Global law and the environment is an increasingly prominent and rapidly evolving area of scholarship. In confronting global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, freshwater scarcity, and other symptoms of planetary breakdown, critical scholars from different intellectual traditions are questioning the traditional approach taken within environmental law which has, so far, only managed to save “some trees” but failed to keep “the forest”. These dominant legal interactions often use the law to address “problems” after they arrive. However, the law plays a key role also in constituting these “problems” by incentivizing certain harmful activities, upholding socio-political-economic structures, and through the limited framing of the issues it claims to solve. It is becoming increasingly clear that we live in a “legally constituted world”. Against this background, there is a need for further critical reflection on the role of the law in preventing, addressing, and even driving the entangled socio-ecological-economic crises of modernity. Through interrogating the assumptions that underlie environmental law, critical scholars have exposed, challenged, and put forward alternative visions to its neo-colonial and gendered biases; its exclusion of indigenous perspectives and voices; its construction upon problematic representations of “the environment” that centres an anthropocentric worldview; and a neoliberal economic order that fosters vast environmental damage.

Global animal law has emerged as a new legal subdiscipline and area of study following the widespread proliferation of animal law and animal law studies across the globe. However, there remains confusion as to what exactly global animal law is. Early global animal law studies are also entrenching norms that facilitate coloniality and neglect intersecting oppressions. In response, this article proposes a conception of global animal law based in global law metatheory and second wave animal ethics. This article critically analyses instances of “globabble” within global animal law, where global-speak has masked ethnocentric, western influence, and bias. This article recommends diversifying and decolonizing global animal law, relabelling some such work as western/European perspectives on animals and international law. It also recommends focusing on deep, critical, and radical animal justice in lieu of welfarism or rights-based theory. The article argues this could inspire a more interconnected, post-Westphalian, multilateral global animal lawscape.

This article examines the implications for a change in framework from sustainable development to degrowth in the environmental and social discourse of International Economic Law (I.Econ.L.). It argues that the framework of sustainable development accommodates the Global North's inaction in assuaging environmental degradation and alleviating global inequality by remaining embedded in a capitalist, growth-oriented political economy. Degrowth would provide a strategy to move past such an impasse by encouraging actors to grapple with the role growth plays in the rationale behind I.Econ.L. Degrowth advocates a planned economic contraction to reconcile human's relationship with the environment. This project serves as the first effort to link ideas of degrowth with I.Econ.L. and seeks to identify some of the areas in I.Econ.L.'s scholarship where degrowth would serve as an alternative to sustainable development and what such an alternative would mean for the norms in the different areas of I.Econ.L.

There seem to be no answers to resolve the deadlock between the Global North and the Global South on liability and compensation for loss and damage from climate change. Revisiting the original story of international environmental law from the Stockholm Conference of 1972 may help us address these historical tensions. In doing so, this article unveils the genesis of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) from the Stockholm Conference as an alternative consciousness centred around the aspirations of the Global South. Indira Gandhi's plenary address at Stockholm outlined the Global South's position on environmental issues, which greatly influenced early TWAIL scholarship in the 1980s. Locating TWAIL's origins at Stockholm allows us to: (1) chart the environmental concerns of the Global South till date; (2) infer its evolved view on the “development versus environment” debate; and (3) understand the role of future TWAIL scholarship in challenging the enduring and structural limitations of international environmental law, especially in future deliberations on loss and damage.

International environmental law has come a long way in addressing humans’ extractive and negative relationship with nature, although despite its profound anthropocentrism and economic focus. This paper analyzes how and whether international environmental law can be conceived differently by incorporating different perspectives about the human/nature relationship. More specifically, the article engages with the concept of multinaturalism, as developed by anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, to address the advantages and significance of admitting indigenous forms of life in international environmental law. Forms of life which not only relate to nature differently but can conceive of nature differently. Taking such an approach requires a methodological shift to examine the existence of forms of life that invert the traditional Western conception of nature and culture, thus allowing for the potential to move international environmental law beyond anthropocentrism, while providing elements to resolve the tension between development/economic concerns in ecological conservation and long-term species survival.

Agrobiodiversity conservation is vital for food security, maintaining ecological balance, and preserving socio-cultural norms. There is substantial evidence to support that agrobiodiversity hotspots coincide with localized, small-scale peasant food systems. Preserving such food systems is necessary for protecting agrobiodiversity. The current legal framework over agrobiodiversity is fragmented and inadequate. A major portion of this framework is situated within intellectual property law and farmers’ rights law, neither of which are designed to foster sustainable management of agrobiodiversity. In this context, the 2018 Peasants’ Rights Declaration has the potential to fill the gaps in the existing framework. The paper critically analyses the Declaration by exploring some of its legal innovations in improving agrobiodiversity conservation. While some of these innovations are commendable, they are unlikely to be adopted by states owing to their radical nature. Their adoption would require a massive overhaul of the existing agricultural model and power structures embedded within it.

As of 2020, close to 1 billion people are living with mental disorders. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and intensified the shortcomings in guaranteeing the right to mental health, particularly of the marginalized. The article discusses the international human rights framework with the endeavour of highlighting the non-derogability of the right and the obligations imposed on States in pursuance of it. By discussing the Indian experience the article exemplifies that, despite greater normative clarity, practice has not been brought into conformity in most States, resulting in pre-existing lacunae being amplified during the pandemic. The article proceeds to outline recommendations for States to consider by treating India as a global reference. The overarching conclusion is that while the pandemic has made it even more apparent that the implementation of the rights-framework is deficient, it has also provided an opportunity to advance which can only be availed by operationalizing this framework.

In the past decade China's engagement with UN peacekeeping has intensified. In particular, Beijing has supported and participated in peace operations that were not fully compatible with the consensual, impartial, and non-coercive models of peacekeeping traditionally employed by the United Nations. China's endorsement of offensive and intrusive missions is not inconsequential, given that it clashes with its professed adherence to rigid interpretations of the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and the non-use of force in international relations. This article suggests that to make sense of China's involvement in unconventional peacekeeping operations one must examine the broader process of foreign policy recalibration that is redefining the interests and priorities of the country as a new great power. Furthermore, by examining China's ambivalent approach to the principles that have traditionally defined the legal framework of UN peacekeeping, this article highlights the opportunities and challenges that China will face as a provider of international security.