Literature Review

We read every day about the desecration of our environment and the mismanagement of our natural resources. We have always had the capacity to wreck the environment on a small or even regional scale. Centuries of irrigation without adequate drainage in ancient times converted large areas of the fertile Tigris-Euphrates valley into barren desert. What is new is that we now have the power to change our global environment irreversibly, with profoundly damaging effects on the robustness and integrity of the planet and the heritage that we pass to future generations.

Exploring the peculiar nature of future generations and concluding that types of future people is the most promising object on which to project our concern for future generations the article poses two main questions: “Can future people have rights?” and, if so, “Do they in fact have any rights?” The article first explains why the non-existence of future people raises doubts whether future generations can have rights. Within the philosophical literature, the leading approach explaining how future people can, nevertheless, have rights argues that they have rights as tokens of types of people. After presenting this account of the rights of future people and couching it in a jurisprudential context, this Article points out a possible deficiency in the approach’s metaphysical underpinnings. Assuming that future people can have rights the article goes on to explain that there is reason to doubt whether any such rights actually exist, which derive from the doubt whether future people will be harmed by most actions and choices in their prenatal past. According to what has come to be known as the “nonidentity argument,” actions and choices that are necessary parts of the causal chain leading up to the existence of a person cannot harm that person - had the act or choice not occurred that person would have never existed, and one is better off existing than not. Under the two prevalent theories of rights, the Will Theory and the Interest Theory, the nonidentity argument seemingly entails that future people have no rights. After exploring how this is the case, the conception of harm underlying the nonidentity argument is analyzed. Two types of interests future people may have in prenatal identity-determinative events (constitutive interests and threshold interests) are explored as possible sources of certain rights future people may have - the nonidentity argument notwithstanding. The article then elaborates and assesses the merits of these approaches

In 2008, Ecuador adopted the world's first constitution recognizing the rights of nature. The status of nature was redefined to enable, ideally, legal interventions to protect ecosystems. This article examines the process through which rights of nature entered the Ecuadorian context by contextualizing the campaign to mobilize support for these constitutional changes launched by Fundación Pachamama, a nongovernmental organization close to indigenous and environmental movements. The collective action forms involved in the constitutionalization of rights of nature are approached as sites of knowledge production and contestation. Concepts from the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse are applied to reconstruct the interpretive repertoires of rights of nature advocates, a faction of the indigenous movement and the environmental movement during the constitutional reform. This analysis reveals that interpretive affinities or resemblances among the interpretive repertoires of rights of nature advocates and indigenous and environmental movements shaped and enabled the advocacy for rights of nature. Moreover, the article demonstrates that throughout the debates at the Constituent Assembly, the concept of rights of nature was stitched onto a discursive context imprinted with nationalist feelings underpinning a critique of neo-liberalism, and aspirations for legal progress and the decolonization of society.

The first book to explain the theoretical and practical dimensions of bioregionalism from an interdisciplinary standpoint, focusing on the place of bioregional identity within global politics. Leading contributors from a broad range of disciplines introduce this exciting new concept as a framework for thinking about indigenous peoples, local knowledge, globalization, science, global environmental issues, modern society, conservation, history, education and restoration. Bioregionalism's emphasis on place and community radically changes the way we confront human and ecological issues.

This paper aims specifically at identifying the nature of the challenges to the very idea of rights of members of future generations, as well as the possibility of addressing such challenges. It examines four challenges to the possibility and meaningfulness of granting rights—including constitutional ones—to future generations. They are non-existence challenge, non-identity challenge, unactionable rights, and self-sanction challenge. The chapter shows that for a reason different from the non-existence challenge, generational overlap will be crucial even for interest-rights theorists. The non-existence challenge can be disposed of by defending the idea of future rights. The non-identity challenge is relevant to all cases in which adopting one policy or another will also affect the identity of those who will be born, affecting in turn the possibility of using concepts of harm and rights. The future class actions are perfectly compatible with the transitive solution proposed to the non-identity challenge.

Thirty years after the Hamburg seals case, autonomous rights for nature are no longer a merely utopian idea, but a social reality— and, in view of urgent ecological questions, a necessity. By expanding the stakeholder status in politics and law, ecosystems and animals are being empowered de lege lata to enforce their rights as non-human legal persons in the courts. I will first trace current trends in the juridical personification of non-human persons. I will then explore the potential for opening the concept of legal personhood to non-human legal persons from a theoretical perspective—considering the limitations of this approach as well. Finally, I will sketch out the current framework for legal action brought by nonhuman persons in German, European, and international law.

Different definitions of energy justice appear to be competing, or at least seem to be devoid of a theoretical effort at the systematization of the concepts. In this Paper, the authors attempt to fill this gap, discussing how energy justice is embedded in the tradition of philosophical and political thought, with reference to the concept of equality.

An increasing number of court rulings and legislation worldwide are recognizing rights of nature to be protected and preserved. Recognizing these rights also entails the recognition that nature has the right to stand in court and to be represented for its defense. This is still an incipient field and every step taken in this direction constitutes a precedent from which to learn and on which to base new rulings and legislation initiatives. Within this doctrine, rivers seem to be on the spotlight and court rulings on the rights of rivers are the ones setting precedent. These cases have taken place in New Zealand, Ecuador, India, and Colombia. This review looks into what all these rulings and legislation worldwide say about the rights of nature and what legal and systemic considerations should be taken into account as the recognition of the rights of nature moves forward.

The current model of corporate governance needs reform. There is mounting evidence that the practices of shareholder primacy drive company directors and executives to adopt the same short time horizon as financial markets. Pressure to meet the demands of the financial markets drives stock buybacks, excessive dividends and a failure to invest in productive capabilities. The result is a ‘tragedy of the horizon’, with corporations and their shareholders failing to consider environmental, social or even their own, long-term, economic sustainability. With less than a decade left to address the threat of climate change, and with consensus emerging that businesses need to be held accountable for their contribution, it is time to act and reform corporate governance in the EU. The statement puts forward specific recommendations to clarify the obligations of company boards and directors and make corporate governance practice significantly more sustainable and focused on the long term.

In the age of globalization, marketization, and decentralization of environmental governance, scholarship on private environmental regimes has proliferated over the past decades and greatly influenced the discourse in international environmental politics. This book aims to argue for the benefits of private governance on climate change. As expressed in the title of the book, Beyond Politics, the authors emphasize the emerging conceptual shift of global climate governance, from the traditionally dominant government policy to a new form of governance by the private sector, including corporations, nongovernmental organizations NGOs, and individuals both households and consumers.

This Article compares two NGOs to show how their different philosophies are both grounded in private environmental governance (PEG) and then reviewing the legal literature about PEG.

Should we cabin democracy to advance environmental protection? It’s a more complicated question than it seems, and this Article will argue the answer is “no.” However, given the direction of some environmental activism and scholarship today, one might think that turning some degree away from democracy is the best option for combating environmental problems.