Global Environmental Change and Innovation in International Law

Explores normative and institutional innovation in international law as a response to the challenges to global order posed by rapid environmental change.

This book will be of interest to students of environmental policy, transnational law, climate change law and policy, and innovation law and policy. It offers insights on the prospects for innovative legal responses in the area of climate change policy and global environmental governance more broadly.The challenges to global order posed by rapid environmental change are increasingly recognized as defining features of our time. In this groundbreaking work, the concept of innovation is deployed to explore normative and institutional responses in international law to such environmental change by addressing two fundamental themes: first, whether law can foresee, prevent, and adapt to environmental transformations; and second, whether international legal responses to social, economic, and technological innovation can appropriately reflect the evolving needs of contemporary societies at national and international scales. Using a range of case studies, the contributions to this collection track innovation - descriptively, normatively, and as a process in and of itself - to explain international environmental law's functionality in the Anthropocene. This book should be read by anyone interested in the critical intersection of environmental and international law.