Establishing Norms in a Kaleidoscopic World


Book Description

We live in a kaleidoscopic world in the new Anthropocene Epoch. This calls for a more inclusive public international law that accepts diverse actors in addition to States and other sources of law, including individualized voluntary commitments. Norms are critical to the stability and legitimacy of this international system. They underlie responses to rapid change, to new technological developments and to problems of protecting commons, promoting public goods, and providing social and economic justice. Certain fundamental norms can be identified ; others are emerging. The norm of mutual accountability underpins the implementation of other norms. Norms are especially relevant to frontier doit-yourself technologies, such as synthetic biology, digital currencies, cyber activity, and climate interventions, as addressed in the book. Reconceiving public international law lessens the sharp divide between public and private law and between domestic and international law.




Envisioning Our Environmental Future


Book Description

With the Stockholm+50 Conference, held on 2-3 June 2022, the global movement to protect the environment has reached a 50 year milestone. The first UN Conference on the Human Environment, also held in Stockholm, from 5-16 June 1972, proved to be the watershed in addressing this problem, and as the world assembles once more in the Swedish capital it is time to think aloud and look ahead. In his address in 1972, the then Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme said: “The decisive question is in which direction we will develop ... there is no individual future, neither for people nor for nations.” The only other head of government to attend in 1972, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, highlighted the development as “one of the primary means of improving the environment of living, of providing food, water, sanitation and shelter, of making the deserts green and mountains habitable” and drew attention to the wisdom of the Atharva Veda: “What of thee I dig out; Let that quickly grow over; Let me not hit thy vitals or thy heart." As we look back over 50 years, we need to assess what has gone wrong in the trajectory travelled so far and look ahead to the future of our environment at this juncture and beyond. As a scholarly journal for global decision-makers, Environmental Policy and Law has sought to envision what lies ahead in the 21st century by inviting outstanding scholarly works from around the world. The 22 articles which resulted from this invitation are presented in this book, Envisioning Our Environmental Future, which is organised in three parts: Testing Times; Global Ideas; and Sectoral Ideas. The book is a sequel to Our Earth Matters (IOS Press), which was published on 5 June 2021. Bharat H. Desai is Professor of International Law and Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International Environmental Law at the Centre for International Legal Studies, School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is Editor-in-Chief of the global journals Environmental Policy and Law (Amsterdam: IOS Press) and Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Prof. Desai’s ideas and proposals are reflected in his published books and in journals of international repute.




By Peaceful Means


Book Description

Distinguished scholars and practitioners commemorate and expand upon the work of international judge, arbitrator, and professor, David D. Caron (1952-2018). By Peaceful Means is an insightful examination of how international dispute resolution seeks to avert disaster and mitigate discord, and how it might continue to do so in our uncertain future.




Solidarity and Community Interests


Book Description

Solidarity and community interest may appear to be purely abstract notions. But in fact they may form the basis of a more flexible approach to international lawmaking than traditional formulas of legally binding commitments. Through an empirical analysis of existing and emerging public international law, this book traces these concepts in existing regimes and investigates the impact they have had and will continue to have on the progressive development of specific international regimes, particularly those serving the protection of the environment and of human rights. It discusses how through these two regimes these concepts have changed the international normative order and explores the challenges such changes have created for implementation and enforcement. One such challenge is the lack of an adequate dispute settlement regime, and the book closes with some practical suggestions for an appropriate mechanism.




Our Earth Matters


Book Description

On 21 May 2019, it was officially recognized that we are now living in the Anthropocene, our earth’s latest geological epoch, named for the 'unmistakable imprint of human activities'. This announcement came almost 60 years after the publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark work of environmental writing, Silent Spring, and next year (2022) it will be 50 years since the first UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in June 1972. This book, Our Earth Matters: Pathways to a Better Common Environmental Future, is a special issue of the journal Environmental Policy and Law, which was first published in 1975. It presents 21 invited contributions by outstanding scholars from around the world, which examine existing global regulatory approaches, processes, instruments and institutions for the protection of the global environment. The articles are grouped under four headings: Prognoses, Processes, Problematique and Prospects, and in them the authors have sought to explore answers to the existential environmental crisis. They urge us to ponder our reckless destruction of natural spaces, endangering of plant and animal species, poisoning of the environment, and general disturbance of our essential ecological processes. The primary objective of the book is to raise the awareness of the global audience by inspiring scholars and decision-makers to re-examine current global approaches to environmental issues and explore the future trajectory with new ideas and frameworks for international environmental governance in the 21st century and beyond. The book will be of interest to all those working to secure the sustainable future of the human race on our only abode, planet Earth. Bharat H. Desai is Professor of International Law and Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International Environmental Law, Centre for International Legal Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Editor-in-Chief of the journal Environmental Policy & Law (Amsterdam: IOS Press) and of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford: OUP).




Global Risks and International Law


Book Description

Global risks present formidable challenges to international law. Although they have long been identified in many other scientific disciplines, they are currently only considered on a sectoral basis in international law in the absence of a legal definition. The aim of this book is threefold: to identify the main elements that characterise global risks in a legal perspective, to determine the characteristics that make them a new category of risk, and to analyse the changes they bring about in the main mechanisms of international law. Drawing on the relationship between international law and other legal systems, and in particular national law, this book highlights possible responses to the challenges posed by global risks. The study is based on extensive practice related to the examples of climate change and pandemics, but opens up perspectives on conclusions that could be common to other global risks, such as financial risks or cyber risks.




Crisis Narratives in International Law


Book Description

This volume offers a series of short and highly self-reflective essays by leading international lawyers on the relation between international law and crises. It particularly shows that international law shapes the crises that it addresses as much as it is shaped by them. It critically evaluates the modes of intervention of international law in the problems of the world. Together these essays provide a unique stocktaking about the role, limits, and potential of international law as well as the worlds that are imagined through international lawyers’ vocabularies.




The Law of International Financial Institutions


Book Description

In this new volume in the Elements series, Daniel D. Bradlow traces the history and development of international law and international financial institutions from 1918 to today, providing a detailed overview of the legal frameworks within which such institutions were established and operate, and which structure their relationships with their member states and their citizens. The book opens with the inter-war years, the Bretton Woods Conference, and background on the treaties establishing the IMF and the World Bank. It then discusses the Articles of Agreement of the IMF and the IBRD, providing information on their governance arrangements, mandates, and operating principles. The international legal status of these two international financial institutions, their international legal rights, responsibilities and obligations, and their privileges and immunities are also examined. In later chapters, the book explores how the structure, functions, and operations of the World Bank and IMF have evolved since their establishment and examines the regional development banks and the regional financial arrangements that were created after them. The book concludes by exploring the challenges that international financial institutions are currently facing, and the contributions that international law can make to help them successfully meet these challenges.




The Survival Nexus


Book Description

Technology and science can enable us to create a richer, healthier, sustainable, and equitable world, but they can also lead to global disaster. After all, human technical, political, economic, business, and ethical decisions determine the impact of scientific discoveries and technological innovations... In this book, Charles Weiss explores the intertwining of science, technology, and world affairs that affects everything from climate change and global health to cybersecurity, biotechnology, and geoengineering. Compact and readable, the book ties together ideas and experiences arising from a broad range of diverse issues, ranging from the structure of the energy economy to the future of work and the freedom of the internet. The Survival Nexus highlights opportunities to mobilize science and technology for a better world through technological innovations that address global health, poverty, and hunger. It alerts the reader to the Earth-in-the balance risks stemming from the decline in the international cooperation that once kept the dangers of pandemics, climate change, and nuclear war in check. It warns of the challenge to democracies from the multi-faceted global information and cyber-wars being waged by authoritarian powers. Central to the global problems it explores are questions of basic ethics: how much are people willing to respect scientific facts, to act today to forestall long-run dangers, and to ensure equitable sharing of the benefits, costs, and risks arising from advances in science and technology. Weiss clearly explains the technical principles underlying these issues, showcasing why scientists, policy makers, and citizens everywhere need to understand how the mix of science and technology with politics, economics, business, ethics, law, communications, psychology, and culture will shape our future. This important nexus underpins issues critical to human survival that are overlooked in the broader context of world affairs.




The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene provides a critical survey into the function of law and governance during a time when humans have the power to impact the Earth system. The Anthropocene is a “crisis of the earth system.” This book addresses its implications for law and legal thinking in the twenty-first century. Unpacking the challenges of the Anthropocene for advocates of ecological law and politics, this handbook pursues a range of approaches to the scientific fact of anthropocentrism, with contributions from lawyers, philosophers, geographers, and environmental and political scientists. Rather than adopting a hubristic normativity, the contributors engage methods, concepts, and legal instruments in a way that underscores the importance of humility and an expansive ethical worldview. Contributors to this volume are leading scholars and future leaders in the field. Rather than upholding orthodoxy, the handbook also problematizes received wisdom and is grounded in the conviction that the ideas we have inherited from the Holocene must all be open to question. Engaging such issues as the Capitalocene, Gaia theory, the rights of nature, posthumanism, the commons, geoengineering, and civil disobedience, this handbook will be of enormous interest to academics, students, and others with interests in ecological law and the current environmental crisis.