Unearthing Under-Governed Territory

Author(s):  
Peter J. Stoett

This chapter looks at whether and how international organizations and criminal law can help us deal effectively with transnational environmental crimes and, more broadly, with environmental insecurity and injustice. It explores the question of whether the climate change justice agenda can benefit from the expanded pursuit of transnational environmental crime. The chapter asks whether international environmental law, refurbished, act as a mitigating factor in climate change. It concludes that while current international legal instruments can help spur additional action, by themselves, they will prove inadequate. Consequently, one idea proposed is a new international environmental court to deter all forms of ecocide.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory L. Rose

Environmental law became global through the adoption of environmental treaties in the last quarter decade of the 20th century. Similarly, globalisation of criminal law accelerated when the Convention on Transnational Organised Crime 2000 (CTOC) deepened international legal cooperation between States to combat transnational crime. A protocol to the CTOC, complemented by voluntary guidelines and model legislation, could promote international harmonisation of laws against environmental crimes. This article argues that the time is right to bring together certain elements of international environmental and transnational criminal law.


Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert

This chapter focuses on the connection between the international legal framework governing the conservation of natural resources and human rights law. The objective is to examine the potential synergies between international environmental law and human rights when it comes to the protection of natural resources. To do so, it concentrates on three main areas of potential convergence. It first focuses on the pollution of natural resources and analyses how human rights law offers a potential platform to seek remedies for the victims of pollution. It next concentrates on the conservation of natural resources, particularly on the interconnection between protected areas, biodiversity, and human rights law. Finally, it examines the relationship between climate change and human rights law, focusing on the role that human rights law can play in the development of the current climate change adaptation and mitigation frameworks.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Gregory Rose

Environmental law became global through the adoption of environmental treaties in the last quarter decade of the 20th century. Similarly, globalisation of criminal law accelerated when the Convention on Transnational Organised Crime 2000 (CTOC) deepened international legal cooperation between States to combat transnational crime. A protocol to the CTOC, complemented by voluntary guidelines and model legislation, could promote environmental crime harmonisation. This article argues that the time is right to bring together certain elements of international environmental and transnational criminal law.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 69-73
Author(s):  
Galina V. Arsenyeva ◽  
◽  
Irina S. Khramova ◽  

The article is devoted to the study of the evolution of Russian legislation on environmental crime. The empirical basis of the study was made up of legislative acts of the mid-XVII — early XX centuries. The main trends in the evolution of criminal law protection of natural objects are revealed. The authors came to the conclusion that despite a certain unsystematic and casuistic nature of the legislation establishing responsibility for environmental crimes, the provisions of legislative acts of the mid-XVII — early XX centuries served as the basis for further development of the system of environmental crimes.


Author(s):  
Simon Caney

. . . It’s exciting to have a real crisis on your hands when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum things like the environment. . . . The world’s climate is undergoing dramatic and rapid changes. Most notably, the earth has been becoming markedly warmer, and its weather has, in addition to this, become increasingly unpredictable. These changes have had, and continue to have, important consequences for human life. In this chapter, I wish to examine what is the fairest way of dealing with the burdens created by global climate change. Who should bear the burdens? Should it be those who caused the problem? Should it be those best able to deal with the problem? Or should it be someone else? I defend a distinctive cosmopolitan theory of justice, criticize a key principle of international environmental law, and, moreover, challenge the “common but differentiated responsibility” approach that is affirmed in current international environmental law. Before considering different answers to the question of who should pay for the costs of global climate change, it is essential to be aware of both the distinct kind of theoretical challenge that global climate change raises and also the effects that climate change is having on people’s lives. Section 1 thus introduces some preliminary methodological observations on normative theorizing about global climate change. In addition, it outlines some basic background scientific claims about the impacts of climate change. Section 2 examines one common way of thinking about the duty to bear the burdens caused by climate change, namely the doctrine that those who have caused the problem are responsible for bearing the burden. It argues that this doctrine, while in many ways appealing, is more problematic than might first appear and is also incomplete in a number of different ways (sections 3 through 8). In particular, it needs to be grounded in a more general theory of justice and rights.


Author(s):  
Humphreys Stephen ◽  
Otomo Yoriko

This chapter opens up some new theoretical perspectives on environmental law, which has surprisingly been subjected to little theoretical speculation. International environmental law is generally characterized as quintessential ‘soft law’: general principles and aspirational treaties with weak or exhortatory compliance mechanisms, often dependent on other disciplines altogether—science and economics—for direction and legitimacy. At the same time, the problems it is called upon to deal with are immense, frequently catastrophic, and global in nature: climate change, species extinction, increasing desert, disappearing rainforest. To rectify this, the chapter delves into a question of terminology—why ‘international environmental law’?—before exploring its Romantic and colonial origins and concluding with how international environmental law’s origins in the confluence of the Romantic and the colonial explains the apparent mismatch between its ambitious stated objectives and its muted regulatory provisions—and how this tension continues to inform its functioning today.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valsamis Mitsilegas ◽  
Fabio Giuffrida

The last decades have witnessed a growing emphasis on the relationship between environmental law and criminal law. Legislation aimed at tackling environmental crime has been adopted at national,eu, and international level and has been gradually evolving over time. These developments notwithstanding, the current legal framework faces a number of challenges in tackling the largely inter-related phenomena of transnational, organised and economic environmental crime. This study of Valsamis Mitsilegas and Fabio Giuffrida addresses these challenges by focusing on the role of the European Union- and more specifically its criminal justice agencies (Europol and Eurojust)- in tackling transnational environmental crime. The study analyses the role of Eurojust and Europol in supporting and coordinating the competent national authorities dealing with investigations and/or prosecutions on transnational environmental crime, and it shows that, for the time being, the full potential of these agencies is not adequately fulfilled with regard to fighting this phenomenon effectively.


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