Climate Emergency and the Limits of Environmental Law

Overview

A critical introduction to law and society’s responses to the climate emergency and calls for ‘system change’, focusing on socio-economic and ecological transitions. The module will aim to enhance the ecological literacy of law students to assist critical thinking about the origins and meaning of law, the changing role and demands on law, and the role of legal pluralism (the pluriverse (Escobar) in navigating societal transitions.

a. Ecology and the history of our legal traditions
b. The scope and limits of Environmental Law
c. Planetary Boundaries (Rockstrom et al. 2009)
d. Law, Systems and System Change: Sustainable Development Goals
e. Law and the pluriverse
f. Negotiating just transitions: climate negotiating skills

- Law and climate change (multi-level governance)
- Law and the wellbeing economy
- Law, inequality and post-growth
- Law and energy justice
- Law and the commons
- Law and the Rights of Nature

Learning Objectives

Students will be expected to emerge from the Module with:-

a. A critical understanding of the social and ecological history of jurisprudence

b. An appreciation of the scope and limits of environmental law

c. An understanding of the wider challenges to our legal system posed by the climate emergency and calls for socio-economic and ecological systems change

d. A basic understanding of law and the pluriverse (critical legal pluralism in the context of indigenous and other non-Western legal approaches to the climate emergency)

e. An understanding of the emerging role of law and the ‘just transition’ including calls for transitions to a wellbeing economy, post-growth and post-extractivism.

f. An understanding of emergent jurisprudence on the commons, the rights of nature and rights to a healthy environment.

Skills

a. Ecological Literacy within the context of the climate emergency and calls for socio-economic and legal system change.

b. Historical and critical knowledge of the ecological history of Western Jurisprudence.

c. Negotiating skills in the context of international climate politics.

d. Introductory skills in the field of legal pluralism (e.g. an ability to work with and through encounters with non-Western legal traditions and approaches to ecology and wellbeing).

Assessment

All students will be expected to complete a report (80%) on their participation in a climate change negotiation simulation (www.climateinteracitve.org). The structured report will be designed to ensure that students draw on a range of learning from the module, including a focus on one of the following:

a. Law and systems thinking
b. Law and climate justice
c. Law and the climate emergency
d. Law and economics in a time of transition
e. Law and the commons
f. Law and energy justice
g. Law and Ecocide