This article systematically evaluates whether, how, and to what extent twelve prominent forestry and fisheries certification schemes address human rights in their standards. In line with the broader cross-fertilization of the fields of international human rights and environmental law and policy, our results demonstrate that human rights norms and considerations – primarily Indigenous, labour, and procedural rights – are increasingly reflected in the rulemaking of these schemes. At the same time, our analysis also demonstrates the mixed and underwhelming performance of certification standards in protecting human rights norms, including those relating to women, children, racialized and ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, workers, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, and peasants and rural peoples. Through descriptive statistics, we also show that levels of human rights adherence vary significantly across schemes and that standards developed in the forestry sector tend to outperform those for fisheries. Our methodology and results add a new dimension to efforts to assess the stringency, equity, and legitimacy of private authority in the environmental field.

This article revisits the overlooked field of comparative environmental law. It examines contributions to this field from the late 1960s to 2022, highlighting the methodologies proposed, their shortcomings, the main aspects and angles taken by the literature, and the curious lack of engagement by experts in comparative law proper with environmental law systems. On the basis of a structured examination of the literature, the article extracts four main aims or purposes that may guide this line of research: (i) clarifying the initial system by contrasting it with a foreign system; (ii) using the basic conceptual features of a known system to analyse and understand a foreign unknown system; (iii) evaluating and fine-tuning a system or an aspect thereof; and (iv) extracting analytical categories that can serve to map the entire field or areas of it.

Labour and environmental law operate in silos. This is equally true in the transnational sphere, despite the 2011 endorsement of UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Labour rights as human rights appear easier to grasp than environmental human rights, and the UNGPs specifically highlight the work of the ILO. Due to egregious events such as the Bangladesh Rana Plaza factory collapse, transnational governance regimes have emerged to better ensure building safety and respect for labour rights. Yet the process of production of “fast fashion” is not only a problem for workers whose health and safety are put at risk, but also for children and families who live in the vicinity of polluting factories and experience “slow death” as a result of contaminated air and water. This paper will explore how a reconceptualization of the worker as a relational being and corporeal citizen might bridge the silos.

This article analyzes the role played by the Latin American Water Tribunal (Tribunal Latinoamericano del Agua – TRAGUA) (LAWT) in the resolution of environmental disputes over water resources. Since its inception in 1998, the LAWT has emerged as a non-governmental body with a multidisciplinary composition and a mandate based on both formal and informal sources of law, which holds public hearings in order to address water-related complaints. This article explores whether (and the ways in which) the LAWT is contributing to the resolution of environmental disputes concerning water resources. The main underlying thesis is that, whereas the traditional model for interstate dispute settlement offers only limited possibilities of redress to non-state actors (mainly individuals and groups), the LAWT provides them with the opportunity to present their demands before an environmental justice forum.

Over the past years, two important challenges to traditional conceptions of international law have come to the fore: pluralism and informality. Pluralism refers to the fact that global society is characterized by multiple legal systems that frequently overlap. Informality refers to the increasing relevance of non-traditional actors, processes and outputs in the realm of international law. Two recent books provide important contributions to enhancing our understanding of these challenges. In the first book, Nico Krisch presents a powerful plea that in a ‘postnational’ context legal pluralism is to be preferred over its alternative, transferring constitutionalism to the global level. In the second book, Joost Pauwelyn, Ramses Wessel and Jan Wouters offer a collection of essays that seek to further knowledge of the concept, legal nature, impacts and accountability of ‘informal international lawmaking’. In reviewing these two books, this review essay seeks to identify avenues for further inquiry in the area of transnational environmental law.

The concept of transnational environmental law is used descriptively and prescriptively to refer to a multitude of legal processes which are distinct from transnational law in other legal areas. Hence, the rise of transnational environmental law requires environmental lawyers to reflect on their skills and knowledge and to foster both their contributory and interactional expertise in this area. That process of fostering expertise needs to be seen in light of a number of intellectual challenges, including the necessity to engage with comparative environmental law methodology, the need to not privilege one legal system over others, the need to engage with extended legal pluralism, the importance of thinking about the role of language in legal processes, and the significance of understanding the process of co-production.