Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shipping contribute meaningfully to climate change. Despite significant efforts of the International Maritime Organization over recent decades, existing measures are still inadequate for achieving net-zero GHG emissions in the shipping sector and multilateral negotiations hold little promise for improvement. This article considers the polluter pays principle (PPP) as an alternative or additional pathway for tackling marine GHG emissions. The article focuses on the challenges in identifying polluters, which is the key issue that must be addressed before the PPP can be applied. Specifically, the article presents an analytical framework and examines various approaches to identifying marine GHG emissions polluters. Firstly, it identifies the polluter from a general perspective, using three approaches: examining the issue broadly, reviewing international conventions and European Union initiatives that incorporate the PPP, and analyzing selected domestic legislation reflecting the PPP. The article then focuses on maritime shipping, considering specifically two types of contract of affreightment – charterparties and bills of lading – while highlighting key factors in identifying the polluter. In conclusion, the assessment of causal links, along with operational and management decisions regarding the vessel, attribute the status of primary polluter to the shipowner, demise charterer, and time charterer.

This article analyzes the application of environmental impact assessment as a tool for climate change mitigation from a global comparative perspective. It firstly confirms that, despite persistent resistance in a few jurisdictions, climate effect assessment is now widely applied on a global scale. Yet the article also shows that this practice has faced recurrent practical and conceptual issues, in particular, concerning the determination of the significance of a project’s climate effect and the assessment of indirect effects. Lastly, this article assesses how states have addressed these issues and identifies good practices. In doing so, the article illustrates the potential of functionalist comparative analysis in advancing our understanding of climate law and suggesting policy-relevant conclusions.

Over the past 20 years, the European Union (EU) has shifted the emphasis of its trade policy from multilateral agreements towards bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and, more recently, to unilateral policy instruments. In this article we analyze the EU’s growing ambitions in promoting environmental sustainability in the context of these shifts. We advance an analytical and a conceptual argument, focusing on a product group that is highly relevant to the EU’s green transition: aviation fuels. We argue that the increasing hardness and ambition of the EU’s environmental policy instruments on the sustainability of aviation fuels contributes to a trend of ‘unilateralization’ in EU trade policy. Our analysis further illustrates how the complementary qualities of hardness and ambition in the multi-, bi-, and unilateral EU instruments lead to their flexible combination in the EU trade policy mix. Based on these findings, we propose to describe and critically analyze the EU’s current approach as ‘flexilateralism’. The EU has changed from prioritizing multilateralism to a more pragmatic, flexilateral approach, rather than for fully fledged bilateralism or unilateralism. This is what the EU’s more assertive ‘strategic autonomy’ may be about: a flexilateral approach to better address issues such as environmental sustainability with the most useful combination of instruments available.

This article investigates whether environmental planning law can demonstrate ethical responsibility for its role in settler colonialism. Planning law contributes to settler colonialism by diminishing, excluding, and eliminating alternative views of land that are fundamental to First Nations culture, philosophy, and law/lore. The article adopts a transnational legal frame that recognizes and promotes First Nations as sovereign. The investigation is focused primarily on the planning law system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, while being guided by interpretations and applications of the rights of First Nations peoples by courts in Canada. It is argued that state planning law in NSW fails to give effect to ethical responsibility because its operation continues to dominate and marginalize Aboriginal legal culture by eroding the necessary ontological and epistemic relationships with land. However, there is potential for change. Opportunities to disrupt settler colonialism have emerged through bottom-up litigation, which has promoted interpretations, applications, and implementation of law that can be performed in ways that resonate with Canadian case law. While the absence of treaty or constitution-based rights protection in NSW and Australia means that the transplant is not seamless, the article argues that laws should not be interpreted and applied in ways that perpetuate settler colonialism where alternative interpretations can lead to a different outcome.

The interface of science and law is a territory frequently occupied by policymakers. In facilitating this interface, epistemic communities have become significant influencers in policymaking, especially at the European Union (EU) level, as a result of its complex multilevel governance system. In this article we assess the quality and nature of interactions between epistemic communities and EU stakeholders on the Horizon-funded project ‘PrecisionTox’, by deploying the concept of epistemic communities developed by Haas, as well as the learning modes of epistemic communities as presented and adapted by Dunlop. The overarching goal of PrecisionTox is to advance the safety assessment of chemicals by establishing a new, cost-effective testing paradigm built from evolutionary theory, which entails reduction, replacement, and refinement of mammalian testing (the 3Rs). The study shows that EU-funded projects can provide an excellent platform for building epistemic communities and forging alliances with EU policymakers, especially when novel technologies may be unlocked and socialized. This study also explores the early interaction of policymakers with epistemic communities through different forms of learning to better understand the complexities surrounding these new technologies in order to set an agenda for policy interventions.

Historiographic studies of transnational environmental law (TEL) are increasingly relevant as scholars and practitioners search for ways in which to deliver more quickly and efficiently effective regulation that is responsive to global environmental issues. This article uses new and original archival research to better locate the Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa (1900 London Convention) in its legal-scientific historical context. Most of the scholarship on this topic draws on historian John M. MacKenzie's groundbreaking analysis of what he called ‘the hunting cult’ and its role in the imperial advance into India, Africa, and elsewhere. When viewed through the dual lens of legal history and the history of science, the late 19th and early 20th centuries represented a period of transition during which a new science-based perspective advanced by evolutionary biologists was embraced by science-minded policymakers, and expressed in domestic law and foreign policy aimed at the preservation of endangered species and the protection of biodiversity. The 1900 London Convention is an early example of a modern TEL instrument informed by science and by values that today most recognize as being critically important and universal. The new history in this article also resonates as an example of how polarizing political narratives can delay law reform and the importance of maintaining focus on collaborative problem solving and science-based regulation of complex transnational environmental issues.

This article scrutinizes the role of transparency in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Specifically, it examines a widely heard claim that ‘transparency is the backbone of the Paris Agreement’, and the assumption that mandatory transparency (reporting and review) is essential to fill potential gaps in climate action left by voluntary, nationally determined climate targets. We subject this claim to critical scrutiny by tracing the political contestations around the desired role of transparency in the UNFCCC, with a focus on mitigation-related transparency. Our analysis shows that, despite developing countries expressing concerns during the pre-Paris negotiations, the Paris Agreement's enhanced transparency framework (ETF) is almost exclusively ‘enhanced’ (compared with earlier provisions) for developing countries, with some instances of regression for developed countries. Furthermore, the effects of such enhanced reporting are not straightforward and might de facto have an impact on countries’ autonomy to nationally determine their mitigation targets in diverse ways, even as all the detailed reporting does not facilitate comparability of effort. With implementation of the ETF due to start in 2024, our analysis provides a timely exploration of the extent to which transparency is really a backbone of the Paris Agreement, and for whom and with what implications for ambitious action from all under the international climate regime. It calls into question whether the transformative potential of transparency, much extolled within the UNFCCC process, will materialize for all countries in a similar manner or rather will have an impact on countries differentially.

The expansion of soybean cultivation in South America has created substantial economic prosperity but has also raised a series of unsustainable land-use issues. Considering the telecoupling system (a system of socio-ecological interactions between distant places) between South America and its soybean trade partners, transnational governance could play an important role in addressing these issues. To achieve effective governance of this specific telecoupling system, this study applies a polycentric approach to improve the existing transnational governance and identify more suitable governance arrangements. This study first explores the telecoupling system and the existing transnational governance system of soybean land use in South America. It then compares the existing governance system with the polycentric approach to examine the gaps between them. Based on these analyses, suggestions for improving the governance system are provided, including increasing the involvement of major governance centres, improving public-private partnerships, and establishing a knowledge-sharing platform.

The scope of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) has traditionally been limited to on-site effects. This approach faces limitations when dealing with intricate value chains. Particularly for projects involving biomass-to-energy facilities, the primary environmental impacts often originate from off-site biomass production. This article considers the resulting limitations of EIAs by using two legal disputes in France as illustrative examples. In the Gardanne and the La Mède cases, French Administrative Courts sought to establish the necessity for project proponents to incorporate supply-related impacts into the EIA process. Strategies aimed at broadening the scope of EIAs, either by expanding the assessed project boundaries or by invoking the concept of cumulative impacts, were not deemed the most relevant approaches. Instead, the concept of ‘indirect impact’ emerged as a valuable tool for incorporating supply-related impacts. However, to prevent the indirect impact concept from being disregarded as too ambiguous or ineffective, it should be complemented by precise criteria to determine whether an impact may be considered indirect. We study these avenues within the broader evolving landscape of EIA laws, and by exploring ways to harmonize EIAs with other regulatory instruments governing value chains.

Awareness of agricultural climate impacts is growing. In the European Union (EU), the agricultural sector is responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to receive considerable EU budgetary support. A large share of agricultural emissions is linked to livestock husbandry, a sector the direct and indirect climate impacts of which the EU's ‘green’ agricultural policies have historically ignored. This blind spot extends to the sizeable global deforestation footprint from EU livestock feed imports that remains unaddressed, despite the EU's aspired status as a global climate leader and major global agricultural market player. This article benchmarks the evolution of EU agri-climate legal and policy developments, using livestock emissions as a case study to highlight the importance of learning from the successes and failures of the EU experience, to realize future attempts to tackle global agricultural emissions.

The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is one of the best-known and most controversial of the international investment treaties. The energy transition necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement climate target will require large and sustained flows of investment capital. Scholars, environmentalists, industry representatives, and governmental officials have intensively debated the modernization of the ECT. The main point of contention is whether the ECT can facilitate the energy transition or whether it entrenches fossil lock-in in unsustainable and unjust ways. This article proposes a comprehensive and integrated approach to the ECT, guided by the theoretical matrix of Earth system law scholarship. Our analysis reveals that the ECT cannot address contemporary socio-ecological challenges, but rather it remains a sectoral piece of a supranational economic constitution far removed from the most pressing exigencies of the Anthropocene.