Climate change is affecting the Arctic environment and ecosystems at an accelerating speed, twice the rate of the global average. This is opening the Arctic to transportation and resource development and creating serious challenges for local communities and indigenous peoples.

Climate Governance in the Arctic considers two aspects of climate change from an institutional perspective. It focuses on how relevant regimes, institutions and governance systems support mitigation of climate change. It also examines the extent to which the varying governance arrangements in the Arctic support adaptation and the development of adaptation processes for the region. The book 's focus on Arctic governance offers unique insights within climate change mitigation and adaptation research.

This comprehensive Handbook describes the implementation of SEA in 18 countries around the world, as well as a critical analysis of different SEA methodologies. It introduces key SEA principles and the legal requirements of the new European SEA Directive, which became law in 2004, and describes the implementation of SEA in 11 European Union countries, as well as the USA, Canada and New Zealand. This is contrasted with SEA requirements of four developing countries.

This volume is an important contribution to both theoretical and practical approaches to solving contradictions and conflicts between the approaches, principles, objectives and regulations of international environmental agreements. The issue of the coordination and streamlining of environmental agreements is of growing importance regarding the increasing number of international regulations on the one hand and the urgency for effective instruments in the light of continuing environmental degradation on the other. This study will become an essential reference for scholars as well as practitioners working in the field of international environmental law.

Despite the potential benefits that the IMO's Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA) designation can deliver, recent practice within the IMO and by individual member states has considerably undermined confidence in this emerging concept. The focus of this book is on the events within the IMO that have led to this lack of confidence arising. In the process, this book presents an examination of coastal State practice with the PSSA concept.

Subsidies to fisheries have been in existence for centuries. However, these remained outside the spotlight of the international community until the turn of this century when the negative effects that fisheries subsidies have on international trade, the environment and sustainable development became increasingly clear. As a result the Doha Round Negotiations set the parameters for an effective fisheries subsidies regime. WTO Members thus embarked in intensive negotiations with the collaboration of various international organizations. These negotiations culminated with publication of the legal text of the Chairman of the Negotiating Group on Rules in 2007 which reflects to a large extent the mandates of the Ministerial Conferences and reconciles the diverse interests of the negotiators. The EU as a major WTO Member and with its own Common Fisheries Policy which has been in effect for a number of years can serve as the basis for comparison and improvement of the proposed regulations.

In this thought-provoking new book, career U.S. State Department negotiator Richard J. Smith offers readers unprecedented access to the details about some of the most complex and politically charged international agreements of the late and immediate post Cold War era. During his nine years as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, Smith led U.S. negotiations on many significant international agreements. In Negotiating Environment and Science, Smith presents first-hand, in-depth accounts of eight of the most high-profile negotiations in which he was directly involved. The negotiations Smith covers are wide-ranging and include the London agreement to amend the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the international space station agreement, the U.S.-Soviet (eventually, U.S.-Russian) agreement on scientific cooperation, the U.S.-Canada acid rain agreement, the negotiations in Sofia, Bulgaria that established a first link between human rights and the environment, and a contentious confrontation with Japan over driftnet fishing. Smith chronicles the development of these negotiations, the challenges that emerged (as much within the U.S. delegations as with the foreign partners), and the strategies that led to substantive treaties. Smith infuses his narrative with unique historical insight as well as astute observations that can guide U.S. strategies toward productive international agreements in the future. His book also highlights the shift in diplomatic focus over the past 25 years from arms control and other security-related agreements to international and trans-boundary agreements that address global environmental threats and promote cooperative approaches in science and technology. Written for an audience with a general interest in environmental issues as well as international relations, Negotiating Environment and Science will also be an important resource for historians, political scientists, and students in international law and diplomacy.

This book examines uniform contract law in all relevant areas of legal doctrine and practice, and considers the barriers which exist toward it in modern nation states, namely in the German and English legal systems. The author suggests ways to overcome these obstacles, and develops an autonomous methodology of interpretation of transnational contract principles. The book analyses existing uniform transnational law rules, such as the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts.

Standards and Thresholds play an important role in many stages of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process. They can be legally binding or guidance values and are linked to environmental data. This book provides a comprehensive collection of standards and thresholds, with their derivation and application in case studies of EIA projects. The text introduces key drivers of standards, their effect on environment and health, emerging issues and more.

Marine Environmental Governance: From International Law to Local Practice considers the relationship between international environmental law and community-based management of marine areas. Focusing on small island states, in which indigenous populations have to a large extent continued to maintain traditional lifestyles, this book takes up the question of how indigenous customary law and state-based legislation can be reconciled in the implementation of international environmental law. Including a range of case studies, as well as detailed comparative analysis, it pursues an interdisciplinary approach to legal pluralism 'in practice' that will be of considerable interest to environmental lawyers, legal anthropologists, conservation biologists and those working in the area of community-based conservation.

Shannon O'Lear brings a geographer's perspective to environmental politics. The book considers issues of climate change, energy, food security, toxins, waste, and resource conflict to explore how political, economic, ideological and military power have contributed to the generation of environmental issues and the formation of dominant narratives about them. The book encourages the reader to think critically about the power dynamics that shape (and limit) how we think about environmental issues and to expand the reader's understanding of why it matters that these issues are discussed at particular spatial scales. Applying a geographer's sense of scale and power leads to a better understanding of the complexity of environmental issues and will help formulate mitigation and adaptation strategies. The book will appeal mainly to advanced students and researchers from a geography background, but also to social and political scientists who wish to look at the topic from this different perspective.

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.

Aufgrund der zunehmenden Vernetzung internationaler Energiemarkte und der wachsenden Abhangigkeit der Industriestaaten von Ol- und Gasimporten haben Meeresrohrleitungen als maritimes Transportmedium in den letzten Jahrzehnten an Bedeutung gewonnen. Aktuelles Beispiel einer solchen unterseeischen Rohrleitung ist die Nordstream Pipeline. Die vorliegende Arbeit behandelt die in multilateralen Vertragen globaler und regionaler Reichweite niedergelegten volkerrechtlichen Rechte und Pflichten der Staaten sowie internationaler Organisationen bei Verlegung und Betrieb unterseeischer Rohrleitungen. Die Arbeit zeigt die Verschrankung der unterschiedlichen Ebenen sowie Regelungsdefizite auf und fragt, ob das internationale Seerecht, insbesondere das Seerechtsubereinkommen der Vereinten Nationen, den Staaten ausreichende Handlungsinstrumentarien zur Verfugung stellt, um sowohl Meeresumweltschutz als auch Sicherheit bei Verlegung und Betrieb von Seerohrleitungen zu garantieren.

Initially created as afterthoughts to competitive electricity markets, capacity markets were intended to enhance system reliability. They have evolved into massive, highly controversial, and poorly understood billion-dollar institutions. Electricity Capacity Markets examines the rationales for creating capacity markets, how capacity markets work, and how well these markets are meeting their objectives. This book will appeal to energy experts and non-experts alike, across a range of disciplines, including economics, business, engineering, public policy, and law. Capacity markets are an important and provocative topic on their own, but they also offer an interesting case study of how well our energy systems are meeting the needs of our increasingly complex society. The challenges facing capacity markets - harnessing market forces for social good, creating networks that manage complexity, and achieving sustainability - are very much core challenges for our twenty-first century advanced industrial society.

The new millennium raised hopes for a better future for humanity through a new spirit of international cooperation. Participants at the United Nations Millennium Summit agreed on an ambitious agenda for international cooperation that singled out, among other issues, environmental protection and development as key objectives. The increasing degradation of our planet continues to emphasize the need to conserve and preserve natural resources. Yet with more than half of the global population still living on $2 dollars a day or less, there is also a glaring need for development initiatives to combat poverty. This book draws on contributions to the People and the Environment lecture series at Fordham University, organized in partnership with the United Nations Development Program Equator Initiative and The Nature Conservancy. The essays offer a wealth of fresh perspectives and strategies to promote both environmental conservation and poverty eradication. Reflecting a range of disciplines, issues, and settings, they cover four interrelated topics: the link between poverty reduction and the environment and encouraging integration of environmental management and development; environmental disasters, their impact on poor people and ways to prevent and mitigate their consequences; conservation knowledge and the role of information and education in sustainable development; and legal empowerment of the poor. Each part offers an overview of the theme and introduces the perspectives of leading experts and scholars-from the lessons of Katrina and the Tsunami to model agricultural policies for sustaining the environment while strengthening local economies. Demonstrating the roles the environment can and should play in poverty alleviation, the essays deepen our understanding of the some of the world's most difficult challenges-and provide a toolkit of ideas and techniques for addressing them.

In the face of growing freshwater scarcity, most countries of the world are taking steps to conserve their water and foster its sustainable use. Water crises range from concerns of drinking water availability and/or quality, the degradation or contamination of freshwater, and the allocation of water to different users. To meet the challenge, many countries are undergoing systemic changes to the use of freshwater and the provision of water services, thereby leading to greater commercialization of the resource as well as a restructuring of the legal, regulatory, technical and institutional frameworks for water.

The contributions to this book critically analyse legal issues arising under international law, such as environment and human rights provisions, concerning the economic, environmental and social consequences of proposed water regulatory changes and their implementation at the national level. The book examines the situation in India which is currently in the midst of implementing several World Bank led water restructuring projects which will have significant impacts on the realisation of the right to water and all other aspects of water regulation for decades to come. In analysing the situation in India the volume is able to detail the interactions between international law and national law in the field of water, and to ask broader questions about the compliance with international law at the national level and the relevance of international law in national law and policy-making.

Dieses Buch untersucht die philosophischen Grundlagen und die geschichtliche Entwicklung des common concern of humankind-Begriffs und seine Rechtswirkungen im Voelkerrecht. Hierbei wird das Prinzip in den Bestand des Umweltvoelkerrechts eingeordnet und sein Verhaltnis zum Grundsatz der Staatensouveranitat untersucht. Ausserdem wird das common concern-Prinzip vom common heritage-Prinzip abgegrenzt und voelkerrechtstheoretisch dargelegt, welche Wirkung es als Prinzip innerhalb und ausserhalb der von ihm erfassten Regime entfaltet. Der Autor begrundet, dass mit der Verankerung des common concern of humankind-Prinzips in der Klimarahmenkonvention und im Pariser Abkommen sowie in der Biodiversitatskonvention die dort enthaltenen Umweltschutzpflichten zu solchen gegenuber der Staatengemeinschaft als Ganzes geworden sind, sodass sich alle Vertragsstaaten - unabhangig von einer eigenen Betroffenheit - gegenuber allen anderen Vertragsstaaten auf ihre Erfullung berufen koennen und eine Klagebefugnis vor dem Internationalen Gerichtshof haben.

In international law, as in any other legal system, respect and protection of human rights can be guaranteed only by the availability of effective judicial remedies. When a right is violated or damage is caused, access to justice is of fundamental importance for the injured individual and it is an essential component of the rule of law. Yet, access to justice as a human right remains problematic in international law. First, because individual access to international justice remains exceptional and based on specific treaty arrangements, rather than on general principles of international law; second, because even when such right is guaranteed as a matter of treaty obligation, other norms or doctrines of international law may effectively impede its exercise, as in the case of sovereign immunity or non reviewability of UN Security Council measures directly affecting individuals. Further, even access to domestic legal remedies is suffering because of the constraints put by security threats, such as terrorism, on the full protection of freedom and human rights.
This collection of essays offers seven distinct perspectives on the present status of access to justice: its development in customary international law, the stress put on it in times of emergency, its problematic exercise in the case of violations of the law of war, its application to torture victims, its development in the case law of the UN Human Rights Committee and of the European Court of Human Rights, its application to the emerging field of environmental justice, and finally access to justice as part of fundamental rights in European law.

Authoritative, comprehensive, accessible—the definitive guide to a new approach in environmental policy Emissions Trading: Environmental Policy’s New Approach presents the work of an outstanding group of contributors on the successes and limitations of this new and exciting incentive-based tool for reducing environmental pollutants. By including the comments of emitters, regulators, public interest group representatives, and academics, the book reveals the criticisms, disagreements, and growing resolution of numerous environmental questions, including:

• Can markets be used to correct market environmental failure?
• Will decentralized decisions by emitters produce an improvement in air quality?
• Can this approach realize significant control cost savings?
• Can emissions trading be monitored and enforced effectively at a reduced cost?
• Will affected groups support this dramatic innovation?

Die Untersuchung beschaftigt sich mit der Frage einer internationalen Haftung fur gentechnologisch bedingte Folgeschaden. Anknupfungspunkte hierfur sind das UN-UEbereinkommen uber die biologische Vielfalt (CBD) und das Cartagena-Protokoll uber die biologische Sicherheit (BSP). Dieses Protokoll beschaftigt sich mit dem Schutz vor den Gefahren der Biotechnologie fur den Bereich der grenzuberschreitenden Verbringung gentechnisch veranderter Organismen. Die Frage der Haftung wird nur in Form eines Verhandlungsauftrages geregelt. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht und systematisiert die spezifischen Probleme des Sachbereichs und den Stand der gegenwartigen Diskussion um voelkervertrags- und voelkergewohnheitsrechtliche Haftungsnormen. Auf dieser Basis entwickelt sie Eckwerte fur ein moegliches internationales Haftungsregime.

The proliferation of environmental agreements is a defining feature of modern international relations that has attracted considerable academic attention. The cooperation literature focuses on stories of policy creation, and ignores issue areas where policy agreements are absent. Science and International Environmental Policy introduces nonregimes into the study of global governance, and compares successes with failures in the formation of environmental treaties. By exploring collective decisions not to cooperate, it explains why international institutions form but also why, when, and how they do not emerge. The book is a structured comparison of global policy responses to four ecological problems: deforestation, coral reefs degradation, ozone depletion, and acid rain. It explores the connection between knowledge and action in world politics by investigating the role of scientific information in environmental management. The study shows that different types of expert information play uneven roles in policymaking. Extensive analysis of multilateral scientific assessments, participatory observation of negotiations, and interviews with policymakers and scientists reveal that some kinds of information are critical requirements for policy creation while other types are less influential. Moreover, the state of knowledge on ecological problems is not a function of sociopolitical power. By disaggregating the concept of 'knowledge, ' the book solves contradictions in previous theoretical work and offers a compelling account of the interplay between knowledge, interests, and power in global environmental politics

This book provides a critical assessment of the New South Wales Land and Environmental Court (NSWLEC). Effective adjudication has become a key consideration for environmental lawyers. One of the most important questions is whether environmental law frameworks need their own courts, with the conclusion being: yes they do. Here, a pioneer of such a court, the NSWLEC is forensically examined to see what it might teach other such courts. Showing a court 'in action' it suggests models that practitioners and policy makers might follow. It also speaks to the environmental law scholars, setting out a conceptual framework for studying such courts as legal institutions. This multi-faceted collection is invaluable to scholars and practitioners alike.

Analysing the regulation of vessel-source pollution from the perspective of the political interests of key players in the ship transportation industry, this 2005 book by Alan Khee-Jin Tan offers a comprehensive and convincing account of how pollution of the marine environment by ships may be better regulated and reduced. In this timely study, he traces the history of regulation at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and investigates the political, economic and social forces influencing the IMO treaties. Also examined are the efforts of maritime states, ship-owners, cargo owners, oil companies and environmental groups to influence IMO laws and treaties. This is an important book, which uncovers the politics behind the law and offers solutions for overcoming the deficiencies in the regulatory system. It will be of great interest to professionals in the shipping industry as well as practitioners and students.

The worst chemical disaster ever could be happening right now. In India and Bangladesh between forty and eighty million people are at risk of consuming too much arsenic from well water that might have already caused one hundred thousand cancer cases and thousands of deaths. Many millions elsewhere in South-East Asia and South America may soon suffer a similar fate. Venomous Earth is the story of this tragedy: the geology, the biology, the politics and the history. It starts in Ancient Greece, touches down in today's North America and takes in William Morris, alchemy, farming, medicine, mining and a cosmetic that killed two popes.

Dieses mit der Otto-Hahn-Medaille der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft ausgezeichnete Werk entwickelt eine eigene These vom voelkerrechtlichen Legitimationsdefizit: Voelkerrechtlicher Rechtserzeugung fehlt es an Mechanismen institutionalisierter Opposition. Obwohl die Rechtserzeugungskompetenzen internationaler Institutionen zunehmen, fehlt es an Moeglichkeiten, Regelungsalternativen und AEnderungsvorschlage in voelkerrechtlichen Verfahren zu artikulieren. "Opposition im Voelkerrecht" entwirft im Anschluss an Hannah Arendt und Claude Lefort eine Theorie des Konzepts der Opposition, die auch im Voelkerrecht Anwendung finden kann. Es folgt eine interdisziplinare Studie, die zum ersten Mal voelkerrechtliche Rechtserzeugungsprozesse (konkret an drei Beispielen der Parlamentarischen Versammlung des Europarats, des WTO waiver-Mechanismus, der UNESCO Konvention zur kulturellen Vielfalt und des Cartagena-Protokolls zur Biodiversitat) unter dem Gesichtspunkt mangelnder Politisierung untersucht und die in der Voelkerrechtswissenschaft bisher nicht rezipierten philosophischen Ansatze von Hannah Arendt und Claude Lefort hierfur fruchtbar macht.

This book explains the role and limitations of liberalized international trade on the global environment and sustainable development. A distinguishing feature of this book is an integration of trade, environment and development perspectives for operationally meaningful policy purposes. The topics explored include an analysis of the global trade regimes, their interrelationships with the existing multilateral environmental agreements, institutional mechanisms governed by the World Trade Organization, and a framework for pragmatic reforms.