This article explores the development and enforcement of the Republic of Korea’s Soil Environmental Conservation Act (SECA). It argues that, although Korea has adopted the statutory model of the United States (US) Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and US case law, it has formulated SECA to devise a Korean model of an effective and reasonable liability scheme based on the Korean regulatory context. The original SECA, especially its retroactive liability provision, was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Korea, because it violated ‘the principle of legitimate expectations protection’. Since then, SECA has been amended to include more diverse categories of polluter and to provide more adequate defences. The development process of this Korean model can be instructive for less developed countries that urgently need to address soil pollution but are not yet equipped with the necessary environmental statutes and regulatory infrastructure and, thus, are vulnerable to environmental risks.

Over several years, the European Union (EU) has gradually developed its legal framework to assist in the proper application of EU environmental protection rules, both at Member State as well as at EU institutional levels. This article focuses on one particular and relatively recent emerging element of that supranational framework, namely the range of EU secondary legislative measures and provisions concerning the management of environmental inspections. In addition to appraising the extent of EU legislative engagement in relation to environmental inspections, this article reflects on certain challenges of a constitutional nature that the EU will need to address in the future if its intervention in this particular policy field is to continue to develop.

Following the European Union (EU) experience, an increasing number of countries are establishing an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The EU ETS often serves as a ‘model’ despite fundamental differences in the receiving environment. In the EU liberalized energy markets, carbon prices are intended to raise the cost of carbon-intensive energy and thereby stimulate cleaner alternatives. In contrast, many emerging economies continue to regulate energy investments and prices, which may insulate consumers and producers from the impact of an ETS. To avoid this risk, energy economists advocate EU-style energy market reforms as a prerequisite to the introduction of the ETS concept abroad. By focusing on the cases of China, Kazakhstan, and Russia, this article highlights the limits on the exportation of the EU liberalization model and argues that, instead of energy reform, the ETS must be reconceptualized as a mechanism that integrates the regulated energy market paradigm in emerging economies.

Transparency is fundamental to environmental governance. It promotes public trust, goodwill, and credibility in environmental decision making. It also ensures that monitoring and enforcement of emissions reduction targets are efficient and effective. As the impacts of climate change increase, it is urgent that scholars and policy makers develop and test criteria for transparency in both the calculation of emissions reductions and the public reporting of emissions. This article highlights basic principles of transparency that should inform such criteria and that may be applied on a transnational basis. We also examine China’s recently implemented pilot emissions trading schemes and find that the approach in China does not yet comply with our suggested principles. Nevertheless, the positive direction of environmental governance in this region is encouraging.

Discourses on ‘climate migration’ have played an instrumental role in initiating negotiations on loss and damage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Yet, to date, the framing of climate migration has not been clear: it has been considered as a tool for reducing loss and damage (hence essentially a form of adaptation) or, alternatively, as a source of loss and damage for the migrants or for other concerned communities. Moreover, proposed approaches to address climate migration as a form of loss and damage have extended beyond compensation, and remain controversial among developed nations. In the highly politicized field of migration governance, however, this article submits that policy support and guidance in addressing loss and damage could prompt dangerous forms of political interference, such as the imposition of a Western objective of containing migrants to the Global South. It is thus suggested that top-down migration policies may not help vulnerable nations who face loss and damage in the context of climate migration.

The regulation of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) is widely seen as an important dimension of global atmospheric pollution control and climate change governance. SLCPs emitted outside the Arctic influence the Arctic atmosphere, Arctic communities, and the rate of ice melt. As an intergovernmental forum that brings together three of the world’s major petroleum producers (Russia, the United States, and Canada), the Arctic Council has a pivotal role in reducing the rate of Arctic warming through SLCP mitigation. This article explores the Arctic Council’s approach to SLCP mitigation. It begins by addressing the current status of black carbon and methane in international legal instruments, and goes on to explore the important regime linkages that are set in place through the Arctic Council’s Framework for Action on Enhanced Black Carbon and Methane Emission Reductions. The article suggests that the Arctic Council provides an experimental platform that may catalyze SLCP regulation not only in Arctic jurisdictions but also in Arctic Council observer states, such as China and India. The transnational and inclusive character of the Arctic Council’s constitutional framework and knowledge-generating mechanisms enables new pathways for global action on climate change and air pollution governance.

One question left unanswered by the 2015 Paris Agreement is exactly how the world will meet the daunting technological challenges that lie ahead. This article proposes a global strategy to build up human capital oriented towards two bodies of knowledge: alternative, non-fossil systems of energy generation, delivery and consumption; and a deeper understanding of climate systems that might be geoengineered to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Simply committing funding to climate technology is insufficient; a global climate technology policy must take into account the unique growth properties of human capital, and the conditions under which it can grow.

Human capital should be the focus of an international climate agreement for three reasons. Firstly, the wrong kind of human capital (attached to fossil fuel-related methods of energy generation and consumption) has helped to create an unfavourable political economy for climate policy. Secondly, the right kind of human capital (broader, and building on fundamental understandings of energy systems and climate systems) can create a more favourable political economy for climate policy. Thirdly, the technological changes needed for both mitigation and geoengineering technologies are so profound that a human capital stock must be developed with a conscious focus on radical technological change that can be delivered quickly. While individual countries may pursue an enlightened human capital policy on their own, cooperation at the international level would maximize the scale economies of inventive effort.