Environmental Discourses in Public and International Law

How do dominant views and arguments about environmental problems traverse and connect international and public law?

Brad Jessup (Edited by), Kim Rubenstein (Edited by)

9781107019423, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 February 2012

558 pages, 3 tables
23.5 x 16 x 2.9 cm, 1 kg

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.

Introduction: using environmental discourses to traverse public and international law Brad Jessup and Kim Rubenstein
Part I. Theories and Rights as Discourses in Environmental Law: 1. Justice for future generations: environment discourses, international law and climate change Peter Lawrence
2. The journey of environmental justice through public and international law Brad Jessup
3. The political discourse of land stewardship reframed as a statutory duty Mark Shepheard and Paul Martin
4. Dephysicalisation and entitlement: legal and cultural discourses of place as property Nicole Graham
Part II. Discourses in Environmental Decisions: 5. Perspectives on discourse in international environmental law: expert knowledge and challenges to deliberative democracy Jaye Ellis
6. Getting to yes: structuring and disciplining arguments for and against transgenic agricultural products in European Union authorisations Bettina Lange
7. Nuclear narratives, environmental discourse and UK energy policy and legislation, 1970–2008 Elizabeth Rough
Part III. Environmental Discourses in Legal Institutions: 8. International courts and sustainable development: using old tools to shape a new discourse Tim Stephens
9. The discourse of environmental security in the ASEAN context Kheng-Lian Koh
10. Public participation in transboundary environmental impact assessment: closing the gap between international and public law? Simon Marsden
Part IV. Discourses in Climate Law: 11. Climate change: limits discourses at the interface of international law and environmental law Lee Godden
12. The national interest or good international citizenship? Australia and its approach to international and public climate law Owen Cordes-Holland
13. The Asia-Pacific partnership: a deepened market liberal model for the international climate regime? Jeffrey Mcgee and Ros Taplin
14. Global gazing: viewing markets through the lens of emissions trading discourses Sanja Bogojevi?
Part V. Discourses in the Commons: 15. Polar opposites: environmental discourses and management in Antarctica and the Arctic Donald R. Rothwell
16. Heritage discourses Ben Boer and Stefan Gruber
17. Environmental principles and social change in the ocean dumping regime: a case study of the disposal of carbon dioxide into the seabed Afshin Akhtarkhavari
18. Environmental discourses in the ocean commons: the case of ocean fertilisation Julia Mayo-Ramsay
Concluding remarks: discourse versus strategy Thomas Pogge.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], International environmental law [LBBP], Public international law [LBB], Law [L]