Environmental Law
Can the law contribute to sustainable development? How strong is environmental protection in different legal conflicts of interests? How does national legislation work together with international environmental treaties? These are important questions in environmental law research.
More and more environmental problems cross boundaries, and the need for effective action at the global level is increasing. One obvious example is climate change, which raises numerous legal issues about, for example, measures to reduce the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Researchers at the Faculty of Law and the Stockholm Environmental Law and Policy Centre have unique expertise on cross-boundary – international, supranational and transnational – environmental law.
One of our research projects concerns environmental protection of the Baltic Sea, dealing with both how effective standard systems are developed and how the standards can be checked to keep emissions down. The study is being carried out in cooperation with the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the interdisciplinary research programme BEAM (Baltic Ecosystem Adaptive Management). Other research areas include the development of insurance solutions for sustainable development, the impact of international regulations on investment protection on national environmental law, transnational corporate environmental responsibility, and the right of the public to participate in environmental decision-making processes.
The research is both prescriptive and critically analytical. On the one hand, researchers are working to monitor and systematise national legislation, international treaties, customary law and court rulings. On the other, they investigate how well the law corresponds to political initiatives and general environmental goals in order to contribute to sustainable development.
Web editor:
Paul Parker
Last updated:
November 23, 2011
Source: Communications Office
