Environmental Policy and Law

The Stockholm+50 Conference (2-3 June 2022) has been perceived as a low-key affair and a missed opportunity. The moral halo that ushered the world into global environmental consciousness, led by the Prime Ministers of Sweden (Olof Palme) and India (Indira Gandhi) at the first UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) held in Stockholm (5–16 June 1972) seemed to be missing at the 2022 Stockholm+50 Conference. This historic event coincided with the 30th anniversary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Stockholm+50 event, jointly hosted by Sweden and Kenya, ended as a ubiquitous joint Presidents’ Final Remarks to the Plenary issued by the two host countries. In spite of the call for action by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to address the “triple planetary crisis” driven by climate emergency, biodiversity loss and pollution and waste, the Stockholm+50 outcome took the shape of ten-point summarized recommendations. It didn’t cause any ripples or resulted in a clarion call that could shake the conscience of peoples and nations to arise for everting the existential planetary crisis. The 2022 Stockholm+50 Moment at best remained a timid acknowledgement of things going terribly wrong in the past fifty years (1972–2022). Yet, no world leader stepped forward to don the mantle “to rescue” the world from the “environmental mess” as urged by the UNSG in his 2 June 2022 inaugural address. The heads of government and delegations seemed to lack the requisite courage befitting the momentous occasion for a decisive course correction in the global environmental regulatory policies, legal instruments and the environmental governance architecture. What would it entail to address the planetary crisis? It brings to the fore some lessons from the 2022 Stockholm+50 Moment that presents an ideational challenge for scholars of International Law and International Relations as well as the UN system, multilateral environmental treaty processes, international institutions and the decision-makers of the sovereign states.

This article provides a retrospective assessment of the United Nations climate change regime at age thirty. It begins by reviewing the four key stages in the development of the regime. It then discusses how, despite considerable changes in the world, the climate change regime has stayed much the same, and analyzes why the issue has been so intractable. It introduces three models of how international law might address the climate change problem—a prescriptive, contractual, and facilitative/catalytic model—and argues that the facilitative/catalytic approach reflected in the Paris Agreement is best suited to address the climate change problem. It concludes with a report card on how the regime is doing on its 30^th anniversary.

The complex sustainability challenges of the 21st century need to be addressed through integrated interdisciplinary approaches, combining science, law, and ethics with concrete, timely, and effective solutions. This study offers a legal framework and a case study to the needs posited by the Agenda 2030 on sustainable development. Starting from an analysis of the first part of the Agenda, the article unfolds by exploring the possibility of defining environmental compliance through environmental responsibility, environmental duties, and the virtuous case of agroecology. The case study focuses on a climate-smart practice applied to the sea and delves into the environmental, nutritional, and health benefits of the marine biomass from Northern Norway. The theoretical framework and the case study will emphasize the importance of systemic approaches to sustainability for putting integral ecology models into action.

Green roofs provide multiple benefits to households and urban neighbourhoods by lowering temperatures, reducing energy costs, and reducing stormwater runoff. However, green roofs are expensive and may not be available to all residents, which raises questions about who benefits from green roofs and urban policies that support this technology. Policies to support different social groups’ access to this green infrastructure is important for achieving equity. This study aims to identify and analyze to what extent existing different rooftop greening incentives and mandatory policies in three American cities, including New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, address environmental justice. Nine policies were analyzed from three cities based on three dimensions of environmental justice. The results show that all policies have neglected a degree of distributional, recognitional, and procedural environmental justice in their policies. Although incentives try to advance distributional justice by implementing green roofs in different parts of the city, these policies do not pay enough attention to support themes such as zoning, size, rental status, land value, and affordability in all urban areas.

Coral reefs need strong management and protection efforts. However, public awareness and legal instruments concerning coral reefs are still insufficient. An ecosystem service model perspective is needed for the optimum management of that ecosystem. This study examined the relationship between ecosystem services management in international, national and local environmental laws and the coral reef ecosystem. An analytical descriptive qualitative method with the environmental services model and statutory regulation approaches was used. The researcher found a good relationship between the ecosystem services management in the international, national and local environmental laws and the policy planning concerning the sustainable development of the coral reef ecosystem. However, not all of the existing regulations support the environmental services model. It is because the regulatory framework is not complete, and existing norms do not support the efforts to improve people’s welfare.

This article builds a case in favour of using carbon tax as a cost-effective tool for regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as part of the climate change mitigation solution in terms of discouraging further GHG emission. Drawing on existing primary and secondary data, the article makes an assessment of the Cameroon’s legal environment for the design and implementation of carbon tax and articulates on the prospects and challenges of designing and implementing it. The article postulates that in spite of the promising opportunities that carbon tax offers for regulating GHG emissions, the potentials of this climate-smart fiscal policy tool has not yet been explored within the framework of climate governance in Cameroon. The article finds that while the spirit of carbon tax is underpinned by relevant environmental law principles, there is a timid legal framework both at the international and national levels for using carbon to regulate GHG emissions in Cameroon. The article concludes with a recommendation of the strong need for Cameroon to introduce a carbon-tax system as one of the cost-effective measures to reduce the country’s GHG emissions by adopting a carbon tax legal instrument designed specifically to target major GHG emitters across dozens of economic sectors. The model of carbon tax proposed for Cameroon could be useful and replicable elsewhere.