International Law

This book engages with international legal responses to the global environmental crisis.
Humanity faces a triple planetary crisis, consisting of the interlinked problems of climate change, depletion of biological diversity and pollution.The chapters in this volume of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law address important questions of how and to what extent these environmental concerns have been integrated into international law, who or what drives these developments, and what all of this tells us about international law’s ability to tackle the challenges that a deteriorating environment brings for the future of life on Earth.

Over the last century, international law has sought to keep pace with sweeping changes that have revolutionised the international community. It has done so in various ways: by developing new fields, adopting new legal instruments, and including new actors and entities in the international fora. Human rights law and environmental law have emerged to address essential issues raised by civil society. Treaties, judgments and soft law instruments have attempted to fill the gaps in regulation. International organisations, corporations, civil society organisations and individuals have all worked to make and enforce, also by judicial means, legal rules. But is all this sufficient?