Learning to Overcome Political Opposition to Trans-formative Environmental Law
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Posted: 9 Jul 2020
Date Written: March 31, 2020
Abstract
Garmestani et al. observe that the transformation of national and international environmental laws to respond to accelerating climatic changes is unlikely any time soon. In lieu of the political will required to enact new laws, the authors propose tapping the underutilized capacity of existing laws. While greater attention to environmental law in socioecological models is necessary, the authors’ focus on formal legal instruments, at the expense of those instruments’ underlying political preconditions, limits the practical relevance of their proposal.
This brief letter responds to A. Garmestani et al., Untapped capacity for resilience in environmental law. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116, 19899–19904 (2019).
Keywords: environmental law, climate change, political opposition, learning
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