Economic production indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI) fail to reflect the state of natural resources or ecological conditions and both focus exclusively on the short term. The Inclusive Wealth Report 2014 is the second book in an important biennial series that provides a new framework for measuring the inclusive wealth of nations. It provides an overview of how the capital asset components of inclusive wealth evolved between 1990 and 2010, and analyses the meaning of these trends for sustainability. While the asset base studied is largely unchanged from the 2012 report, the country sample has been expanded from 20 to 140 nations and the focus has shifted from natural to human capital. This report offers a wealth of information for researchers and policy-makers, identifying key gaps in data and knowledge, and suggesting specific needs for future research.

Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet, we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives."

This book is for those who are not just interested in the ways humans have harmfully altered their environment, but instead wish to learn why the many governmental policies in place to curb such behavior have been unsuccessful. Since humans began to exploit natural resources for their own economic ends, we have ignored a central principle: nature and humans are not separate, but are a unified, interconnected system in which neither is superior to the other. Policy must reflect this reality. We failed to follow this principle in exploiting natural capital without expecting to pay any price, and in hurriedly adopting environmental laws and policies that reflected how we wanted nature to work instead of how it does work. This study relies on more accurate models for how nature works and humans behave. These models suggest that environmental laws should be consistent with the laws of nature.

This book, the first in a new series that focuses on treaty implementation for sustainable development, examines key legal aspects of implementing the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at national and international levels. The volume provides a serious contribution to the current legal and political academic debates on biosafety by discussing key issues under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety that affect the further design of national and international law on biosafety, and analyzing recent progress in the development of domestic regulatory regimes for biosafety. It also examines the legal, political, economic, and practical challenges and solutions encountered in recent efforts to develop and implement domestic biosafety regulations, with a focus on developing countries. In the year of the fifth UN Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, at the signature of a new Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Protocol on Liability and Redress, this timely book examines recent developments in biosafety law and policy.

Attending to the 'Cry of the Earth' requires a critical appraisal of how we conceive our relationship with the environment, and a clear vision of how to apprehend it in law and governance. Addressing questions of participation, responsibility and justice, this collective endeavour includes marginalised and critical voices, featuring contributions by leading practitioners and thinkers in Indigenous law, traditional knowledge, wild law, the rights of nature, theology, public policy and environmental humanities.Such voices play a decisive role in comprehending and responding to current global challenges. They invite us to broaden our horizon of meaning and action, modes of knowing and being in the world, and envision the path ahead with a new legal consciousness. A valuable reference for students, researchers and practitioners, this book is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.

With a vast river network and rainforests extending over eight South American countries, the Amazon plays a vital role particularly in maintaining biodiversity and terrestrial carbon storage. Due to its ecological characteristics, the Amazon benefits not only those countries but also the international community at large. However, the Amazon forests are being rapidly cleared with a consequent loss of biodiversity and impact on global climate. This book examines whether international law has an impact on the preservation of the Amazon by inquiring into the forms of cooperation that exist among the Amazon countries, and between them and the international community, and to what extent international cooperation can help protect the Amazon. Given the role of this region in maintaining the balance of the global environment, the book examines whether the Amazon should be granted a special legal status and possible implications in terms of international cooperation.

The research focus for the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law in 2003 was a timely and challenging one, entitled 'The Law of Energy for Sustainable Development'. As contemporary world politics demonstrates, energy resources and generation are crucial issues facing the international community. As research on energy law, at the international, regional, and national level is in its infancy, the insights provided by the contributors to this 2005 volume are a significant addition to the field.

This volume is a companion to The Law of Energy for Sustainable Development. Here the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law assembles a volume of legal instruments which can be recognized as constituting the core of the law of energy for sustainable development. It will be an essential reference for all those involved in environmental and energy research.

This 2007 book surveys the global experience to date in implementing land-use policies that move us further along the sustainable development continuum. The international community has long recognized the need to ensure ongoing and future development is conducted sustainably. While high-level commitments towards sustainable development such as those included in the Rio and Johannesburg Declarations are politically important, they are irrelevant if they are not translated into reality on the ground. This book includes chapters that discuss the challenges of implementing sustainable land-use policies in different regions of the world, revealing problems that are common to all jurisdictions and highlighting others that are unique to particular regions. It also includes chapters documenting new approaches to sustainable land use, such as reforms to property rights regimes and environmental laws. Other chapters offer comparisons of approaches in different jurisdictions that can present insights which might not be apparent from a single-jurisdiction analysis.

This book collects land use laws from countries on each continent that attempt to achieve sustainable development. Due to the startling evidence of global deterioriation and the long-term trends in land use, the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development was signed in 2002. In the laws collected in this volume, the reader can witness the evolution of national legal systems as they respond to the challenge of sustainable development. This volume illuminates the great flexibility and power of the law as a vehicle for change. Laws contained in this compendium are mechanisms competent to address society's problems; they provide strategies that are appropriate to the culture and place of their origin. The book provides evidence that laws and law reform are being used to create strategies that address a worldwide priority: the clear need to effectively use and preserve the land and its natural resources.

With more than 158,000 treaties and some 125 judicial organisations, international law has become an inescapable factor in world politics since the Second World War. In recent years, however, international law has also been increasingly challenged as states are voicing concerns that it is producing unintended effects and accuse international courts of judicial activism. This book provides an important corrective to existing theories of international law by focusing on how states respond to increased legalisation and rely on legal expertise to manoeuvre within and against international law. Through a number of case studies, covering a wide range of topical issues such as surveillance, environmental regulation, migration and foreign investments, the book argues that the expansion and increased institutionalisation of international law itself have created the structural premise for this type of politics of international law. More international law paradoxically increases states' political room of manoeuvre in world society.

Courts have emerged as a crucial battleground in efforts to regulate climate change. Over the past several years, tribunals at every level of government around the world have seen claims regarding greenhouse gas emissions and impacts. These cases rely on diverse legal theories, but all focus on government regulation of climate change or the actions of major corporate emitters. This book explores climate actions in state and national courts, as well as international tribunals, in order to explain their regulatory significance. It demonstrates the role that these cases play in broader debates over climate policy and argues that they serve as an important force in pressuring governments and emitters to address this crucial problem. As law firms and public interest organizations increasingly develop climate practice areas, the book serves as a crucial resource for practitioners, policymakers and academics.

Originally published in 2006, this collection is the outcome of an interdisciplinary research project involving scholars in the fields of international and comparative environmental law, the sociology and politics of global governance, and the scientific study of global climate change. Earth system analysis as developed by the natural sciences is transferred to the analysis of institutions of global environmental change. Rather than one overarching supranational organisation, a system of 'multilevel' institutions is advocated. The book examines the proper role of industrial self-regulation, of horizontal transfer of national policies, of regional integration, and of improved coordination between international environmental organisations, as well as basic principles for sustainable use of resources. Addressing both academics and politicians, this book will stimulate the debate about the means of improving global governance.

The central idea animating environmental impact assessment (EIA) is that decisions affecting the environment should be made through a comprehensive evaluation of predicted impacts. Notwithstanding their evaluative mandate, EIA processes do not impose specific environmental standards, but rely on the creation of open, participatory and information rich decision-making settings to bring about environmentally benign outcomes. In light of this tension between process and substance, Neil Craik assesses whether EIA, as a method of implementing international environmental law, is a sound policy strategy, and how international EIA commitments structure transnational interactions in order to influence decisions affecting the international environment. Through a comprehensive description of international EIA commitments and their implementation with domestic and transnational governance structures, and drawing on specific examples of transnational EIA processes, the author examines how international EIA commitments can facilitate interest coordination, and provide opportunities for persuasion and for the internalisation of international environmental norms.

With a vast river network and rainforests extending over eight South American countries, the Amazon plays a vital role particularly in maintaining biodiversity and terrestrial carbon storage. Due to its ecological characteristics, the Amazon benefits not only those countries but also the international community at large. However, the Amazon forests are being rapidly cleared with a consequent loss of biodiversity and impact on global climate. This book examines whether international law has an impact on the preservation of the Amazon by inquiring into the forms of cooperation that exist among the Amazon countries, and between them and the international community, and to what extent international cooperation can help protect the Amazon. Given the role of this region in maintaining the balance of the global environment, the book examines whether the Amazon should be granted a special legal status and possible implications in terms of international cooperation.

An assessment of policy options for future global climate governance, written by a team of leading experts from the European Union and developing countries. Global climate governance is at a crossroads. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was merely a first step, and its core commitments expire in 2012. This book addresses three questions which will be central to any new climate agreement. What is the most effective overall legal and institutional architecture for successful and equitable climate politics? What role should non-state actors play, including multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, public private partnerships and market mechanisms in general? How can we deal with the growing challenge of adapting our existing institutions to a substantially warmer world? This important resource offers policy practitioners in-depth qualitative and quantitative assessments of the costs and benefits of various policy options, and also offers academics from wide-ranging disciplines insight into innovative interdisciplinary approaches towards international climate negotiations.

In A Third Way, Hillary Hoffmann and Monte Mills detail the history, context, and future of the ongoing legal fight to protect indigenous cultures. At the federal level, this fight is shaped by the assumptions that led to current federal cultural protection laws, which many tribes and their allies are now reframing to better meet their cultural and sovereign priorities. At the state level, centuries of antipathy toward tribes are beginning to give way to collaborative and cooperative efforts that better reflect indigenous interests. Most critically, tribes themselves are building laws and legal structures that reflect and invigorate their own cultural values. Taken together, and evidenced by the recent worldwide support for indigenous cultural movements, events of the last decade signal a new era for indigenous cultural protection. This important work should be read by anyone interested in the legal reforms that will guide progress toward that future.

This book offers a vision for the third generation of environmental law designed to enhance its ability to protect our environment. The book presents two core proposals, an Environmental Legacy Act to preserve a defined environmental legacy for future generations and an Environmental Competition Statute to spark movement to new clean technologies. The first proposal would require, for the first time, that the federal government define an environmental legacy that it must preserve for future generations. The second would establish a market competition to maximize environmental protection. The balance of the book provides complimentary proposals and analysis. The first generation of environmental law sought broad protection of health and the environment in a fairly fragmented way. The second sought to enhance environmental law s efficiency through cost-benefit analysis and market mechanisms. These proposals seek to create a broader, more creative approach to solving environmental problems.

Guaranteeing energy security is one of the most complex challenges of energy law and policy. Energy insecurity threatens economic development, social peace and stability. This book focuses on energy security in the strategically important region of Central Asia. The region holds huge energy reserves, but its energy systems are highly inefficient and unreliable, and thus require urgent reform. However, endemic corruption, discrimination and the strong centralization of power have so far blocked initiatives to reorganize energy supply. The case of Central Asia is uniquely relevant for understanding the informal constraints on energy law and policy. In addition, Central Asian energy insecurity illustrates the impact of geopolitics on the regulation of energy markets. The region is strategically located in Russia's sphere of influence and along China's New Silk Road. Its energy situation highlights the complex interactions amongst energy law, geopolitics and institutions.

This thoughtful book provides an overview of the major developments in the theory and practice of 'environmental justice'. It illustrates the direction of the evolution of rights of nature and exposes the diverse meanings and practical uses of the concept of environmental justice in different jurisdictions, and their implications for the law, society and the environment. The term 'environmental justice' has different meanings to different scholars and is applied in many different contexts. For some, the focus is on equal distribution of the earth's benefits, with concern for the interests of the less wealthy, disadvantaged minorities, or indigenous peoples. For others, the focus is on the interests of the earth and nature itself. Additionally, for some, environmental justice is a framework for discourse, whilst for others it connotes specific legal principles and procedures. The application of these interpretations through the law involves diverse approaches and rules. In this timely book, expert contributors identify the meanings and the practical translations of environmental justice, reflecting the perspectives of academic, judicial and indigenous people from many countries. Among the issues considered are the rights of nature and its application through judicial practice, and approaches to respecting the laws, cultures and the rights of Indigenous peoples. This integrated exploration of the topic will provide an excellent resource for scholars, judicial officers and practitioners interested in environmental and social justice issues. Contributors: J. Aseron, S.Z. Bigdeli, K. Bosselmann, C. Chaulk, J.I. Colon-Rios, D. Craig, T. Daya-Winterbottom, W. Du Plessis, B. France-Hudson, E. Gachenga, S. Glazebrook, L. Godden, N. Greymorning, R. Karky, A. Keene, A. Kennedy, J. Khatarina, P. Martin, E. O'Connell, M. Perry, W. Phromlah, B.J. Preston, V. Rive, J.G. Rose, M.A. Santosa, A.S. Suwana, A. Telesetsky, J. Williams

The system of international co-operation in the Antarctic has been evolving rapidly since the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959. Inextricably linked to this co-operation is the question of the rational management of Antarctic resources. In this book Professor Orrego Vicuna examines in depth the legal framework - the Antarctic Treaty, sovereignty, jurisdiction and the law of the sea - as it relates to the exploitation of Antarctic minerals. This is fast becoming a live issue with the ever-growing potential for the development of these resources. The first part of the book examines the main characteristics of the international legal framework governing the co-operation of states in Antarctica, particularly in relation to resource conservation. Against this background, in the second part of the book, the regime for mineral resources is discussed in sufficient detail to identify the basic issues and interests which have to be accommodated in order to attain an acceptable convention. The final part of the book considers the important set of questions raised by the interest of the world community at large in the Antarctic: most significantly, the initiatives concerning a broader international participation under the auspices of the United Nations.

In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This historic document constituted a transformative 'plan for action for people, planet and prosperity' with regards to the sustainable development efforts of all countries. The Sustainable Development Goals serves as an expert compendium, the most authoritative ready-reference tool for anyone interested in the SDGs. Each chapter comprises a detailed target-by-target analysis of one of the SDGs, including a methodical analysis of the preparatory proceedings that shaped each goal in its present form, an exhaustive examination of their content, and a critical assessment from an international law perspective. This commentary provides readers with the most up-to-date information on normative and legal questions arising from the incorporation of the SDGs into the international economic, social, and environmental legal frameworks, and on their implementation status. Scholars, practitioners, and those interested in the fields of law, politics, development, economics, environmental studies, and global governance will find this book a must-read.

The Antarctic Treaty regime is a uniquely successful legal system which preserves Antarctica for peaceful purposes and guarantees freedom of scientific research. This volume based on an international conference, examines the legal, political and environmental issues that it raises. After setting the scene of the Antarctic environment, the early chapters discuss the legal issues involved in the Treaty. Later chapters consider protection of the marine environment and the regulation of mineral exploitation. The book concludes with a discussion of Antarctica and its development.

Through a detailed analysis this book examines the role of law in European Union integration processes through the implementation of the EU Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control at European Level and in the UK and Germany. The book questions traditional conceptions which perceive law as the 'formal law in the books', as instrumental and as relatively autonomous in relation to its social contexts. The book also discusses in depth how the key legal obligation on the Directive, to employ 'the best available techniques', is actually implemented. This research locates the analysis of the implementation of the IPPC Directive in the wider context of current, cutting-edge political science and sociology of law debates about the role of law in EU integration processes, the nature of EU law, new modes of governance and the significance of 'law in action' for understanding legal process.

International Environmental Law offers a concise, conceptually clear, and legally rigorous introduction to contemporary international environmental law and practice. The book covers all major environmental agreements, paying particular attention to their underlying structure, main legal provisions, and practical operation. It blends legal and policy analysis, making extensive reference to the jurisprudence and scholarship, and addressing the interconnections with other areas of international law, including human rights, humanitarian law, trade and foreign investment. The material is structured into four sections - foundations, substantive regulation, implementation, and influence on other areas of international law - which help the reader to navigate the different areas of international environmental law. Each chapter includes charts summarising the main components of the relevant legal frameworks and provides a detailed bibliography. Suitable for practicing and academic international lawyers who want an accessible, up-to-date introduction to contemporary international environmental law, as well as non-lawyers seeking a concise and clear understanding of the subject.