Plastic litter is introduced into the oceans from land-based sources located in many countries around the world. Marine plastic pollution may therefore be attributable to multiple states, resulting in shared state responsibility. This article discusses the issue of shared state responsibility for land-based marine plastic pollution by examining (i) primary rules of international law concerning the prevention of land-based marine plastic pollution; (ii) secondary rules of international law on this subject; and (iii) possible ways of strengthening the primary rules. It concludes that the barrier for the invocation of state responsibility may become higher in cases of shared state responsibility. Three cumulative solutions to this problem are proposed: elaborating the obligation of due diligence, strengthening compliance procedures, and interlinking regimes governing the marine environment and international watercourses.

Recent geopolitical and environmental events have created a new urgency for a just energy transition and a socially inclusive modernization of the energy sector. This article critically evaluates the extent to which Article 194(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), as the competence provision of EU energy law, is congruent with the energy justice framework emerging from social sciences. It establishes the substantive scope and justiciability of Article 194(1) TFEU, including the legal principles and so-called ‘guiding principles’ of the provision relating to the internal market, environmental protection, and energy solidarity. The article analyzes the potential and shortcomings of Article 194(1) TFEU in contributing to more equitable decision-making processes in EU energy law. It concludes by evaluating the provision as a regulatory instrument that facilitates the (re)balancing of competing interests of the energy sector. This research further concludes that social considerations of energy justice cannot be sufficiently addressed through Article 194(1) TFEU.

The environmental assessment literature has neglected the distorting effect of cognitive and unconscious motivational biases (CUMB) in environmental assessment processes. This is problematic because CUMB are present in most, if not all, decision-making situations and can significantly distort decision-making processes. This article assesses how debiasing techniques are, or should be, incorporated in (supra)national environmental assessment legislation. The Dutch case study undertaken for this article shows that EU and Dutch legislation do not sufficiently incorporate debiasing techniques to ensure sound environmental decision making. Furthermore, the extent to which Dutch legislation incorporates debiasing techniques was found to be decreasing. Based on these findings, the article presents ways to incorporate debiasing techniques in environmental assessment legislation more generally, and in EU and Dutch legislation in particular.

The rapid and widespread establishment of domestic environmental courts and tribunals raises important questions regarding their implications for international environmental law and global environmental governance. I use an interdisciplinary, multi-method approach to consider the capacity of domestic environmental courts to identify and apply norms and principles of international environmental law in domestic opinions. I first review existing literature, identifying jurisdiction, judicial discretion, and a court's position in a legal system as key institutional determinants of this capacity. I then develop a typology of domestic environmental courts and tribunals, which suggests that, all else being equal, a court with national geographic jurisdiction that also enjoys attributes of broad subject-matter jurisdiction and discretion may be expected to be best equipped to implement norms and principles of international environmental law. Next, I integrate existing assessments of environmental court presence with original outreach and web research to identify all countries which possess environmental courts, and assess a subset of eight existing national-level institutions. The analysis of this subset highlights the diversity of institutional models that can incorporate theorized best practices. Based on these findings, I draw several theoretical conclusions: specifically (i) the relevance of environmental court research to individual- and institutional-level analysis in transnational and international environmental law, (ii) the need for further legal-institutional analysis in global environmental governance scholarship, and (iii) the opportunity for further interdisciplinary analysis of the role of domestic courts in environmental governance.

In recent years, a number of jurisdictions have recognized diverse ecosystems and other-than-human organisms as legal persons. From national constitutions and legislation to subnational judicial decisions and ordinances, these legal experiments have extended legal personality to riverine and terrestrial ecological communities, including vast geographical areas and the beyond-human beings that inhabit them. A growing body of literature engages with these developments and, in particular, their consequences for states and governments. However, few analyses have considered the practical implications they may present for private organizations operating under company law. We address this research gap and explore potential challenges and opportunities that the recognition of ecosystems as legal persons may create for private legal persons, especially corporations. We also discuss the possible impacts and opportunities of the expansion of legal personality on company law and corporate practice more broadly, arguing for a reimagination of company law. This reimagination embraces an ethics of reciprocity, responsibility, and relationality between corporate entities, and ecological and human communities.

In 2008, Ecuador recognized rights of nature (RoN) in its Constitution. Since then, RoN have been relied upon in judicial decisions 55 times in Ecuador. Following years of ad hoc treatment of RoN by Ecuador's government and courts, its Constitutional Court selected various cases to establish binding jurisprudence in respect of RoN. In doing so, the Constitutional Court and various provincial courts in Ecuador have clarified the content of RoN, including specific criteria for determining RoN violations and the relationship between RoN and other constitutional rights, including community and economic rights related to development. Moreover, the courts are imposing sanctions on RoN violators, including the state and powerful commercial sectors. This article shows how Ecuadorian court decisions are changing RoN from a vague, abstract concept into a set of specific standards for how to balance RoN with various human rights and existing environmental law in order to implement sustainable development in an integrated and holistic manner that does not sacrifice ecosystem functioning. In doing so, the article contributes to the emerging literature on how new environmental law norms are constructed as they are put into practice, as well as the important role that judges play as norm entrepreneurs.

Increasing research has been devoted to examining collaborations between public and private actors in environmental regulation under neoliberal democracies. However, this public-private interaction in authoritarian regimes remains understudied. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature through an empirical examination of the interaction between environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and procuratorates in China's environmental public interest litigation. We find emerging complementarity: NGOs focus on new issues and target high-profile defendants to increase the socio-legal impact of their civil litigation, whereas procuratorates increasingly engage in administrative litigation against government agencies. This complementarity is shaped by the different legal opportunities for Chinese NGOs and procuratorates, as well as their respective institutional objectives and capacities. Their divergent regulatory preferences have also fostered synergy between these two actors, allowing them to collaborate on legal experimentation and innovation.

In Indonesia, swidden practices have been part of traditional rice farming for centuries. Swidden agriculture is a fundamental part of all remaining large tropical forests and provides a critical form of biodiversity-friendly agriculture. Meanwhile, peatland degradation and land conversion for oil palm plantation and agriculture have created an annual transboundary environmental disaster in Southeast Asia. This article adopts a transnational lens to highlight the complex multi-scale interactions that perpetuate recurring transboundary air pollution in the region. Having examined the traditional practices of swidden agriculture in Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra (Indonesia), the article reveals that swidden agriculture has been misunderstood generally, and in particular in international and national law and policy. It argues that existing laws fail to identify the important role that swidden agriculture plays in sustainable ecosystem management and cultural expression. Nuanced understandings of fire use, alongside transnational multi-stakeholder and multi-scale approaches, are required.