Environmental Law Beyond Emergencies: Lessons from the Future

Abstract

Notwithstanding its important contributions, environmental law has thus far failed to reverse, or even halt, the global environmental and climatic degradation causing significant hardship across society. This chapter reflects on the role and function of past and present approaches to environmental law: of 'old' environmental law, which helped establish the world we now live in; and the requirements for and of 'new' environmental law, which is the environmental law that we should collectively and intentionally grow towards. We consider what it means for environmental law to look to the future, how this may be done and what it can offer. Specifically, what voices, spaces and values may have been missing from old environmental law that could be included to the betterment of new environmental law.

Keywords: Environmental law, Transformational change, Environmental values, Optimism, Grief