Description
This book is a novel, sophisticated, broad ranging and insightful study of the idea of global environmental governance but from a legal dimension and perspective. While recognizing that concepts and ideas used to describe governance are generally abstract, vague and slippery, this project brings clarity to the field by being theoretically informed, contextually sensitive and pragmatically circumscribed. Its conclusions and arguments open up a field of inquiry that has to be genuinely interdisciplinary and in that sense has great potential to contribute to a better understanding of environmental themes and issues. This book is destined to become a landmark for legal academics who will write about environmental governance in that its concern is with the global governance of nature rather than a text that uses the environment as a pretext for understanding governance. It is well written, easy and enjoyable to read and while it traverses through diverse bodies of literature it manages to effectively communicate with a variety of scholarly communities.'
- Afshin Akhtarkhavari, Griffith Law School, Australia
'Fourth generation global environmental regulation attempts to address the complex realities of an interconnected environment, global environmental problems and collective regulatory responses. It merits conceptual clarity. Louis Kotzé reveals the legal contours and content of global environmental governance by chipping away such parts of the conceptual marble block as are not needed. For the environmental lawyer, it is a welcome - and much needed - process of elimination. This book provides a toolkit for lawyers to engage critically with the extra-legal concept of environmental governance. Its scrutiny and careful analysis contribute meaningfully to the environmental discourse.'
- Christine Voigt, University of Oslo, Norway
'Global Environmental Governance is a truly important book. Drawing on a multitude of disciplines, award-winning environmental law Professor Louis Kotzé masterfully explains the emerging concept of 'global environmental governance' and its elements of globalism, environmental law, regulation, and governance theory. He makes a compelling case that the world has outgrown the 'sustainability' model and moved toward this more all-encompassing approach to environmental regulation. This admirable book makes global environmental governance theory understandable and pertinent so environmental leaders, lawyers, and regulators can engage comfortably with this new vision for an ecologically and economically healthy world.'
- George (Rock) Pring, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, US
This timely book brings much-needed clarity to the concept of 'environmental governance' as manifested in the global regulatory domain. The author argues that despite being used as a fashionable term by many - including economists, political scientists, environmentalists and, increasingly, lawyers - its theoretical contours and conceptual content remain unclear, incoherent, and inconsistent. In addressing this problem, the book begins by describing globalization as a general context of governance. It comprehensively interrogates and clarifies both the governance and global governance concepts, and then explains aspects and components of global environmental governance. Finally it investigates the role of law in global environmental governance.
Providing a much-needed definition of environmental governance and global environmental governance, this comprehensive study will appeal to academics and researchers, post-graduate and under-graduate students, intergovernmental organizations such as UNEP, WTO, IUCN, as well as governments and governmental agencies involved with environmental regulation.
