Environmental law remains grounded in a ‘one-world world’ paradigm. This ontological structure asserts that, regardless of variation in world-construing, all beings occupy one ‘real’ world of discrete entities. The resulting legal system is viewed as an independent set of norms and procedures regulating the ‘human’ use of the ‘environment’ by specifying allowable harm rather than adjudicating on mutually enhancing relations. This legal form fails to fulfil its purpose of prevention and remediation, and constitutes a significant barrier to overcoming world(s)-destroying conditions. As such, we take up the injunction for a ‘legal ontological turn’ so as to lay bare these assumptions, and to be able to move beyond their constraints into a renewed exploration at the intersection of vastly differing legalities. In dialogue with systems-grounded ecological jurisprudence(s), Indigenous legal thinking, and anthropological insight, we seek to ground future discussions towards building a truly earth-sustaining form of environmental law for all beings.

Humanity is at a crossroads in addressing biodiversity loss. Several assessments have reported on the weak compliance with the Aichi Biodiversity Targets by the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). To address this lack of compliance, the challenges in implementing and enforcing CBD obligations must be understood. Key implementation challenges of the CBD are identified through a content analysis of policy documents, multi-stakeholder interviews, and participant observation at the recent CBD Conference of the Parties. Building on this analysis, the article explores the extent to which the review mechanisms of international human rights law, with their various strategies for eliciting compliance, can help to improve CBD mechanisms. The findings of this article reveal insights that the CBD can draw from international human rights law to address these compliance challenges, such as facilitating the participation of civil society organizations to provide specific input, and engaging independent biodiversity experts to assess implementation. The article concludes that insights from human rights review mechanisms are useful for improving the emerging peer review mechanism of the CBD, which is important for strengthening accountability within the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

International human rights law (IHRL) offers potential responses to the consequences of climate change. However, the focus of IHRL on territorial jurisdiction and the causation-based allocation of obligations does not match the global nature of climate change impacts and their indirect causation. The primary aim of this article is to respond to the jurisdictional challenge of IHRL in the context of climate change, including its indirect, slow-onset consequences such as climate change migration. It does so by suggesting a departure from (extra)territoriality and an embrace of global international cooperation obligations in IHRL. The notion of common concern of humankind (CCH) in international environmental law offers conceptual inspiration for the manner in which burden sharing between states may facilitate international cooperation in response to global problems. Such a reconfiguration of the jurisdictional tenets of IHRL is central to enabling a meaningful human rights response to the harmful consequences of climate change.

This article examines rosewood trafficking in the Casamance region of Senegal to determine whether acts of massive deforestation committed in the context of a non-international armed conflict can be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court (ICC) as war crimes of pillage and destruction of property under Article 8(2)(e)(v) and (xii) of the Rome Statute, respectively. It examines two of the main challenges resulting from the application of these provisions to acts of massive deforestation in the light of the ICC Elements of Crimes. Firstly, the article addresses the delicate issue of the establishment of a nexus between these acts and the related non-international armed conflict. Secondly, it discusses whether natural resources may qualify as ‘property’ for the purpose of Article 8(2)(e)(v) and (xii). It then offers avenues of reflection regarding the determination of ownership of these resources to fulfil the requirements of the Rome Statute.

China's climate governance is distinguished by the contrast between an abundance of policies on climate change and the lack of legally binding laws. This article argues that Chinese courts bridge this difference, which fosters a ‘rule of climate policy’ rather than a strict rule of law. The effective authority of Chinese climate policy is made possible in practice both by provisions of the Chinese Constitution and the prevailing use of legal reasoning. China's constitutional design of ‘ecological civilization’ delegates the duty and the power of managing climate change issues to the executive branch of its government. Most Chinese documents on climate governance have no binding legal force, which means, according to positive law, that they cannot serve as legal grounds for judicial decisions. Chinese judges, in deciding climate-related disputes, must combine legal provisions and non-binding materials to achieve regulatory goals. They use non-legal materials to support statutory or contractual interpretations and determine the existence or limits of rights, which alters the meaning and scope of existing legal terms and principles. This rule of climate policy is possible in the courtroom because judges justify public policy considerations with arguments of principle that are substantiated in various non-binding climate plans.

This article takes stock of the many private and public instruments enacted transnationally to tackle the pressing problem of deforestation, ecosystem conversion, and associated human rights violations caused by international demand for and trade in agricultural commodities. The article argues that non-financial due diligence based on no-conversion criteria, and in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, holds considerable potential for ensuring deforestation-free value chains by enrolling and scaling up firm-level supply-chain management systems and private standards. The article introduces the main features of a possible European Union measure that disciplines via non-financial due diligence the placing on the market of commodities and products associated with deforestation, ecosystem conversion, degradation of forests and ecosystems, and associated human rights violations. Such a measure would also have the effect of streamlining initiatives enacted by private authority.

The year 2020 proved to be a clarion call for global society. There is no longer doubt that increasingly we are experiencing unpredictable events, known as ‘black swans’, ranging from pandemics to financial meltdowns. One of the ’climate black swans’ against which experts have cautioned is the financial crisis caused by climate change. In this context, the Australian case of McVeigh v. Retail Employees Superannuation Trust for the first time tested climate risk and the fiduciary duties of retail pension funds. Settled in November 2020, the case has already raised the bar for climate risk practice in pension funds. In particular, McVeigh suggests that courts, as well as out-of-court settlements, may articulate a duty, rather than grant permission, for pension funds to consider climate-related financial risk in their investment decisions.

The article builds on McVeigh to ask two questions. Firstly, what is the role of climate change litigation in promoting climate regulation by pension funds? Secondly, what is the relative importance of pension funds for the risk management of climate-related financial risk via due diligence compared with risk assessment via disclosure? Fundamentally, the article explains climate-related financial risk as a cultural phenomenon and argues that a discussion on pension fund fiduciary duties must consider disclosure in addition to due diligence. It argues that McVeigh articulated the need for a normative approach to pension fund disclosure duties and an extension of the field of climate-related risk disclosure to embrace climate-related risk due diligence.

A citizens’ initiative was launched in 2016 in the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt, demanding that the rights catalogue in the Cantonal Constitution be complemented by a fundamental right to life and a right to bodily and mental integrity for non-human primates. This initiative became the subject of a three-year legal dispute that ended with a decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in September 2020, ruling that the initiative is legally valid and must be put to the people for a vote. This case note discusses the key developments in the dispute, including the groundbreaking decision by the Constitutional Court of Basel-Stadt, which held that cantons are free to ‘expand the circle of rights holders beyond the anthropological barrier’. The authors, who were involved in the drafting of the initiative and acted as legal advisers in the judicial proceedings, offer first-hand insights into legal strategies and shed light on the importance of the case in the context of the ongoing efforts to secure rights for primates around the world.