Environmental discourses in public and international law / edited by Brad Jessup and Kim Rubenstein.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 448-514) and index.

Introduction. Using discourse theory to untangle public and international environmental law / Brad Jessup and Kim Rubenstein -- Justice for future generations : environment discourses, international law and climate change / Peter Lawrence -- The journey of environmental justice through public and international law / Brad Jessup -- The political discourse of land stewardship reframed as a statutory duty / Mark Shepheard and Paul Martin -- Dephysicalisation and entitlement : legal and cultural discourses of place as property / Nicole Graham -- Perspectives on discourse in international environmental law : expert knowledge and challenges to deliberative democracy / Jaye Ellis -- Getting to yes : structuring and disciplining arguments for and against transgenic agricultural products in European Union authorisations / Bettina Lange -- Nuclear narratives, environmental discourse and UK energy policy and legislation, 1970-2008 / Elizabeth Rough -- International courts and sustainable development : using old tools to shape a new discourse / Tim Stephens -- The discourse of environmental security in the ASEAN context / Kheng-Lian Koh -- Public participation in transboundary environmental impact assessment : closing the gap between international and public law? / Simon Marsden -- Climate change : limits discourses at the interface of international law and environmental law / Lee Godden -- The national interest or good international citizenship? : Australia and its approach to international and public climate law / River Cordes-Holland -- The Asia-Pacific partnership : a deepened market liberal model for the international climate regime? / Jeffrey Mcgee and Ros Taplin -- Global gazing : viewing markets through the lens of emissions trading discourses / Sanja Bogojevic -- Polar opposites : environmental discourses and management in Antarctica and the Arctic / Donald R. Rothwell -- Heritage discourses / Ben Boer and Stefan Gruber -- Environmental principles and social change in the ocean dumping regime : a case study of the disposal of carbon dioxide into the seabed / Afshin Akhtarkhavari -- Environmental discourses in the ocean commons : the case of ocean fertilisation / Julia Mayo-Ramsay -- Concluding remarks. Discourse versus strategy / Thomas Pogge.

This collection of essays examines the development and application of environmental laws and the relationship between public laws and international law. Notions of good governance, transparency and fairness in decision-making are analysed within the area of the law perceived as having the greatest potential to address today's global environmental concerns. International trends, such as free trade and environmental markets, are also observed to be infiltrating national laws. Together, the essays illustrate the idea that in the context of environmental problems being dynamic and environmental changes appearing suddenly, laws become difficult to design and effect. Typically, they are also devised within a conflicted setting. It is in this changeable and discordant context that environmental discourses such as precaution, justice, risk, equity, security, citizenship and markets contribute to legal responses, present legal opportunities or hinder progress

The world is talking, pondering, and strategising about the environment. Ever more of the environment has been identified, publicly contemplated, or designated for despoliation and resource extraction. Remote and 'wild' places like the rugged Australian Kimberley and the far reaches of North America are now subject to advanced plans for fossil fuel extraction. Environmental disasters, including fires, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunami, and schemes to alleviate or prevent future human suffering from catastrophe, have occupied governmental and organisational attention. Meanwhile, concerns about environmental degradation, and in particular human-induced climate change, dominate Western media and national and international politics, and are connecting communities through conversation and localised action. The nature, breadth and extent of global responses to climate change are also points of contention between the developing and developed worlds.