Literature Review

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.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a valuable case study for testing the efficacy of private environmental governance. TVA is not on a trajectory to achieve the decarbonization targets necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Article concludes that these private governance options are not a panacea, but they have the potential to fill an important gap in public climate governance.

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.

Abstract: The article examines the ecological and legal component of criminal offenses under martial law, since the risk of man-caused accidents and ecological disasters, which threaten security, including environmental and human ones, as well as international legal order, is increasing owing to aggressor-country army’s deliberate actions. It has been argued that the consequences of the military conflict for the environment, human life and health are already considered catastrophic. It has been proven that the ecological crisis should be recognized as an existential threat to the national security of Ukraine. Pressing issues of forming interdisciplinary (synergistic) connections between environmental and criminal law science and other areas of scientific knowledge have been covered. Considering the outlined problem is becoming of a significant relevance due to the fact that certain criminal offenses cause damage to the environment, thus, leading to its destruction. It is a matter of such criminal offence compositions as laws of the war violation (Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (CCU) and ecocide (Article 441 of the CCU)). The expediency of improving the current criminal legislation and legal liability mechanism, which would satisfy the proportionality requirement, namely commensurate punishment of severity and consequences of the committed acts, has been substantiated. The expediency of further criminal law prohibition of ecocide in the new CCU Draft has been motivated, taking into account the degree of social danger as well as the severity of large-scale and long-term consequences for the environment and the entire humanity. It has been proven that the state’s environmental function to ensure environmental security, fundamental constitutional environmental rights of citizens, as well as to maintain ecological balance and sustainable development on Ukraine’s territory should become today’s narrative, with the environmental security component to be further included into the sectoral state restoration programs in order to form a new environmental law under martial law both for Ukraine and European countries. Based on our own conclusions and generalizations, proposals and recommendations for improving the current national legislation and greening the sectoral national policy components have been provided. It has been argued that legal mechanisms for fixing and determining the amount of environmental damage caused to natural resources and complexes as a result of armed aggression and hostilities under martial law should be established at the legislative level.