Environmental Regulation Through Financial Organisations:Comparative Perspectives on the Industrialised Nations

Environmental Regulation Through Financial Organisations:Comparative Perspectives on the Industrialised Nations
Author: Benjamin Richardson
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2002-02-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9041117350

This book takes a comparative perspective of practice in the European Union, North America, Japan and Australasia, arguing that existing legal reforms to promote sustainable development are unlikely to be successful unless environmental policy can be diffused and embedded in the financial services sector. This sector plays a crucial role in creating the financial conditions that allow much economic development to proceed. Financial markets are already highly regulated in pursuance of various public policy objectives, and there is scope to adapt existing regulation to incorporate environmental aspects into the financial services sector. In terms of specific reforms, the book focuses on the role of corporate environmental reporting, economic instruments and liability rules to provide a proper context for engaging financial organisations with the environment, as well as reforms to the system of prudential regulation that currently governs this sector. Beyond the focus on the financial services sector, the book raises complex questions regarding the relationship between the state and market institutions in environmental policy, and will appeal to scholars from a wide range of disciplines interested in problems of environmental governance.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Law

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Law
Author: Emma Lees
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1296
Release: 2019-05-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0192508385

This Handbook is the first comprehensive account of comparative environmental law. It examines in detail the methodological foundations of the discipline as well as the substance of environmental law across countries from four vantage points: country studies from all continents, responses to common problems (including air pollution, water management, nature conservation, genetically modified organisms, climate change and energy, chemicals, waste), foundational components of environmental law systems (including principles, property rights, administrative and judicial organisation, command-and-control regulation, market mechanisms, informational techniques and liability mechanisms), and common interactions of environmental protection with the broader public, private, and criminal law contexts. The volume brings together the foremost authorities in this field from around the world to provide a concise, self-contained, and technically rigorous account of environmental law as a single overall system.

Environmental Law and Economics

Environmental Law and Economics
Author: Michael G. Faure
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2019-10-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108429483

A detailed overview of the law-and-economics methodology developed and employed by environmental lawyers and policymakers.

Sustainable Development Principles in the Decisions of International Courts and Tribunals

Sustainable Development Principles in the Decisions of International Courts and Tribunals
Author: Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 933
Release: 2017-05-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317670000

The 2002 New Delhi Declaration of Principles of International Law relating to Sustainable Development set out seven principles on sustainable development, as agreed in treaties and soft-law instruments from before the 1992 Rio ‘Earth Summit’ UNCED, to the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, to the 2012 Rio UNCSD. Recognition of the New Delhi principles is shaping the decisions of dispute settlement bodies with jurisdiction over many subjects: the environment, human rights, trade, investment, and crime, among others. This book explores the expanding international jurisprudence incorporating principles of international law on sustainable development. Through chapters by respected experts, the volume documents the application and interpretation of these principles, demonstrating how courts and tribunals are contributing to the world’s Sustainable Development Goals, by peacefully resolving disputes. It charts the evolution of these principles in international law from soft law standards towards recognition as customary law in certain instances, assessing key challenges to further judicial consideration of the principles, and discussing, for instance, how their relevance for compliance and disputes related to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The volume provides a unique contribution of great interest to law and policy-makers, judges, academics, students, civil society and practitioners concerned with sustainable development and the law, globally.

Sustainable Development As a Principle of International Law

Sustainable Development As a Principle of International Law
Author: Christina Voigt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 453
Release: 2009
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004166971

This volume provides a framework for the doctrinal foundation of sustainable development as a principle of integration in international law. The work departs from the fragmented nature of the international legal system, a system that lacks integrative principles for creating coherent relations between, for example, the international trade regime of the WTO and multilateral environmental agreements. The specific focus is on a legal analysis of potential normative conflicts between climate measures as regulated by the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, in particular the flexibility instruments of international emissions trading and the Clean Development Mechanism, and the rules of the WTO. Attention is then given to the application of sustainable development as a principle of integration in relation to these conflicts. The book takes on several important, timely and demanding tasks related to the urgent global challenge of climate change and the capacity of international law to deal with complex and multifaceted issues. It addresses in particular: a [ The relations between various international legal regimes, especially between international trade law and climate law, a [ The legal status of sustainable development as a principle of international law, and a [ The analysis of interpretative methods and of principles that may serve to address conflicts between rules pertaining to different legal regimes. Here, integration as part of legal reasoning becomes particularly relevant.

Deficits in EU and US Mandatory Environmental Information Disclosure

Deficits in EU and US Mandatory Environmental Information Disclosure
Author: Dirk Bünger
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2011-10-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3642227570

It is the publicity about the Pollutant Release Inventory’s data which creates an incentive for firms to achieve emission reductions. Accordingly, public access to environmental information constitutes a core characteristic of the aforementioned inventory. Here, in essence, two facets arise. First, with regard to the collection, it is disputed whether such information, which may comprise confidential commercial and industrial information in the EU as well as trade secrets in the US, can be protected under fundamental and constitutional property rights respectively. Second, in the context of dissemination and utilisation, it is arguable whether the information indeed impacts polluters and produces an outcome that secures a certain level of environmental protection. The author responds to the first issue by taking the EU and US jurisdictions into account and strives to analyse how this novel form of Internet disclosure liberates market mechanisms in the quest for effective and efficient emission reductions.

Fiduciary Law and Responsible Investing

Fiduciary Law and Responsible Investing
Author: Benjamin J. Richardson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2013-08-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1135941068

This book is about fiduciary law’s influence on the financial economy’s environmental performance, focusing on how the law affects responsible investing and considering possible legal reforms to shift financial markets closer towards sustainability. Fiduciary law governs how trustees, fund managers or other custodians administer the investment portfolios owned by beneficiaries. Written for a diverse audience, not just legal scholars, the book examines in a multi-jurisdictional context an array of philosophical, institutional and economic issues that have shaped the movement for responsible investing and its legal framework. Fiduciary law has acquired greater influence in the financial economy in tandem with the extraordinary recent growth of institutional funds such as pension plans and insurance company portfolios. While the fiduciary prejudice against responsible investing has somewhat waned in recent years, owing mainly to reinterpretations of fiduciary and trust law, significant barriers remain. This book advances the notion of ‘nature’s trust’ to metaphorically signal how fiduciary responsibility should accommodate society’s dependence on long-term environmental well-being. Financial institutions, managing vast investment portfolios on behalf of millions of beneficiaries, should manage those investments with regard to the broader social interest in sustaining ecological health. Even for their own financial self-interest, investors over the long-term should benefit from maintaining nature’s capital. We should expect everyone to act in nature’s trust, from individual funds to market regulators. The ancient public trust doctrine could be refashioned for stimulating this change, and sovereign wealth funds should take the lead in pioneering best practices for environmentally responsible investing.

Carbon Capture and Storage

Carbon Capture and Storage
Author: Michael Gebert Faure
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2017-04-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262035596

A theoretical and practical analysis of the complex liability issues raised by carbon capture and storage systems for containing greenhouse gases. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems inject highly compressed carbon dioxide gas deep into geological formations in order to contain the gas, and its harmful effects on the planet, for the foreseeable future and beyond—for centuries or even millennia. Used effectively, CCS could lessen the impact of climate change while carbon-free energy sources are developed. And yet CCS is not widely deployed. In this book, Michael Faure and Roy Partain offer a theoretical and practical discussion of one of the main obstacles to CCS adoption: complex liability and compensation issues. Faure and Partain point out that current liability rules are unclear in their application to CCS. Causation is complicated, and the timeline of hundreds of years goes beyond the lifetimes of people or corporations. Examining the subject from legal and economic perspectives, they consider whether rules of civil liability can govern CCS risk; how a liability system might address the open-ended timeline; what role public and private regulatory measures could play; and whether compensation should be provided from public or private resources. They investigate the utility of different forms of insurance and of such financial tools as guarantees, deposits, and catastrophe bonds. They offer not only a rigorous framework for assessing policy but also a summary of policy recommendations they develop from their findings.

Sustainable Justice

Sustainable Justice
Author: Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 681
Release: 2004-11-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9047414608

This book offers a cutting-edge scholarly discussion of judicial and legal methods to reconcile national and international economic, social and environmental law for sustainable development. A diverse anthology of perspectives from developed and developing countries, the book contains contributions from judges, international lawyers and other experts with a wealth of experience in the emerging field of sustainable development law. It presents negotiators, scholars and jurists with a lively, thought-provoking and highly current discussion of international legal debates related to sustainable development. The final part discusses future developments in sustainable development law, based on the results of three recent international processes. Sustainable Justice weaves a diverse and intriguing collection, reflecting a vigorous yet practical international legal debate of crucial importance to our common future.

The Quest for Environmental Regulatory Integration in the European Union

The Quest for Environmental Regulatory Integration in the European Union
Author: Eberhard Bohne
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 662
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9041120815

It is a commonplace that pollution knows no borders, and that environmental law must allow for cross-border implementation. The European Union specifies this principle in EC directives on integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC), on environmental impact assessment (EIA), and on the control of major accident hazards involving dangerous substances (Seveso II). This is the first book to investigate from both empirical and normative perspectives the effectiveness of these directives at the national level. It provides by far the most extensive comparative analysis and evaluation of the industrial permitting and inspections, EIA, and major accident prevention in the EU. Offering an in-depth study of the transposition and implementation of EC environmental directives in eight EU member states (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), the author who has played a significant role in the formulation of environmental legislation and regulation at both the national (German) and EU levelsand¿provides a stable base for an assessment of the benefits and costs of the integrated approach to environmental protection. Among the factors considered are the following: key features of national constitutional, administraand¬tive, and judicial systems which provide the framework for environand¬mental regulations and their implementation in the eight countries under study; procedures and substantive requirements transposing the IPPC, EIA and Seveso II directives into national laws; and evaluation of national deficiencies and the extent of muddling through. The empirical part of Dr Bohne's analysis draws on 138 expert interviews with public and private actors, a survey of 178 public authorities, and document analyses of selected industrial permits and environmental impact statements. His comparative analysis of procedural, organizational, and substantive integration makes it possible to identify and compare national accomplishments in regulatory integration, and offers new insights into the effectiveness and limits of EC law. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for European governance and better regulation after the enlargement of the EU. This thoroughly researched, rigorous, and insightful study will be of great interest and value to policymakers, regulators, business people, environmental NGOs, consultants, and lawyers, as well as to students of environmental policies and European governance.