Tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion at scale: opportunities and limitations

Rapid and comprehensive social change is required to mitigate pressing environmental issues such as climate change. Social tipping interventions have been proposed as a policy tool for creating this kind of change. Social tipping means that a small minority committed to a target behaviour can create a self-reinforcing dynamic, which establishes the target behaviour as a social norm. The possibility of achieving the large-scale diffusion of pro-environmental norms and related behaviours with an intervention delimited in size and time is tempting. Yet, the canonical model of tipping, the coordination game, may evoke overly optimistic expectations regarding the potential of tipping, due to the underlying assumption of homogenous preferences. Relaxing this assumption, we devise a threshold model of tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion. The model suggests that depending on the distribution of social preferences in a population, and the individual cost of adopting a given pro-environmental behaviour, the same intervention can activate tipping, have little effect, or produce a backlash. Favourable to tip pro-environmental norms are widespread advantageous inequity aversion and low adoption costs. Adverse are widespread self-regarding preferences or disadvantageous inequity aversion, and high costs. We discuss the policy implications of these findings and suggest suitable intervention strategies for different contexts.

Invoking International Environmental Norms Through Treaty Interpretation

This article analyses the way in which international tribunals considering treaty- based disputes incorporate extraneous environmental principles through the use of interpretative mechanisms. Increasingly prominent in the international sphere, this approach allows States bringing claims under historical treaties to adopt and enforce contemporary understandings of environmental obligations. This article pursues an extensive survey of cases exhibiting this process, focusing on the interpretative techniques used; the extent to which the tribunals allowed for environmental arguments; and the basis, and use, of environmental norms. These results facilitate a comparative analysis, which concludes that tribunals’ choices regarding each of these features ultimately depends on the underlying treaty’s relationship with intertemporal law. This article thus provides a guide as to how States may effectively enforce environmental obligations, even absent explicit environmental enforcement mechanisms.

Part IX International Environmental Law in National/Regional Courts, Ch.61 Africa

This chapter reflects on examples where some domestic and regional African courts have engaged directly and indirectly with international environmental law (IEL). Generally speaking, African states have had and continue to have a tenuous and/or superficial relationship with IEL. Having said this, Africa is also a site for innovation and progressive development in the area of IEL, especially through the work of the courts. Regional quasi-judicial institutions are pioneering the innovative jurisprudential development of environmental norms, while domestic African courts are increasingly, either directly or indirectly, interpreting, applying, and further refining IEL. Collectively, while one must be wary of the challenges and barriers to the implementation of IEL, such innovation bodes well for the potential and gradual development of a more amicable and constructive relationship between IEL and Africa.

Part IV Normative Development, Ch.23 Customary International Law and the Environment

This chapter highlights how, despite the large number of environmental agreements at all levels, the role of customary international law remains key in practice. First, many treaties in force remain largely unimplemented. Secondly, treaties only bind those states parties to them, and that introduces sometimes important variations in the scope of environmental agreements. Thirdly, there is at present no treaty formulating binding overarching principles interweaving sectorial environmental agreements. As a result, it is often necessary to revert to customary norms when difficulties of interpretation or implementation arise. Fourthly, custom is important to mediate between a range of environmental and non-environmental interests governed by different treaties. Finally, custom plays an important role in disputes concerning a disputed area or where there is no applicable treaty. The chapter then analyses the process of custom formation with reference to environmental norms in order to show both the ‘banality’ and the peculiarities of this process. It also looks at the content of customary international environmental law as recognized in the case law.

Legal Consequences of Downstreaming in The Mineral and Coal Mining Business

This paper aims to analyze the consequences of commodity dependence, an impact on the trend of natural resources exported in raw form. On the one hand, it creates a loss factor in the loss of value opportunities in the acquisition of added value for the Indonesian state, and then it also creates too many opportunities for foreign parties in obtaining industrial raw materials. Precisely due to the liberalization of mineral exploitation and exploitation of foreign parties, many leave big social and environmental problems. The research method in this paper uses a normative legal approach supported by socio-legal, qualitative analysis of social and environmental norms. The research results are papers on the effectiveness of the downstream process so that it has resistance to the dynamics of the trade economy and global conditions. So that in the future independently to process mineral and coal natural resources and optimize the latest mineral and coal regulations and provide facilities for various Omnibuslaw management permits to create a centralized policy system and use of raw materials for domestic industries to achieve results to encourage commodity-based regional economies to influence economic growth independent which guarantees and provides benefits for the welfare of the people.

China will seek to lead in global environmental norms

Significance It was enshrined in China’s Constitution in 2018. The concept has helped reshape discussion of environmental protection in China; Beijing is now deploying it in international fora too. Impacts Foreign governments and environmental NGOs will not welcome ‘ecological civilisation’ uncritically. Beijing’s espoused commitment to environmental principles will be used to encourage it to commit to ‘greening’ the Belt and Road. China’s construction of coal-fired power stations overseas will come in for particular attention.

The Political Economy of Conservation

This chapter introduces a strategic actor framework of environmental norm diffusion, which it uses to develop a theory of the diffusion of the norm of large marine protected areas. By incorporating domestic material interests into environmental norm diffusion, it builds norm diffusion theory to better explain why certain environmental norms gain global traction while others do not, as well as why there is considerable variation in how environmental norms are localized. The chapter also examines the interests of key stakeholder groups, including the state, extractive and non-extractive industry, environmental groups, and local communities. The framework foregrounds business influence to explain how governments attempt to reconcile new environmental norms with commercial interests. In some instances, business influence can lead to stronger protections, but more often tends to undermine conservation goals. This chapter analyses the potential and the limits of business influence over state conservation policy.