Conference Agenda

The importance of transnational advocacy networks in resisting, challenging, influencing and constituting global governance is well known. Yet we are only just beginning to understand how authority held by specific activists within networks shapes campaign outcomes. This article argues that the type authority held by activists within a network shapes not only how an issue is governed but also by whom. In the case of the transnational advocacy network Multilateral Development Bank (MDB) campaign, environmental lawyers at the centre of the network held both principled and expert authority, which shaped specific understandings of what constitutes accountability for the Banks. In response, the MDBs created quasi-judicial accountability mechanisms to provide recourse for people adversely affected by the (in)actions of the MDBs in financing international development projects. This in turn created a new cadre of accountability officers or international development accountability professionals who agreed on how to fulfil their tasks according to their shared conception of competence. The cadre of officers are over-represented by American trained lawyers from a few institutions, working to hold multilateral institutions to account for their environmental and social impacts on the ostensible beneficiaries of development in developing countries. The overly technical, legalistic, and adversarial accountability process would then be challenged by the private sector and people harmed by Bank financed projects, leading to the addition of mediation processes to the accountability mechanisms, which in turn may reconstitute how development financers are held to account and the profile of accountability professionals.

Courts, and litigation before them, have developed into a principal site of legal and political action for preempting governance transformations around the ongoing challenges of climate change, biodiversity conservation, large-scale land use transitions, and pollution. As insufficient political and policy action continues to raise the likelihood of a more than 2 degree Celsius warming scenario, climate litigation will likely continue to expand as it shifts to include more claims about reparations and Loss & Damage compensation, alongside mitigation-focused cases. Despite the growing activities of public interest or strategic litigation about the aforementioned environmental challenges, the agency of the litigators involved in these cases is poorly understood. This paper aims to account for three dimensions of agency in strategic environmental litigation. First, it draws on legal opportunity structure frameworks to account for the agency of litigators within cases. This includes an account of their ability to shape claims and evidence in their effort to obtain a favorable outcome. Second, it will examine accounts of litigation within political, economic and social movement literature in order to identify the various understandings of how strategic or public interest litigation can affect institutional and behavioral changes, as well as drive interest group formation processes. This second focus seeks to account for the agency of a case as it looks to drive legislative or policy transformations, recalibrate the economic behavior of a group of (corporate) actors and / or gather public attention in the development of broader social movements and political campaigns. Finally, the third section of the paper looks towards literature on transnational professional networks and the sociology of transnational legal practice in order to understand the organizational settings that facilitate and structure litigation practice that leads to these cases. In doing so, it seeks to account for the agency of transnational environmental litigation communities beyond the case, describing how these professional communities see their legal practice within the broader context of their national legal professions. Through these three avenues, the paper intends to provide the first comprehensive account of agency frameworks related to public interest and strategic litigation in Earth System Governance.

Earth system law scholars advocate urgent legal transformations to address pressing Anthropocene challenges, including climate change. However, as a waypoint to such broader reconfiguration, judges and litigants are employing innovative practices in existing domestic courts. Many such efforts seek to attach greater domestic accountability in the context of climate change’s global character, connecting institutions across scales to systemic challenges. In particular, researchers have noted efforts in pleadings and court opinions to incorporate norms and principles of international environmental law (IEL) into domestic climate litigation to bind governments, polluters, and other parties. The mechanisms by which these norms are incorporated, and how they are interpreted and reconciled with domestic sociolegal contexts, pose important yet understudied questions in the context of norm dynamics, norm contestation, and Earth system law scholarship. In earlier research, we presented evidence of the incorporation of IEL norms and principles in domestic climate litigation, and we identified indications of differing interpretations and linkage of norms and principles in domestic contexts. In this paper, we present an extended survey of domestic litigation and attendant contestation surrounding IEL norms and principles. Through qualitative review and coding of existing climate change litigation opinions from diverse domestic contexts, we seek a robust and inclusive characterization of (a) vertical efforts to incorporate IEL norms and principles into domestic litigation, (b) internal dynamics that facilitate or impede the adoption of IEL norms and principles, and (c) evidence of normative contestation that accompanies such international/domestic exchange. Ultimately, our paper reflects three emphases relevant to Earth system governance researchers. First, it directly extends examinations of existing legal architectures and their capacity to engage with the challenges posed by global environmental change. Second, it explores the effect of networked and multiscalar normative exchanges and contestation among courts and domestic judges in addressing climate change. Third, it directly addresses efforts by Earth system law scholars to evaluate how, in practice, systems-level insights and science can support the reimagination of existing environmental law structures.

With the rise of the Anthropocene, light has been shed on the shortcomings of current environmental law to react to the complexity of social-ecological systems. This is also the case for European farming systems that are a key driver for sustainability challenges such as biodiversity decline and climate change. Accordingly, approaches that focus on ‘land sharing’ and integrate nature conservation into agriculture, are receiving increasing attention. Agroforestry, that is the integration of woody perennials into agricultural fields, is an example for a multifunctional farming practice beneficial for biodiversity, climate and soil. Moreover, by bridging the spheres of agriculture, forestry and nature conservation, agroforestry promotes a human-in-nature perspective and is a prime example of ‘land sharing’. However, legal hurdles are a major constraint on the adoption of agroforestry by farmers in Europe and Germany and the current governance architecture is characterized by a high degree of fragmentation and conflict between sectoral laws.

Based on the concept of Earth system law, this paper aims to map out a pathway for transforming the current legal framework for agroforestry. To this end, we take an interdisciplinary perspective on agroforestry and integrate insights from environmental sciences and law. We draw on previous research on the legal possibilities and limitations for agroforestry in Europe and Germany as well as on workshops and semi-structured interviews with actors from agriculture, forestry and nature conservation. By applying Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework, we depict the complex interactions between agroforestry systems, farmers, administrative staff and the legal rules of the governance system and show how an Earth system law approach can allow for a holistic governance architecture for agroforestry beyond human-nature dichotomies.