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Articles 1 - 30 of 61
Full-Text Articles in Law
Low Impact Development In The Coquitlam River Watershed: Barriers And Facilitators In Municipal Laws, Stepan Wood
Low Impact Development In The Coquitlam River Watershed: Barriers And Facilitators In Municipal Laws, Stepan Wood
Centre for Law and the Environment
No abstract provided.
Boom Or Bust: The Public Trust Doctrine In Canadian Climate Change Litigation, Hassan M. Ahmad
Boom Or Bust: The Public Trust Doctrine In Canadian Climate Change Litigation, Hassan M. Ahmad
All Faculty Publications
Over the past few years, Canadian courts have heard the first climate change cases. These claims have been commenced on behalf of youth and future generations who allege that governments have failed to meet or, otherwise, uphold greenhouse gas reduction targets under the Paris Agreement. This novel area of litigation has brought forth creative legal arguments to expand or re-envision existing doctrines in order to place blame for what continues to be a warming planet and increasingly unstable ecosystems. This article investigates the public trust doctrine. In Canadian courts, the doctrine’s limited and arguably parochial interpretation has diverged from its …
Cle Working Paper No.1/2023--Driving Global Heating To 1.7° And Above: The New Canada Energy Future 2023 Report And Canada's Projected Oil Production To 2050, David Gooderham
Centre for Law and the Environment
The Canada Energy Regulator on June 20, 2023, released its new report Canada’s Energy Future 2023. For the first time the Federal Government’s energy regulator has directly addressed whether the currently projected growth of oil production in Canada to 2040 and 2050 is compatible with keeping increased warming to 1.5°C. The regulator’s analysis is based on three scenarios. Only the CER’s first scenario, the “Global Net-zero Scenario” (stated to be based on the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) “Net-Zero by 2050 Scenario”), is aligned with limiting warming to 1.5°C. That would require a very dramatic reduction in Canada’s existing oil production …
Rights Of Nature: What Are They?, Stepan Wood
Rights Of Nature: What Are They?, Stepan Wood
Centre for Law and the Environment
This guide is one in an evolving series of guides intended to provide a general introduction to RON laws in plain language. They are intended for anyone curious about the subject, from ordinary citizens to community organizers, business people, scientists, politicians, government officials and Indigenous leaders.
Rights Of Nature: Who Holds Them?, Stepan Wood
Rights Of Nature: Who Holds Them?, Stepan Wood
Centre for Law and the Environment
This guide is one in an evolving series of guides intended to provide a general introduction to RON laws in plain language. They are intended for anyone curious about the subject, from ordinary citizens to community organizers, business people, scientists, politicians, government officials and Indigenous leaders.
Of Lock-Breaking And Stock Taking: Ip, Climate Change And The Right To Repair In Canada, Graham Reynolds
Of Lock-Breaking And Stock Taking: Ip, Climate Change And The Right To Repair In Canada, Graham Reynolds
All Faculty Publications
This paper argues that Canadian governments have both legal and moral obligations to act to combat climate change. In seeking to fulfill these obligations, Canadian governments should pay particular attention to Canada’s intellectual property (IP) regime. This paper argues that given the centrality of IP to Canada’s economy, a comprehensive review is required in order to determine whether and the extent to which elements of Canada’s IP regime contribute to climate change or impede climate action. To illustrate the need for such a review, this paper will highlight one example of how Canada’s IP regime, as currently structured, impedes the …
The Transnational Exchange Of Law Through Climate Change Litigation, Natasha Affolder, Godwin Dzah
The Transnational Exchange Of Law Through Climate Change Litigation, Natasha Affolder, Godwin Dzah
All Faculty Publications
Climate change litigation continues to bash holes in the view of domestic legal systems as hermetically sealed units. Domestic cases are inspired by litigation elsewhere, actively fostered by transnational advocacy communities, and the decisions themselves are indicative of transjudicial influences and sometimes even dialogue on climate change. This chapter, written in 2021 to reflect the transnationalism of early climate change litigation, takes a close look at practices of transjudicialism in climate change litigation. In so doing, it seeks to disrupt some default patterns of studying the spread of law. By problematizing the practices of ‘finding’ influential climate law cases, measuring …
Cle Working Paper No. 2/2022--Mexican Salsa And Mexican Farm Workers: How International Agricultural Development Marginalizes Farm Labour, Celia White
Centre for Law and the Environment
International food systems have become ever-more complex through systems of globalization, industrialization and technologization, and have been significantly influenced by, and entrenched in concepts of international development. One small meal can have countless intersections with international laws, domestic laws, environments and people. A simple salsa recipe, for example, containing merely tomatoes, lime juice, garlic, onions, and cilantro, contains in its history a complex story of power, privilege, poverty and possibility. Where did these ingredients come from? Who grew them? Where are those people from? What rights do they have? Innumerable personal stories are hidden within the seemingly innocuous act of …
Cle Working Paper No. 2/2022--Mexican Salsa And Mexican Farm Workers: How International Agricultural Development Marginalizes Farm Labour, Celia White
Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers
No abstract provided.
Cle Working Paper No. 1/2022--How Law Shapes Food Sovereignty In Urban Canada, Julia Witmer
Cle Working Paper No. 1/2022--How Law Shapes Food Sovereignty In Urban Canada, Julia Witmer
Centre for Law and the Environment
Inspired by the right to the city, this paper outlines the legal architecture of food sovereignty activities in urban Canada. The architecture is rooted in three fields of law: constitutional law, municipal and planning law, and health law, and explored through various case studies in urban centers. The paper reviews legal instruments in each field and analyzes how they shape different food sovereignty activities in supportive and restrictive ways. Constitutional law generally proves restrictive in its limited recognition of local government as true government, restricted provincial power in agricultural regulation, and its general treatment of food as a commodity. Municipal …
The Public Law Paradoxes Of Climate Emergency Declarations, Jocelyn Stacey
The Public Law Paradoxes Of Climate Emergency Declarations, Jocelyn Stacey
All Faculty Publications
Climate emergency declarations occupy a legally-ambiguous space between emergency measure and political rhetoric. Their uncertain status in public law provides a unique opportunity to illuminate latent assumptions about emergencies and how they are regulated in law. This article analyzes climate emergency declarations in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It argues that these climate emergency declarations reflect back a set of paradoxes about how emergencies are governed in law—paradoxes about defining the emergency, its relationship to time and who gets to respond to the emergency and how. These paradoxes productively complicate long-held and over-simplified assumptions about emergencies contained …
Cle Working Paper No.2/2021--Defending Nature Against Rodenticides, Marie Turcott
Cle Working Paper No.2/2021--Defending Nature Against Rodenticides, Marie Turcott
Centre for Law and the Environment
Anticoagulant rodenticides (i.e., rat poisons) are highly toxic compounds that have been recognized for decades to have devastating effects on wildlife species and the wider ecosystem. In this paper, I argue that the continued use of anticoagulant rodenticides is entirely inconsistent with the provincial and federal governments' obligations to citizens and the environment under their respective pesticide legislation, and that the governments' failure to fulfill these obligations is due in part to the refusal to acknowledge rights of nature. I provide an overview of the current statutory and regulatory framework for pesticides in Canada and examine the practical effects of …
Cle Working Paper No.1/2021--Grassroots And Litigation-Based Approaches To Advancing Indigenous Rights: Lessons From Extractive Industry Resistance In Mesoamerica, Justin Wiebe
Centre for Law and the Environment
Indigenous peoples are frequently recognized as excellent stewards of their traditional territories. These territories, which often exhibit extraordinary levels of biodiversity, face disproportionate and growing threats from extractive industry. In opposing these threats, Indigenous peoples increasingly rely on internationally-defined Indigenous rights, including those set out in UNDRIP and ILO Convention 169. It is uncertain, however, how these rights are most effectively advanced. In this paper, I tease out strategies — both grassroots-based and litigation-based — that show promise in this regard. Drawing on Waorani resistance to an oil auction in Ecuador and Indigenous resistance to a large-scale mining project in …
Cle Working Paper No. 3/2021--A Roof Over Our Stomachs: The Right To Housing In Canada And Its Implications For The Right To Food, Tasha Stansbury
Cle Working Paper No. 3/2021--A Roof Over Our Stomachs: The Right To Housing In Canada And Its Implications For The Right To Food, Tasha Stansbury
Centre for Law and the Environment
In 2019, the Canadian government passed the National Housing Strategy Act, legislating for the first time a human right to housing in Canada. This was largely the result of pressure from housing advocates to align Canada’s legislation with the right to housing embedded in international human rights instruments. Despite similar efforts, food rights advocates have not had the same success in having the right to food recognized in Canadian law. This paper considers the question of whether, and how, food rights advocates can use the process of achieving a legislated right to housing as a model in pursuing the legislation …
"A Code Red For Humanity": Judicial Relevance In A Time Of Climate Emergency, Margot Young
"A Code Red For Humanity": Judicial Relevance In A Time Of Climate Emergency, Margot Young
All Faculty Publications
The Washington Post calls it the “the biggest political story in the world, a grinding global crisis in public view.” The Globe and Mail’s coverage is more muted, but its Editorial Board notes about this crisis that “[t]wo things have since changed: urgency and ability. The danger is growing closer, but so is humanity’s capacity to avert disaster.” These statements reference the 9 August 2021 release by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of its Working Group I report, first instalment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment due out in 2022. The recent report, compiled by 234 authors based on …
Climate Disruption In Canadian Constitutional Law: References Re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Jocelyn Stacey
Climate Disruption In Canadian Constitutional Law: References Re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Jocelyn Stacey
All Faculty Publications
This analysis considers the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in References re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 2021 SCC 11, in which a majority of the Court upheld as constitutional national carbon pricing legislation. The decision presents an excellent illustration of the legally disruptive nature of climate change. Illustrating that nothing is static in a climate disrupted world—including constitutional law—this article identifies three shifts the Court makes in relation to climate disruption. First, the decision represents a shift away from climate denialism toward a judicial willingness to confront the environmental, social and legal implications of climate change for Canada. Second, …
Cle Working Paper No.2/2020--Responsible Scholarship In A Crisis: A Plea For Fairness In Academic Discourse On The Carbon Pricing References, Stepan Wood, Meinhard Doelle, Dayna Nadine Scott
Cle Working Paper No.2/2020--Responsible Scholarship In A Crisis: A Plea For Fairness In Academic Discourse On The Carbon Pricing References, Stepan Wood, Meinhard Doelle, Dayna Nadine Scott
Centre for Law and the Environment
The Canadian federal government's carbon pricing legislation has generated substantial public and academic debate. In this paper we argue that academic debate should adhere to standards for responsible conduct of research during crises such as the current climate emergency, and avoid the nastiness and distortion that infect populist political rhetoric and social media. We discuss the norms of responsible scholarship that apply to Canadian legal academics, with a focus on standards that demand scrupulous fairness to other scholars and to the materials one is analyzing. We argue that a recent article by Professor Dwight Newman on the Saskatchewan and Ontario …
Cle Working Paper No.1/2020--Rights Of Nature Legislation For British Columbia: Issues And Options, Rachel Garrett, Stepan Wood
Cle Working Paper No.1/2020--Rights Of Nature Legislation For British Columbia: Issues And Options, Rachel Garrett, Stepan Wood
Centre for Law and the Environment
This paper explores how the rights of nature could be protected through legislation in British Columbia (BC). Canada is far behind other countries in protecting rights of nature. Canadian law does not currently recognize the rights of nature in any meaningful way. Numerous statutes in Canada making nature—from fisheries to wildlife, to the land itself—the exclusive property of humans, with no inherent right to exist, flourish or be restored. We explore two potential avenues for protecting the rights of nature in British Columbia: 1) amendment of existing legislation, and 2) a new stand-alone rights of nature statute. We examine trailblazing …
An Unknown Past, An Unequal Present, And An Uncertain Future: Transnational Environmental Law Through Three Research Challenges, Natasha Affolder
An Unknown Past, An Unequal Present, And An Uncertain Future: Transnational Environmental Law Through Three Research Challenges, Natasha Affolder
All Faculty Publications
This chapter seeks to bring into focus three broad research challenges facing transnational environmental law – an unknown past, an unequal present, and an uncertain future. Transnational law theory invites scholars to stand at a distance from current orthodoxies and to contemplate environmental law and its practice from new vantage points. The study of transnational environmental law thus prompts new ways of thinking about where to look for environmental law and its foundational influences. New research agendas emerge organically from such shifts of gaze. By identifying future research agendas, we can illuminate both the diversity of sites of past and …
The Deliberative Dimensions Of Modern Environmental Assessment Law, Jocelyn Stacey
The Deliberative Dimensions Of Modern Environmental Assessment Law, Jocelyn Stacey
All Faculty Publications
Environmental assessment (EA) is a cornerstone of environmental law. It provides a legal framework for public decision making about major development projects with implications for environmental protection and the rights and title of Indigenous peoples. Despite significant literature supporting deliberation as the preferred mode of engagement with those affected by EA decisions, the specific legal demands of EA legislation remain undeveloped. This article suggests a legal foundation for deliberative environmental assessment. It argues that modern environmental assessment can be understood through three public law frames: procedural fairness, public inquiry, and framework for the duty to consult and accommodate. It further …
Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey
Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey
All Faculty Publications
In commemoration of their 50th anniversary, this chapter examines the Federal Courts’ role in shaping environmental law in Canada. The chapter uses well-known environmental principles – the precautionary principle, sustainable development and access to (environmental) justice – as focal points for examining environmental law as well as the legal culture of the Federal Courts. The chapter identifies four distinct interpretive roles that the Federal Courts have ascribed to the precautionary principle and it argues that three of these roles have the potential to generate more coherent and transparent doctrine that upholds the rule of law in the environmental context. In …
Responsible Scholarship In A Crisis: A Plea For Fairness In Academic Discourse On The Carbon Pricing References, Stepan Wood, Meinhard Doelle, Dayna Nadine Scott
Responsible Scholarship In A Crisis: A Plea For Fairness In Academic Discourse On The Carbon Pricing References, Stepan Wood, Meinhard Doelle, Dayna Nadine Scott
All Faculty Publications
The Canadian federal government’s carbon pricing legislation has generated substantial public and academic debate. In this paper we argue that academic debate should adhere to standards for responsible conduct of research during crises such as the current climate emergency, and avoid the nastiness and distortion that infect populist political rhetoric and social media. We discuss the norms of responsible scholarship that apply to Canadian legal academics, with a focus on standards that demand scrupulous fairness to other scholars and to the materials one is analyzing. We argue that a recent article by Professor Dwight Newman on the Saskatchewan and Ontario …
Contagious Environmental Lawmaking, Natasha Affolder
Contagious Environmental Lawmaking, Natasha Affolder
All Faculty Publications
It is rare to find an environmental law development or ‘innovation’ announced or celebrated without some discussion of its transferability. Discourses of diffusion are becoming increasingly central to the way that we develop, communicate and frame environmental law ideas. And yet, this significant dimension of environmental law practice seems to have outgrown existing conceptual scaffolding and scholarly vocabularies. The concept, and intentionally unfamiliar terminology, of ‘contagious lawmaking’ creates a space for both fleshing out, and problematizing, the phenomenon of the dynamic and multi-directional transfer of environmental law ideas. This article sets the stage for further study of the global diffusion …
Time To Act: Response To Questions Posed By The Expert Panel On Sustainable Finance On Fiduciary Obligation And Effective Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, Janis P. Sarra, Cynthia Williams
Time To Act: Response To Questions Posed By The Expert Panel On Sustainable Finance On Fiduciary Obligation And Effective Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, Janis P. Sarra, Cynthia Williams
All Faculty Publications
While there are numerous strategies to be deployed to move Canada to a financially sustainable future, this study addresses two critically important issues: fiduciary obligation of corporate- and pension-fiduciaries, and national action on environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) financial disclosure, including climate-related financial risk disclosure. The Canadian economy is facing significant challenges and disruptions in the transition to a lower carbon world. Absent clear and innovative steps to ensure our corporations and financial institutions act to address carbon emissions and other environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities, we will be seriously prejudiced in a world that is rapidly moving …
Transnational Climate Law, Natasha Affolder
Transnational Climate Law, Natasha Affolder
All Faculty Publications
Climate change leaves little on this planet untouched. The concept of transnational law is no exception. Transnational law has long functioned as a mechanism for illuminating particular legal subjects, processes, and spaces: the empty space left by existing doctrinal perspectives, the relationships between, around and outside of national laws, the importance for law of private actors and the power and powerlessness of those actors. It offers a way of opening our eyes to spheres of normativity other than the nation state and distinct ways of conceiving of the nation state itself. But climate change shatters the idea that jurisdictional borders …
Can Non-State Regulatory Authority Improve Domestic Forest Sustainability? Assessing Interactive Pathways Of Influence In Cameroon, Sophia Carodenuto, Benjamin Cashore
Can Non-State Regulatory Authority Improve Domestic Forest Sustainability? Assessing Interactive Pathways Of Influence In Cameroon, Sophia Carodenuto, Benjamin Cashore
Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers
Transnational business governance can involve the use of non-state mechanisms to target the behavior of firms within domestic settings. Drawing on the implementation pillar of the TGBI framework, this chapter focuses attention on the interaction between state and non-state regulatory authority from two leading cases of TBG in tropical forest management: climate mitigation through avoided deforestation (REDD+) and timber legality verification through international trade agreements (FLEGT/VPA). A dominant justification among global elites for both interventions is that empowering marginalized domestic groups through technology transfer and capacity building will lead to more durable policy solutions on the ground. Drawing on empirical …
Local Practices, Transnational Solutions? The Role Of Host Cities In The Cyclic Process Of Environmental Regulation Of Sports Mega-Events, Rebecca Schmidt
Local Practices, Transnational Solutions? The Role Of Host Cities In The Cyclic Process Of Environmental Regulation Of Sports Mega-Events, Rebecca Schmidt
Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers
The chapter uses a case study of the environmental protection and sustainability framework for Olympic Games to examine the interactive role of local government actors as innovators in the creation of transnational regulation. The host city level has been at the forefront of innovating this framework. Developments initiated at this level were later taken up by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and became mandatory for future host cities, in a dynamic the chapter terms ‘cyclical regulation’. The chapter makes two main claims about this process: First, in certain conditions, host cities and their local organizers can ratchet up social and …
Micro-Level Interactions In The Compliance Processes Of Transnational Private Governance, Graeme Auld, Stefan Renckens
Micro-Level Interactions In The Compliance Processes Of Transnational Private Governance, Graeme Auld, Stefan Renckens
Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers
Transnational private governance has emerged in multiple issue areas to promote responsible business practices. While most studies assess its rule-setting function, much less research has been done on the compliance-assessment function. This chapter examines the various actors that are involved in this process—auditors, individual assessors and, to a lesser extent, accreditors—and their respective interactions. Using the Marine Stewardship Council as an empirical case, the chapter examines the level of competition among accredited auditors and assessors, and the degree of organizational interdependence. It argues that while the number of accredited auditors has increased over time, the degree of competition is rather …
Transnational Delegation, Accountability And The Administrative Governance Of Biofuel Standards, Phillip Paiement
Transnational Delegation, Accountability And The Administrative Governance Of Biofuel Standards, Phillip Paiement
Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers
The European Union’s 2009 Renewable Energy Directive delegated to privately run ‘voluntary schemes’ the task of monitoring biomass production sites and ensuring their compliance with the Directive’s sustainability requirements. This chapter assesses the consequences of the Commission’s delegation for the administrative governance architectures of non-state sustainable biofuel standards operating outside the EU, focusing in particular on the effects this governance interaction has on the involvement of vulnerable stakeholders in the governance of sustainable biofuels. Utilizing the Transnational Business Governance Interactions framework complemented by the theory of governance assemblages, this research provides a meso-level analysis of the character and effects of …
Fiduciary Obligations In Business And Investment: Implications Of Climate Change, Janis P. Sarra
Fiduciary Obligations In Business And Investment: Implications Of Climate Change, Janis P. Sarra
All Faculty Publications
Fiduciary obligation, under both corporate law and the common law, requires directors and officers to identify and address climate-related financial and other risks. In fulfilling their obligations to act in the best interests of the company, directors and officers must directly engage with developments in knowledge regarding physical and transition risks related to climate change and how these risks may impact their corporation. Depending on the firm’s economic activities, the risk may be minor or highly significant, but directors and officers have an obligation to make the inquiries, to devise strategies to address risks, and to have an ongoing monitoring …