7 January 2022
New EPL section: Stockholm+50 and Beyond
[Author: Carmel McNamara, IOS Press]
Amsterdam, NL – The latest issue of Environmental Policy and Law (EPL) includes the very first article in the new “Stockholm+50 and Beyond” section – a must-read by Nicholas A. Robinson – and an urgent call to all lawyers across the globe to join the Pledge on Climate Action. The issue also includes three research articles covering global issues of recognition of the right to a healthy environment, space debris mitigation, and data protection and privacy in smart cities, as well as counterproductive approaches in environmental crime and law enforcement in Indonesia.
We invite you to read this extract of the very first article published in the new regular EPL section Stockholm+50 and Beyond leading up to the upcoming conference in June 2022, and we highlight a number of other articles that feature in the new issue below.
New Journal Section
The new journal section will include content from experts in advance of UNEP's milestone event, commemorating the 50 years since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE). Launching this new series is the article by Nicholas A. Robinson (Pace University, USA): “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1972 UNCHE, it becomes clear that humans have also exhausted time itself. Depleting reservoirs of time inflicts harm on present and future generations of humans, everywhere. How did this come to be?” The article goes on to highlight the accomplishments of the past five decades. “It took five decades to attain shared knowledge across all nations about the environmental, plight of human life on Earth, and to frame agreed remedies under the SDGs and the Paris Agreement and Biodiversity Convention. Is there enough time to implement remedial measures? Certainly not with 'business as usual'.” The article concludes by describing two fundamental legal means that can be deployed to end “business as usual” and make a pollution-free, circular economy, with energy systems no longer dependent on fossil fuels. Read the full paper here.
Call to Lawyers to Join Climate Pledge
We also highlight from this issue the urgent call from and to the global legal community, urging lawyers of all kinds to incorporate climate responsibility into their professional work and activities. “EPL is pleased to provide a platform for the initiative of the World Lawyers’ Pledge on Climate Action. This pledge is designed as an ‘open letter’ from and to the global legal community for ‘mainstreaming concerns throughout the law and legal profession.’ Mooted by 18 leading scholars, judges, and practitioners, the pledge seeks to make an impassioned plea in the face of growing scientific evidence of human-induced climatic changes on the anvil,” explains EPL’s Editor-in-Chief Bharat H. Desai, PhD explains in the issue’s editorial. “In view of inherent power of the logic of law embedded in the pledge, EPL has provided it a base, without any endorsement per se, to communicate the ‘idea’ to the global legal community.”
More Content in EPL Volume 51, Issue 6
This new issue includes six research articles, beginning with the above two featured global-focused content. published in a number of key sections of the journal, under the headings:
- Global Law and Policy
- National Law and Policy
The issue then continues with more content in the global developments section, with three research articles covering issues of recognition of the right to a healthy environment, space debris mitigation, and data protection and privacy in smart cities. The latter paper introduces a theoretical framework for the Dubai smart city with comparison to the Barcelona smart city in terms of data law, privacy, and GDPR.
The issue concludes in the national developments section with a paper examining the obstacles to environmental law enforcement in Indonesia and analyzing the ideal environmental law enforcement model for future use.
