The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is a landmark piece of sustainable development legislation and marks a significant development in the emerging legal identity of Wales. Despite the Act's significance and ambition, it has been criticized as merely ‘aspirational’ – as ‘non-law-bearing’ and unenforceable by legal means. The Act is not without difficulties. However, it also has notable legal and other qualities that are often not captured within the standard justiciability-enforceability frame of analysis. Our aim here is to broaden the context for examining the Act and other ‘aspirational’ legislation like it. To that end, we identify three sets of questions that help to bring out different ideas around the Act's varied enforceability, its possible constitutional status, and its potential role as a bearer of hope.

The expansion of soybean cultivation in South America has created substantial economic prosperity but has also raised a series of unsustainable land-use issues. Considering the telecoupling system (a system of socio-ecological interactions between distant places) between South America and its soybean trade partners, transnational governance could play an important role in addressing these issues. To achieve effective governance of this specific telecoupling system, this study applies a polycentric approach to improve the existing transnational governance and identify more suitable governance arrangements. This study first explores the telecoupling system and the existing transnational governance system of soybean land use in South America. It then compares the existing governance system with the polycentric approach to examine the gaps between them. Based on these analyses, suggestions for improving the governance system are provided, including increasing the involvement of major governance centres, improving public-private partnerships, and establishing a knowledge-sharing platform.

The scope of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) has traditionally been limited to on-site effects. This approach faces limitations when dealing with intricate value chains. Particularly for projects involving biomass-to-energy facilities, the primary environmental impacts often originate from off-site biomass production. This article considers the resulting limitations of EIAs by using two legal disputes in France as illustrative examples. In the Gardanne and the La Mède cases, French Administrative Courts sought to establish the necessity for project proponents to incorporate supply-related impacts into the EIA process. Strategies aimed at broadening the scope of EIAs, either by expanding the assessed project boundaries or by invoking the concept of cumulative impacts, were not deemed the most relevant approaches. Instead, the concept of ‘indirect impact’ emerged as a valuable tool for incorporating supply-related impacts. However, to prevent the indirect impact concept from being disregarded as too ambiguous or ineffective, it should be complemented by precise criteria to determine whether an impact may be considered indirect. We study these avenues within the broader evolving landscape of EIA laws, and by exploring ways to harmonize EIAs with other regulatory instruments governing value chains.

Awareness of agricultural climate impacts is growing. In the European Union (EU), the agricultural sector is responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to receive considerable EU budgetary support. A large share of agricultural emissions is linked to livestock husbandry, a sector the direct and indirect climate impacts of which the EU's ‘green’ agricultural policies have historically ignored. This blind spot extends to the sizeable global deforestation footprint from EU livestock feed imports that remains unaddressed, despite the EU's aspired status as a global climate leader and major global agricultural market player. This article benchmarks the evolution of EU agri-climate legal and policy developments, using livestock emissions as a case study to highlight the importance of learning from the successes and failures of the EU experience, to realize future attempts to tackle global agricultural emissions.

The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is one of the best-known and most controversial of the international investment treaties. The energy transition necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement climate target will require large and sustained flows of investment capital. Scholars, environmentalists, industry representatives, and governmental officials have intensively debated the modernization of the ECT. The main point of contention is whether the ECT can facilitate the energy transition or whether it entrenches fossil lock-in in unsustainable and unjust ways. This article proposes a comprehensive and integrated approach to the ECT, guided by the theoretical matrix of Earth system law scholarship. Our analysis reveals that the ECT cannot address contemporary socio-ecological challenges, but rather it remains a sectoral piece of a supranational economic constitution far removed from the most pressing exigencies of the Anthropocene.

Climate change litigation is developing rapidly and pervasively, emerging as a space for legal innovation. Until now, this process has occurred mainly in national courts. The result is a decentralization of the interpretation of human rights relating to climate change. This article argues that such decentralization could, in principle, have a destabilizing impact on claims to the universality of human rights. However, close examination of this litigation shows that a prototype is emerging, certain features of which are becoming ‘hard wired’ through the process of judicial dialogue. By exploring the content of this prototype, its decentralized development, and its self-reinforcing nature, we see a legal space emerging in which environmental human rights sit between the universal and the contextual.

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the number of cases being brought before national courts addressing the constitutional rights of children and future generations (FG) in the context of environmental protection. These cases have required courts to devote increasing attention to a wide-ranging and complicated array of constitutional rights claims involving the short- and longer-term impacts of environmental harm on children and FG. This article argues that both litigation and judicial efforts in this area have been hampered by the lack of precision of definitions of ‘future generations’ under comparative constitutional and international human rights law, in particular vis-à-vis children. This lack of precision poses a major challenge to both the delineation and enforcement of rights claims in the context of such litigation. After outlining how these cases are being brought and how courts are addressing (or not) the complexities involved in defining children and FG respectively, the article highlights the lack of authoritative definitions of FG in comparative constitutional law – a lacuna that, the author argues, is exacerbated by the ongoing lack of a clear definition of FG in the international human rights law context. The article concludes by identifying key challenges faced by litigators and courts seeking to engage with the rights of children and FG that result from this definitional gap.

States have long been understood to have an obligation to protect the international legal rights and interests of others, consistent with the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas (use what is yours in such a manner as not to injure that of another). As the world's population becomes more interdependent, this no harm obligation becomes more significant. Further, as knowledge increases about the consequences of human activity for the climate and the environment, the no harm obligation takes on greater relevance vis-à-vis the interests of the Earth's future populations. Future generations’ legal interests have been recognized in the context of sustainable development and through the principle of intergenerational equity. The no harm rule requires that these interests be properly considered and addressed appropriately, commensurate with what is at stake. At a minimum, this may require avoidance of ‘manifestly excessive adverse impacts’.

This article maps the shared legal anatomy of climate and environmental lawsuits, in which plaintiffs claim protection for future generations before domestic or international courts. By closely analyzing the litigation strategies of plaintiffs and the inquiry of courts, the article argues that these proceedings revolve around structurally similar legal standards across domestic and international jurisdictions, which correspond to five normative requirements flowing from the rule of law: namely, respect for human rights, certain quality of law requirements, prohibition of arbitrary exercise of governmental powers, non-discrimination, and access to justice. The cross-jurisdictional analysis shows that courts appear to be increasingly willing to protect future generations against arbitrary treatment by present-day decision makers. The article appraises whether such an intergenerationally sensitive reinterpretation of the rule of law could help to change the short-termist paradigm of environmental and climate law.

Climate change uniquely affects those who are at the intersection of several inequalities simultaneously, such as those based on gender, age, and disability. This makes them ‘directly affected’ by climate change, which is crucial in establishing ‘victim status’ under Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights. At the same time, as a result of unequal power relations, intersectional victims face exclusion from, or minimal participation in, political decision-making processes concerning climate change. This further justifies their claim to victim status as a matter of procedural climate justice. As agents of change, intersectional victims, namely elderly women and girls with disabilities, can be empowered to contribute to climate decision making, thereby reshaping unjust power relations. The article examines two climate cases currently before the European Court of Human Rights: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, brought by elderly women, and Duarte Agostinho et al. v. Portugal and 32 other States, brought by children and young people.