Advances in International Environmental Politics, edited by Michele M. Betsill, Kathryn Hochstetler and Dimitris Stevis, published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 424 pp., £75.00, hardback.
Published date | 01 April 2016 |
Date | 01 April 2016 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12158 |
safeguard the natural environment
and the related rights of individuals
and groups in this regard. At the
same time, it is necessary to bear in
mind that its effective implementa-
tion depends on a large number of
actors (among others, ‘governments,
competent environmental lawyers,
members of the public, technical
and scientific experts, engineers,
environmental lawyers, industrial
operators and information technol-
ogy experts’(at 531)).In Chapter 24,
Nikzad Oraee-Mirzamani and Zen
Makuch aim to show a category of
directors’duties, in particular the
duty to inform shareholders of ma-
terial information. After demonstrat-
ing the necessity and importance of
adequate corporate non-financial
disclosure, the authors provide
examples of the commercial world to
facilitate understanding. This chap-
ter illustrates that ‘an international
tendency to require firms to publicly
acknowledge and remediate envi-
ronmental damage caused by their
business activities is gaining
momentum’,although‘it is unfortu-
nate that we are without the appro-
priate regulatory means to impose
such active information disclosure
through mandatory public reporting
laws’(at 557–558). Part Eight ends
by examining mechanisms to ensure
compliance with legal obligations to
ensure that the actions of States,
individuals andmultinational corpo-
rations abide by the standards
enshrined in environmental law.
Chapter 25, by Ricardo Pereira, not
only examines compliance and
enforcement of environmental law,
but also the basic aspects of liability,
revealing the significant differences
in this area between international
and European law. At the interna-
tional level, compliance with multi-
lateral environmental agreements
relies on enforcement by signatory
States (although many treaties
require parties to report, there usu-
ally is no procedure for individuals
to bring complaints), while at the
EU level, a tendencytowards harmo-
nization of liability regimes is a key
feature. In addition, the chapter dis-
cusses all the relevant issues affect-
ing the debate regarding why, when,
how and to what extent criminal law
should be used to tackle some seri-
ous environmentaloffences.
Part Nine closes with a number of
useful ‘Case Studies on Environ-
mental Implementation’. It is worth
mentioning here that readers will
also encounter numerous other
opportunities to approach the
topics analysed in this book from
more than just the theoretical angle,
thanks to the fact that each part
closes with a series of questions and
activities that encourage reflection
and further study on the aspects
covered in the chapters they have
just read. University lecturers will
also undoubtedly find much of this
material extremely interesting to
use in specialist teaching pro-
grammes at both undergraduate
and postgraduate level.
The fact that this book is not simply
aimed at legal experts in no way
detracts from the value of its con-
tents, since the authors are all pro-
foundly knowledgeable about the
topics in question. An added ben-
efit is that, notwithstanding the
complex topic of the study, it is easy
to read and highly educational,
especially to non-legal specialists,
and provides a strong blend of
depth and simplicity. This book
accordingly merits praise not only
for its design, aim and objectives,
but also, and in equal measure, for
its form and content.
Montserrat Abad Castelos
University Carlos III of Madrid,
Spain
Advances in International
Environmental Politics,
edited by Michele M. Betsill,
Kathryn Hochstetler and
Dimitris Stevis, published by
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014,
424 pp., £75.00, hardback.
A decade after the 2005 publication
of Advances in International Envi-
ronmental Politics, a second edition
has been released with important
updates. The three-part organiza-
tional architecture of the original
volume remains more or less the
same, with sweeping surveys of
major themes, theories and meth-
ods in Part I, a deeper exploration
of selected topics in Part II and a
final part focusing on evaluative
frameworks. However, theoretical
and methodological approaches to
international environmental poli-
tics (IEP) have matured since the
first edition, and new or previously
under-appreciated themes are now
front and centre in the relevant
scholarly literature. Contributors to
the new volume have kept up with
these developments. To wit, the full
flowering of identity politics in IEP
and demands for transparency in
international environmental deci-
sion making are the bases of new
chapters in the second edition
(Nicole Detraz’s chapter on gender
and IEP and Aarti Gupta and
Michael Mason’s contribution on
transparency, respectively). There
are also new or updated treatments
of subjects like ecological justice (by
Chukwumerije Okereke and Mark
Charlesworth), the role of knowl-
edge in IEP (by Eva L€
ovbrand) and
on sustainable development (San-
der Happaerts and Hans Bruyn-
inckx).
The Part I contributions from
Dimitris Stevis on the ‘trajectory’
of IEP, Matthew Paterson’s survey
of theoretical approaches, and
Kathryn Hochstetler and Melinda
Laituri’s exploration of methods
could and probably should form
required reading for students of
environmental politics at both
undergraduate and graduate levels.
Stevis has the most daunting chal-
lenge; his assignment is to map the
boundaries of the sprawling intel-
lectual landscape and subject
matter of IEP. He poses three
questions that are sufficiently
broad and salient to be serviceable
across the entire volume. Stevis
considers (i) whether IEP is a ‘co-
hesive subfield articulated around
a core set of concepts and debates
...’; (ii) whether one or more
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