enable instructive comparison. The study finds that despite significant changes in the environmental law regime, the EIA process still finds itself a tool of powerful interests in the efforts of political and economic elites to maintain control of decision-making and to displace popular opposition forces to the margins.


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