International Law Commons^™

Defrosting Regulatory Chill, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

In Homer’s Odyssey, King Odysseus asked his men to tie him to the mast of his ship with the hope that he would not jump into the sea after listening to the Sirens. The Odyssey’s hero made a pact to bind himself in the future. He knew that the temptation would be impossible to resist without restraints. Similarly, the creators and advocates of international investment agreements believe that providing rights to foreign investors through international treaties will chill State policies that would harm the interests of investors in the future. The “rope” to tie the State is the threat of …

Legal, Policy, And Environmental Scholars Discuss Global Food Systems At Indiana Law Symposium, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law and its Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies are hosting scholars from around the country Friday and Saturday (Jan. 19-20) for an interdisciplinary discussion on one of the world’s most prevalent problems—food insecurity.

Data from the World Bank estimate more than 780 million people around the world suffered from chronic hunger in 2022. As climate change affects agricultural production and water accessibility, the problem could worsen in coming years.

“A Fragile Framework: How Global Food Systems Intersect with the International Legal Order, the Environment, and the World’s Populations” will bring together legal, policy, …

Environmental War, Climate Security, And The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This Article addresses the Russia-Ukraine conflict’s broad implications for energy security, climate security, and environment protections during wartime. I assert that in the short-term the Russian-Ukraine war is poised to hinder much-needed international climate progress. It will stymie international decarbonization efforts and cause greater uncertainty in other climate-destabilized parts of the world, such as the Arctic. While Russia has become a pariah in the eyes of the United States and other Western nations, it has forged new partnerships and capitalized on new, lucrative energy markets outside the West and Global South. But in the long term, the global renewable energy …

The Role Of Data Sharing In Transboundary Waterways: The Case Of The Helmand River Basin, Najibullah Loodin, Gabriel Eckstein, Vijay P. Singh, Rosario Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

While data and information exchanges theoretically play an effective role in the decision-making process of a shared watercourse, in practice, there are several challenges that prevent riparians from sharing data in an effective and cooperative manner. This chapter seeks to assess why the riparian nations of the Helmand River have failed to adopt an effective data exchange mechanism although both nations signed an internationally recognized bilateral water treaty in 1973. Applying a mixed study approach, the study draws on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to interpret the main obstacles of data sharing between Afghanistan, the upstream state, and Iran, …

Centrality And Compliance: Unitary Vs. Federalist Political Systems In The Implementation Of The Kyoto Protocol In Argentina And Uruguay, Aidan Homan

Baker Scholar Projects

When Uruguay and Argentina first gained their respective independence in the early 1800s, they appeared to be following the same path of development As countries that came from the same Spanish colonization, share almost identical agricultural economies, and retain a close relationship, it is logical that they would follow similar trajectories. This assumption proves to be inaccurate in more ways than one, but most prominently within the environmental sphere. One way to analyze this difference in policy implementation lies in compliance with international environmental treaties which contain specific goals and limits for all parties involved. The Kyoto Protocol presents a …

Fishing And Fisheries Under International Water Law: A Dialogue Between Professor Gabriel Eckstein And Professor Paul Stanton Kibel, Gabriel Eckstein, Paul Stanton Kibel

Faculty Scholarship

On April 10 and 11, 2023, the Center on Urban Environmental Law (CUEL) at Golden Gate University School of Law hosted a two-day webinar on International Law Aspects of Fisheries and Hydropower in Europe. To open the webinar, Professor Gabriel Eckstein (of Texas A&M University School of Law) and Professor Paul Stanton Kibel (of Golden Gate University School of Law) participated in a keynote dialogue titled Fishing and Fisheries under International Water Law. What follows is a transcription of this dialogue between Professor Eckstein and Professor Kibel.

Law Library Blog (March 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Sustainable Seabed Mining And The Phase 1 Environmental Standards And Guidelines, Keith Macmaster

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The oceans are home to a rich diversity of plant and animal life and a source of food and marine resources that drive economies. Climate change and pollution are changing ocean dynamics and the ability to support life. Seabed mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction will add to the ocean's stressors and could cause severe environmental damage. The International Seabed Authority (“ISA”) is mandated to manage access to and benefits from the seabed, its subsoil and mineral resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction (the “Area”). Although the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea sets out the legal …

The Environmental, Social, Governance (Esg) Debate Emerges From The Soil Of Climate Denial, Lawrence J. Trautman, Neal Newman

Faculty Scholarship

It has been almost six decades since Rachel Carson’s ominous warning of pending environmental disaster. During 2019 the United Nations requested urgent action from world leaders, given that “just over a decade is all that remains to stop irreversible damage from climate change.” With every passing year, damage resulting from destructive climate change causes increased pain, suffering, death and massive property loss. During 2020 and 2021 alone, severe weather events have included: destructive fires in California; record breaking freeze, power outage, and threat to the electrical grid in Texas; continuation of disruptive drought in U.S. Western states; and record-breaking high …

Inclusion Of Incentive And Punitive Measures In Multilateral Environmental Agreement: A Suggestion On How The United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change Can Be Utilized To Influence The Reduction Of Gas Flaring In The Oil And Gas Exploration Fields Of Nigeria, Temiloluwa Elijah Olanrewaju

Dissertations & Theses

Gas flaring is categorized as one of the important contributors to greenhouse gases, which increases the risk of global warming and climate change. The overdependence of the modern economy and most industrial technologies on fossil fuels has created a situation in countries where fossil fuels are exploited. The governments rely majorly on the revenue from exporting oil. The IOCs that are engaged in the mining of oil and gas have been able to influence policy and law enforcement on gas flaring to such an extent that the National laws are not enforced, or the stipulated fines are abysmally low that …

Global Climate Governance In 3d: Mainstreaming Geoengineering Within A Unified Framework, Gabriel Weil

Scholarly Works

The failure of conventional climate change mitigation to reduce climate-related risks to tolerable levels has spurred interest in more unconventional—and riskier—climate interventions. What currently sounds like science fiction could become a reality in the not-so-distant future: planes blasting particles into the sky to block the sun, vast deserts covered with mirrors, algae sucking carbon into the depths of the ocean. Scholars tend to lump all these unconventional climate measures together in a fuzzy category called “geoengineering,” and set them apart from conventional climate change mitigation. But the characteristics of climate interferences vary across three distinct dimensions, which the mitigation-geoengineering dichotomy …

Canadian And Russian Fisheries Management In The Arctic: Complexities, Commonalities And Contrasts, David Vanderzwaag, Vitalii Vorobev, Olga Koubrak

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article reviews and compares Canadian and Russian approaches to Arctic fisheries management through a three-part format. First, the complex array of laws and policies applicable to Arctic fisheries is described for each country. How Canada and Russia have addressed international fishery issues is also highlighted, including their participation in the 2018 Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement. Second, commonalities in fisheries governance approaches are summarized, including national commitments to implement precautionary and ecosystem approaches. Finally, contrasts in Arctic fisheries management are discussed. Major differences include the greater devolution of management responsibilities by Canada to Indigenous communities through land-claim agreements and …

Navigating The Structural Coherence Of Sea Life, Aldo Chircop, Philip Steinberg, Greta Ferloni, Claudio Aporta, Gavin Bridge, Kate Coddington, Stuart Elden, Stephanie C. Kane, Timo Koivurova, Jessica Shadian, Anna Stammler-Gossmann

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Ice breaking by ships can cause irreparable harm to the ecologies and cultures of northern regions. This chapter revolves around a central question: what are the barriers preventing the development of a legal mechanism to limit this act of environmental violence? The chapter suggests that the central barrier is not so much legal as it is ontological: foundational conceptions of space that underpin Western legal institutions are unable to value the form of water, reducing it instead to an ed space that is used for movement or resource extraction. This chapter demonstrates how a consideration of the environmental violence of …

Introduction: Responding To A Changing Arctic Ocean: Canadian And Russian Experiences And Challenges, Viatcheslav Gavrilov, David Vanderzwaag, Susan J. Rolston

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article is the guest editors' introduction to the special series entitled Responding to a Changing Arctic Ocean: Canadian and Russian Experiences and Challenges.

Same As It Ever Was : The Tijuana River Sewage Crisis, Non-State Actors, And The State, James M. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

Sewage—a scary mixture of human waste and industrial toxins—flows into the Tijuana River Valley, an environmentally sensitive watershed that straddles the United Mexican States ("Mexico") and the United States of America. Treatment plants, a deteriorating one in Punta Bandera with limited capacity south of the border, and another in San Diego County completed in 1997, are inadequate to process the volume of sewage. So much sewage made its way into the Tijuana River that CBS 60 Minutes broadcast a special report on the binational environmental disaster in 2020.

Border factories and a population spike contribute to the sewage. Maquiladoras, …

Whose Water? Corporatization Of A Common Good, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter encourages readers to think of agricultural communities in the era of climate change-induced droughts and population growth similar to when western Pennsylvania’s steel industry collapsed in the 1980s. If water must flow uphill to money, it should not leave a dust bowl behind. While this chapter’s proposals to address the effects on community build on examples of water reallocation where those effects have been addressed, both the just-transition literature and the experiences of some of the towns successfully adapting to abrupt changes in their economic tissue can offer lessons for areas suffering big water losses. In addition, privatization …

Binational Reflections On Pathways To Groundwater Security In The Mexico-United States Borderlands, Rosario Sanchez, Jose Agustin Brena-Naranjo, Alfonso Rivera, Randall T. Hanson, Antonio Hernandez-Espriu, Rick J. Hogeboom, Anita Milman, Jude A. Benavides, Adrian Pedrozo-Acuna, Julio Cesar Soriano-Monzalvo, Sharon B. Megdal, Gabriel Eckstein, Laura Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

Shared groundwater resources between Mexico and the United States are facing unprecedented stressors. We reflect on how to improve water security for groundwater systems in the border region. Our reflection begins with the state of groundwater knowledge, and the challenges groundwater resources face from a physical, societal and institutional perspective. We conclude that the extent of ongoing cooperation frameworks, joint and remaining research efforts, from which alternative strategies can emerge, still need to be developed. The way forward offers a variety of cooperation models as the future offers rather complex, shared and multidisciplinary water challenges to the Mexico–US borderlands.

Guide On Incentives For Responsible Investment In Agriculture And Food Systems, Anna Bulman, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Ladan Mehranvar, Ella Merrill, Yannick Fiedler

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

To support implementation of the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (CFS RAI), CCSI has developed resources for governments and other stakeholders in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

This work includes an online course on creating an enabling environment for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems. The course is freely available, accessible online and available for download. Part I highlights the features and key players of an enabling environment that promotes responsible investment in agriculture and food security. Part II addresses multi-stakeholder engagement in the design of legal and …

Covid-19 And Land-Based Investment: Changing Landscapes, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Nathaniah Jacobs, Clarisse Marsac

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

CCSI, IIED, and Namati are partnering on a new initiative to support governments, civil society, local communities, and private sector actors in improving the governance and practices of land-based investments.

Recognizing that more and better private sector investment is widely seen as critical to advancing economic development and achieving the SDGs in low- and middle-income countries, this initiative responds to concerns that land-based investments have resulted in land dispossession, environmental degradation, and conflict.

The Advancing Land-based Investment Governance (ALIGN) project involves:

• Sustained, in-depth work in up to three countries, including Sierra Leone, to support policy development and implementation, legal …

When Drills And Pipelines Cross Indigenous Lands In The Americas, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

From the Missouri River, passing through the Sonora Desert, all the way down to the Amazon Forest and the Andean Mountains, drills and pipelines are crossing over indigenous lands. In an energy-thirsty continent, there is no land left to spare, not even tribal land. Many of these energy infrastructure projects involve international investments that are protected by treaties and enforced by arbitral tribunals. At the same time, tribal communities have an internationally recognized right to receive prior and informed consultation before they are affected by projects of this nature. The Article focuses on the clash of rights between energy extraction …

The Case For A Climate-Smart Update Of The Africa Mining Vision, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Karan Bhulwaka, Kojo Busia

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The 2009 Africa Mining Vision (AMV) provides guidance for the industrialization of African countries by leveraging their mining sector. However, the global context has changed since its adoption. As a result, it does not include guidance on how governments should embrace the climate change agenda as an opportunity for better and further industrialization, deeper linkages, and sustainable development.

There are many ways to look at the implications of international climate change policy for Africa, including through the increased extraction of minerals needed in clean energy application and the greening of mines. The localization of global value chains – induced by …

Transparency Of Land-Based Investments: Cameroon Country Snapshot, Sam Szoke-Burke, Samuel Nguiffo, Stella Tchoukep

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Despite a recent transparency law and participation in transparency initiatives, Cameroon’s investment environment remains plagued by poor transparency.

In a new report focusing on agribusiness projects in Cameroon, CCSI and the Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED) find that:

• Communities continue to be excluded from decision-making around investments.
• The government pursues a top-down approach to concession allocation and remains reluctant to recognize all legitimate tenure rights.
• The government faces threats to its legitimacy as the grievances of citizens and investors alike lead to the barring of roads by communities and investor withdrawals.

CCSI and CED therefore call for:

• A …

Harry Potter And The Gluttonous Machine, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

In this paper, I outline the colonial structure of international law, and examine the short decline or suppression of its coloniality in the so-called ‘era of decolonisation’, then illustrate its resurgence in the modern neo-colonial order. PIL has split into two separate systems. One includes, and is justified by, the heroic tales of human rights and ‘Humanity’s Law’. The other is the actualised system of International Economic Law (IEL), an order driven by the need of the over-developed states to plunder the under-developed states’ resources and labour, to subsidise the luxury to which we have grown accustomed. One purports to …

The Carbon Price Equivalent: A Metric For Comparing Climate Change Mitigation Efforts Across Jurisdictions, Gabriel Weil

Scholarly Works

Climate change presents a global commons problem: Emissions reductions on the scale needed to meet global targets do not pass a domestic cost-benefit test in most countries. To give national governments ample incentive to pursue deep decarbonization, mutual interstate coercion will be necessary. Many proposed tools of coercive climate diplomacy would require a one-dimensional metric for comparing the stringency of climate change mitigation policy packages across jurisdictions. This article proposes and defends such a metric: the carbon price equivalent. There is substantial variation in the set of climate change mitigation policy instruments implemented by different countries. Nonetheless, the consequences of …

Contracts On The Seabed, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Four million square kilometers of seabed within the sovereignty of Pacific Island nations are currently under contract for mineral exploration or exploitation. Over a million additional square kilometers of the non-sovereign seafloor are licensed for such use. Historically, these licenses have served to establish “squatters’ rights” in anticipation of a distant future when the industry would develop the machinery to exploit oceanic mineral wealth. That moment has arrived, with the first seafloor mining machines rolling off production lines in 2015-2016. Indeed, but for failed financing, the first seabed mine would now be operating in the territorial ocean waters of Papua …

International Working Group On Polar Shipping: Report To The Executive Council And Assembly Of The Comité Maritime International, Aldo Chircop

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This report covers the reporting period from 1 November 2020 to 31 May 2021. The IWG Chair acknowledges updates provided by the subgroup chairs. The IWG continues to operate through three subgroups, namely on Antarctic Shipping (chaired by David Baker), COLREGS in Polar Environments (chaired by Stefanie Johnston) and Cruise Passengers’ Rights (chaired by Lars Rosenberg Overby). While progress has been made, unfortunately the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has continued to affect aspects of the IWG’s work.

Regulating Wave, Tidal And Ocean Thermal Energy, Meinhard Doelle, Theodore Nsoe Adimazoya

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Ocean renewable energy sources hold the potential to contribute to the options of low-carbon energy sources and enhance the efforts by the global community to slow down climate change. In this Chapter, we provide a brief background on the current state of technology and development of wave, tidal and ocean thermal energy and consider their potential as forms of renewable energy as well as the potential negative environmental footprints of ocean renewable energy installation and development. Secondly, we examine the relevant international legal and policy framework governing ocean energy, highlighting in particular, the absence of a global legal instrument that …

Water Diplomacy And Shared Resources Along The United States-Mexico Border, Maria Elena Giner, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

The United States and Mexico are geographic neighbors with high economic asymmetry, but also a shared history and intense social, cultural, economic, and security relations. Over 15 million people reside along the U.S.-Mexico border and share an environment that includes many watersheds and air basins transcending political boundaries. Pollution impacts on both sides of the border have required a coordinated response at the local, state, and federal level.

At the federal level, a joint institution was created in in 1889 as the International Boundary Commission and later renamed the International Boundary and Water Commission to provide binational solutions to issues …

Getting The Most Out Of Extractive Industries Transparency: How A More Explicit Treatment Of Political Considerations Could Strengthen The Impact Of Transparency Efforts, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Work on transparency in the extractive industries (EI) has achieved important successes over the last two decades. For example, significant commitments to disclosure have been secured, the volume of publicly available information about critical activities has increased considerably, and norms around certain information being in the public domain have been established. There is also a growing library of use cases for this information. Nonetheless, important work remains to be done to translate these efforts into impact.

Political context is crucial to determining the fate of transparency efforts. Therefore, grappling with political context more effectively will also be key to unlocking …

Incorporating Free, Prior And Informed Consent (Fpic) Into Investment Approval Processes, Kelly Dudine, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Investment approval processes are the gateway through which governments set the agenda for their country’s investment environment. Yet too often these processes fail to incorporate meaningful requirements regarding participation in decision-making by Indigenous and other affected communities, increasing the risk of under-performing and conflict-ridden investments.

Enabling meaningful participation by rights holders and obtaining and maintaining their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) throughout different investment approval processes can help governments to fulfill their legal obligations, mitigate financial and political risk, and, ultimately, attract more sustainable land-based investments.

Featuring concrete guidance and drawing on case studies from Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Peru, …