The Research Handbook on International Law and Natural Resources provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the role of international law in regulating the exploration and exploitation of natural resources. The book covers overarching and sectoral, as well as traditional and emerging, legal issues in natural resource development. The book illuminates interactions and tensions between international environmental law, human rights and economic law, as well as the law of the sea, tracing their evolution and identifying critical areas for further investigation. It also discusses the relevance of soft law and international dispute settlement, as well as of various unilateral, bilateral, regional and transnational initiatives in the governance of natural resources. Analysis of historical and current policy debates, including the incipient negotiations of a new international legally binding instrument on marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, and the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change, are included. While the handbook is accessible to those approaching the subject for the first time, it identifies pressing areas for further investigation that will be of interest to advanced researchers and practitioners of international environmental, economic, and human rights law. Contributors include: R. Barnes, V. Barra, B. Boer, C. Chiarolla, L. Cotula, F. Francioni, J. Harrison, J. Jabour, M. Jansson, M. Kidd, R.E. Kim, T. Koivurova, K. Kulovesi, R. Leal-Arcas, F. Lesniewska, C. Massarella, S. Minas, O. McIntyre, E. Morgera, E. Orlando, F. Ortino, A. Proelss, S. Romppanen, C. Salpin, N.M. Tabari, K. Talus, A. Trouwborst, H. van Asselt, J. Vinuales

Climate Change and the Law is the first scholarly effort to systematically address doctrinal issues related to climate law as an emergent legal discipline. It assembles some of the most recognized experts in the field to identify relevant trends and common themes from a variety of geographic and professional perspectives. In a remarkably short time span, climate change has become deeply embedded in important areas of the law. As a global challenge calling for collective action, climate change has elicited substantial rulemaking at the international plane, percolating through the broader legal system to the regional, national and local levels. More than other areas of law, the normative and practical framework dedicated to climate change has embraced new instruments and softened traditional boundaries between formal and informal, public and private, substantive and procedural; so ubiquitous is the reach of relevant rules nowadays that scholars routinely devote attention to the intersection of climate change and more established fields of legal study, such as international trade law. Climate Change and the Law explores the rich diversity of international, regional, national, sub-national and transnational legal responses to climate change. Is climate law emerging as a new legal discipline? If so, what shared objectives and concepts define it? How does climate law relate to other areas of law? Such questions lie at the heart of this new book, whose thirty chapters cover doctrinal questions as well as a range of thematic and regional case studies. As Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), states in her preface, these chapters collectively provide a "review of the emergence of a new discipline, its core principles and legal techniques, and its relationship and potential interaction with other disciplines."

"Climate Change and the Law" is the first scholarly effort to systematically address doctrinal issues related to climate law as an emergent legal discipline. It assembles some of the most recognized experts in the field to identify relevant trends and common themes from a variety of geographic and professional perspectives.

In a remarkably short time span, climate change has become deeply embedded in important areas of the law. As a global challenge calling for collective action, climate change has elicited substantial rulemaking at the international plane, percolating through the broader legal system to the regional, national and local levels. More than other areas of law, the normative and practical framework dedicated to climate change has embraced new instruments and softened traditional boundaries between formal and informal, public and private, substantive and procedural; so ubiquitous is the reach of relevant rules nowadays that scholars routinely devote attention to the intersection of climate change and more established fields of legal study, such as international trade law.

"Climate Change and the Law" explores the rich diversity of international, regional, national, sub-national and transnational legal responses to climate change. Is climate law emerging as a new legal discipline? If so, what shared objectives and concepts define it? How does climate law relate to other areas of law? Such questions lie at the heart of this new book, whose thirty chapters cover doctrinal questions as well as a range of thematic and regional case studies. As Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), states in her preface, these chapters collectively provide a review of the emergence of a new discipline, its core principles and legal techniques, and its relationship and potential interaction with other disciplines. "

Tensions between economic interests and environmental protection have assumed crisis proportions in awareness at every level of society. In particular, the World Trade Organization has become entangled in controversies related to legitimacy, democracy, environmental protection, and fragmentation of international law, fuelling a contentious debate on the use (or abuse) of environmental norms at the WTO. To a greater degree than any comparable treatment, this book focuses on the role of the WTO dispute settlement system in addressing trade-environment conflicts. Highlighting the ways in which environmental issues challenge the legitimacy of WTO jurisprudence, it considers such relevant core issues as the following:;challenges posed to the WTO by so-called 'linkage' issues, such as environmental protection, labour, and investment;;to what extent the WTO can apply rules of international law (e.g., environmental ones) that are not contained in the WTO agreements; and;concerns over the Dispute Settlement System's lack of democratic accountability in matters of great public interest. The study analyses in detail the role of international environmental law in three key WTO cases, namely the Shrimp-Turtle, Hormones and Biotech disputes. This deeply informed and thoughtful book is of special importance for its proposals on how the WTO dispute settlement system can improve its legitimacy while respecting the limits of its mandate. It will be welcomed by international trade attorneys, environmental lawyers, concerned academics and students, and government officials in both trade and environmental policy.

Sound policy and legal frameworks for bioenergy are necessary to ensure that socio-economic and environmental sustainability considerations are taken into account in the production, promotion and use of bioenergy, with a view to minimizing risks of negative impacts and maximizing benefits in the immediate and long term. Through a series of case studies, this publication aims at identifying specific recommendations for policy-makers and legal drafters to ensure that policy and legal instruments on bioenergy contribute to food security, rural development and environmental sustainability.