Environmental Law is a complex body of law made up of global, international, national, state and local statutes, treaties, conventions, regulations and policies which seek to protect the environment and natural resources affected, impacted or endangered by human activities.
This Research Guide is intended as a starting point for research in the field of International Environmental Law. It provides the basic legal materials available in the Peace Palace Library, both in print and electronic format. Handbooks, leading articles, bibliographies, periodicals, serial publications and documents of interest are presented in the Selective Bibliography section. Links to the PPL Catalogue are inserted. The Library’s classification index code 160p. Environmental Questions and subject heading (keyword) International Environmental Law are instrumental for searching through the Catalogue. Special attention is given to our subscriptions on databases, e-journals, e-books and other electronic resources. Finally, this Research Guide features links to relevant websites and other online resources of particular interest.
Climate change in the dock: rethinking the role international law, by Joy Hyvarinen
Finding Ways to Prevent Food Waste and Loss on World Environment Day (June 5th)
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Climate change, forests and REDD Environmental protection in multi-layered systems Die Zugangs- und Teilhaberegelungen der Biodiversitätskonvention unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der staatlichen Souveränität These publications are selected for you by .
This completely revised edition of Energy Law and the Environment has greatly expanded its scope to explore how international law engages with multinational companies regarding energy sources, ownership of those resources, and state sovereignty. Written for all the players in the energy sector, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, this second edition has been aptly renamed International Law for Energy and the Environment. It considers issues of energy sector regulation related to economics and protection of intellectual property associated with development of technologies for mitigating environmentally damaging emissions.
In recent years, the increasing focus on climate change and environmental degradation has prompted unprecedented attention being paid towards the criminal liability of individuals, organisations and even states for polluting activities. These developments have given rise to a new area of criminological study, often called ‘green criminology’. Yet in all the theorising that has taken place in this area, there is still a marked absence of specific focus on those actually suffering harm as a result of environmental degradation. This book represents a unique attempt to substantively conceptualise and examine the place of such ‘environmental victims’ in criminal justice systems both nationally and internationally. Grounded in a comparative approach and drawing on critical criminological arguments, this volume examines many of the areas traditionally considered by victimologists in relation to victims of environmental crime and, more widely, environmental harm. These include victims’ rights, compensation, treatment by criminal justice systems and participation in that process. The book approaches the issue of ‘environmental victimisation’ from a ‘social harms’ perspective (as opposed to a ‘criminal harms’ one) thus problematising the definitions of environmental crime found within most jurisdictions. Victims of Environmental Harm concludes by mapping out the contours of further research into a developing green victimology and how this agenda might inform criminal justice reform and policy making at national and global levels.This book will be of interest to researchers across a number of disciplines including criminology, international law, victimology, socio-legal studies and physical sciences as well as professionals involved in policy making processes.
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In this book Hans-Joachim Koch, Doris König, Joachim Sanden and Roda Verheyen provide an edited overview on the recent discussions regarding legal questions of tackling climate change, and the legal instruments related to environmental problems caused by international shipping. An esteemed international group of authors make important contributions to the legal challenges in international, European and domestic law. Focal points are multilateral environmental agreements and the law of the sea as well as the potential contributions by municipalities. This important new collection, based on the research findings of the Hamburg International Environmental Law Conference 2011, are of particular relevance for lawyers and scholars interested in the recent legal discussions on climate change law and environmental Law of the Sea.
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This book is a review of the development of the WTO dispute resolution procedure and the power and influence it has gained over the practises of the member countries as well as in other international treaties. The book addresses the development of environmental competency in the WTO and examines the arguments of those who oppose WTO rule making with impacts on the environment. The WTO’s interactions with multilateral environmental agreements are considered and recent WTO cases including the 2011 US/Mexico tuna dispute and the US sea turtles decision are analysed in detail. In examining how an international organisation which was established with a specific purpose in mind has come to interact in fields beyond its original remit, James Watson demonstrates how the dispute resolution system at the WTO has come to work in a judicialised manner, operating with an informal system of precedent. This has led to the contracting parties placing more reliance on the decisions of the dispute panels and appeal body when considering policy options, with WTO rulings increasingly influencing the behaviour of national legislatures in regard to the environment. The book goes on to make concrete recommendations, based on existing practise in the WTO dispute resolution procedure, which could enhance decision making in environmental cases heard by the WTO. The book argues that this could be achieved with straightforward amendments to the WTO, based on existing practices endorsed under the WTO for other policy considerations. The WTO and the Environment will be of particular interest to academics and students of International and Environmental law.
The Routledge Handbook of International Environmental Law is an advanced level reference guide which provides a comprehensive and contemporary overview of the corpus of international environmental law (IEL). The Handbook features specially commissioned papers by leading experts in the field of international environmental law, drawn from a range of both developed and developing countries in order to put forward a truly global approach to the subject. Furthermore, it addresses emerging and cross-cutting issues of critical importance for the years ahead. This up-to-date and authoritative book makes it an essential reference work for students, scholars and practitioners working in the field.
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The essays selected for this volume present critical viewpoints from the debate about the need to establish rights on behalf of greater environmental protection. Three main areas for developing environmental rights are surveyed, including: extensionist theories that link existing rights (for example to subsistence or territory) to threats of harm from exacerbated resource scarcity, pollution or rapid environmental change; proposals for rights to specified environmental goods or services, such as rights to a safe environment and the capacity to assimilate greenhouse gas emissions; and rights that protect the interests of parties not currently recognized as having rights, including nonhuman subjects, natural objects and future generations. This volume captures the potential for and primary challenges to the development of rights as instruments for safeguarding the planet’s life-support capacities and features proposals and analyses which argue the need to create an avenue of recourse against ecological degradation, whether on behalf of human or nonhuman right holders.
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This collection of essays examines the development and application of environmental laws and the relationship between public laws and international law. Notions of good governance, transparency and fairness in decision-making are analysed within the area of the law perceived as having the greatest potential to address today’s global environmental concerns. International trends, such as free trade and environmental markets, are also observed to be infiltrating national laws. Together, the essays illustrate the idea that in the context of environmental problems being dynamic and environmental changes appearing suddenly, laws become difficult to design and effect. Typically, they are also devised within a conflicted setting. It is in this changeable and discordant context that environmental discourses such as precaution, justice, risk, equity, security, citizenship and markets contribute to legal responses, present legal opportunities or hinder progress.
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The online edition of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, edited by Rüdiger Wolfrum, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. This comprehensive resource contains peer-reviewed articles on every aspect of public international law.
On January 30, 2013, the court (Rechtbank) in the Hague, The Netherlands, ruled that Royal Dutch Shell can be held partially responsible for pollution in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region and ordered it to pay damages to one farmer. The Dutch court dismissed four out of five allegations of the Ogoni people against the oil company. Although Shell blames the oil pollution to sabotage, activists say the case could set a precedent for damage claims related to the foreign activities of multinational companies.
Read morePromoting security, peace and justice for man and nature by preventing environmental degradation and by restoring environmental damage where done, defines the programme of the Institute for Environmental Security (IES).
Read moreForty years after the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and twenty years after the first “Earth Summit” held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, the world community will meet again. This time at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), in short Rio+20: “the future we want”.
Read moreNowadays nature is threatened by all kinds of dangers which usually have one common denominator: they are caused by humans. Everyday human activity is affecting wildlife in many ways, such as habitat destruction, the use of pesticides, monoculture, genetically manipulated organisms and pollution, which is driving many species towards extinction. For birds, habitat loss is the most important factor closely followed by threats posed by materials used to build in the construction industry. The trend among architects is to use plate glass in building, purely for aesthetic reasons.
Read moreOn February 3rd, Johnson Toribiong, the President of the Pacific Island Nation Palau, announced that his country will seek an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague regarding the issue of climate change. This blog will briefly discuss the measures that states in these circumstances can invoke during a court procedure.
Read moreSolving the problem of marine debris and plastic pollution in the World’s oceans is a very complex and challenging enterprise. In particular, its legal framework. Various international and regional instruments, domestic and local laws and regulations apply directly or indirectly to marine debris pollution. The conspicuously global nature of this problem indicates that a potential role of significance is reserved for international environmental law. However, not all international and regional instruments are legally binding, and not all have a strong focus on marine debris and plastic pollution.
Read moreCurrent scientific evidence demonstrates that a sixth major extinction of biological diversity event is underway. The Earth is losing between one and ten percent of biodiversity per decade, mostly due to habitat loss, pest invasion, pollution, climate change, over-harvesting and disease. Certain natural ecosystem services, which are vital for human societies, are under stress.
Read moreWhales – large, mysterious, intelligent, and endangered. Has any mammal inspired such romantic images of the sea and love for nature as much as the whale, yet aroused such controversy in global environmental conservation? King of the Seas, symbol of the environmental movement, meat and oil for commercial whaling. Over the years, large-scale commercial whaling [...]
Read moreThe most general definition of climate change is a change in the statistical properties of the climate system when considered over periods of decades or longer, regardless of cause.The term is sometimes used to refer specifically to climate change caused by human activity.
Read moreToday, Monday 7 December 2009, governmental representatives from 192 countries are starting two weeks of negotiations in Copenhagen which should eventually result in a new global treaty on climate change. Two years ago, at the UN climate conference held in Bali, governments agreed, with the adoption of the Bali Road Map, to start work on a new global agreement attempting to forge a global framework on carbon emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.
In Italy in July 2009, the G8 and a number of
Read moreFor over a decade the cultivation of crops of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been a highly controversial issue in Europe. GMOs can be defined as organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating or natural recombination.This controversial development asks for legal action
Read moreApril 29, 2009
Guidelines for the next two years work in the Arctic Council
Wednesday, the eight Arctic Council Ministers ratified the Tromsø Declaration. The declaration is the guideline for the work in the Arctic Council the next two years. It is seen as an important leap to reduce the global warming.
The Arctic [...]
Read moreEnvironmental problems caused by tourism in Antarctica
Read moreThe Mare Liberum Case Case concerning sovereignty over Abundantia Ridge and other matters. Rosmarus v Urusus.
From 16 – 18 April 2009 the 32nd Telders International Law Moot Court Competition will be held at the Peace Palace in The Hague. The Telders Moot Court Competition could be considered the most prestigious and important [...]
Read moreA bibliography on the ‘Implementation of environmental law” is now available on the Peace Palace Library website. The bibliography has been compiled exclusively from materials available in the Peace Palace Library for the use of the researchers of the 2008 programme of the Centre for Studies and Research in International Law and International relations of the Hague Academy of International Law
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Koch, H.-J. (et al.) (eds.), Climate Change and Environmental Hazards related to Shipping: an International Legal Framework, Leiden, Nijhoff, 2013.
Alam, S. (et al.) (eds.), Routledge Handbook of International Environmental Law, London, Routledge, 2013.
Hall, M., Victims of Environmental Harm: Rights, Recognition and Redress under National and International Law, London, Routledge, 2013.
Vanderheiden, S. (ed.), Environmental Rights, Farnham, Ashgate, 2012.
B. Jessup and K. Rubenstein (eds.), Environmental Discourses in Public and International Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Park, P.D., International Law for Energy and the Environment, Boca Raton, FL, CRC, 2013.
