Environmental Governance and Sustainability

by Martin, Paul; Li, Zhiping; Qin, Tianbao; Du Plessis, Anel; Le Bouthillier, Yves

• ISBN13: 9781781000472
• ISBN10: 1781000476
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-12
• Publisher: Edward Elgar Pub

Summary

'A unique publication that examines emerging and cutting-edge environmental issues from no less than seven countries including Africa and China. These issues are examined mainly from a trans-disciplinary environmental governance perspective that includes law, ecology, economics, policy and management. The contributors to the book include PhD candidates from Africa, Belgium and China. They are exceptional young scholars. They together with other contributors, who are distinguished environmental legal experts, have advanced the scholarship of environmental governance.' Koh Kheng-Lian, National University of Singapore This timely volume provides fascinating insights into emerging developments in the field of legal governance of the environment at a time when environmental governance is increasingly concerned with far more than legal doctrine. The expert contributors are concerned with the totality of arrangements through which power and resources are deployed to protect and restore natural resources, and how the costs and benefits of this are allocated. They explore key issues such as: how the community exercises its democratic rights; how government responds to the needs of current and future generations and balances the interests of the powerful with the powerless; the freedoms and responsibilities of commerce and the holders of property; and the ways in which laws and policies are informed by science and other perspectives. The various ways in which legal scholarship is pivotal to good governance are thus highlighted, as is the extent of innovation being generated by current ecological, economic and social challenges. Clearly demonstrating the increasing breadth and depth of environmental law scholarship, this thought-provoking book will prove an invaluable reference tool for academics, students and researchers focusing on environmental law and development.