Brad Jessup

Plural and hybrid environmental values: a discourse analysis of the wind energy conflict in Australia and the United Kingdom

Wind energy has divided environmentalists. To understand why, disparate groups from Victoria, Australia and the United Kingdom are characterised as discourse coalitions, and their views and arguments are digested into compelling storylines. Drawing on the literature that explains environmental conflicts in terms of contrasting values, a discourse analysis approach is used to identify and define the hybrid and plural values held by the groups within wind energy discourse coalitions. Importantly for future policy development, influences and views that motivate groups to participate in policy and project assessment are identified, the current battles over facts between coalitions are analysed, and the present ignorance of or preference for certain views and types of values are shown as hindering the policy making process.

The status of international environmental treaties in Vietnam

The satisfaction of the goals of international environmental treaties, which attempt to overcome global environmental problems, requires the co-ordination and cooperation of all nations, from the most developed to the least developed. Virtually every international environmental treaty recognises the importance of achieving global implementation and compliance with obligations. For pragmatic and equitable reasons developing countries are commonly afforded qualified obligations, for instance non-binding goals or delayed timeframes for implementation. Nevertheless, these are obligations that are required to be fulfilled and this is essential to securing positive environmental outcomes. Very little has been written, however, about the performance of developing countries in meeting their current international environmental law requirements. This paper endeavours to partially fill this void by investigating and evaluating the measures taken by Vietnam to fulfil its obligations under international environmental treaties. Vietnam has agreed to be bound by the obligations of ten international environmental treaties. However, the National Assembly has not enacted laws which directly and fully incorporate the obligations under these treaties. Therefore, the treaty obligations are only a part of the domestic laws of Vietnam if they are automatically incorporated upon the conclusion of the treaties. Although Vietnam has rules with regard to the conclusion and adoption1 of treaties, it is not clear from these rules whether treaties entered into are self-executing or require the passage of national legislation to become enforceable domestically. In Parts II and III of this paper the authors will briefly evaluate these laws and conclude that for the most part treaties concluded by Vietnam are self-executing.

Nuclear Citizens Jury: From Local Deliberations to Transboundary and Transgenerational Legal Dilemmas

ABSTRACT South Australia is home to one of the world’s largest uranium mines for export, but does not participate in further stages of the nuclear fuel cycle. In 2016, the Government of South Australia held a series of public engagement activities about the possibility of nuclear waste storage in the state. Two citizens’ juries, collectively called the “Nuclear Citizens Jury,” were the centrepiece of the series. This paper investigates jury members’ perspectives on nuclear waste storage and the deliberative process. The Nuclear Citizens Jury was effective as a local deliberation process that offered learning opportunities, gave access to information and made decision-making transparent. However, the process did not result in consensus or consent. Rather, jury members highlighted concerns about the democratic representativeness of the process, Aboriginal and transgenerational consent and unresolved national dimensions. The Nuclear Citizens Jury underscored the need for deliberative processes to consider multiple geographies of law, representation, and consent.

In one ear and out the other: human rights consultations and environmental discourses for human rights in Australasia

This Chapter identifies three environmental discourses supporting the statutory protection of a right to a healthy environment within Australasia. They are discourses of intergenerational equity, internationalism, and environmental justice. They are the discourses underpinning the widespread community support for a right to environmental protection in the region. Despite these discourses being developed and advanced in the human rights consultations, they are not present in law. Governments and consultation bodies have dismissed the calls for a statutory human right to the environment, ignored submissions or have conflated nuanced legal analysis and arguments, all with the effect of submerging positions and frames developed by the discourse adherents. In addition to explaining and analysing why Australian and New Zealand governments have not pursued an environmental rights legal agenda, this Chapter looks closely at the 2010–11 human rights consultation in the State of Tasmania, Australia’s smallest state, which has a long history of environmental conflict. The Chapter presents Tasmania as a case study of the Australasian consultation experience and relates the Tasmanian analysis to a wider context and broader trends. While there has been no development of any statutory human rights protections at all in Tasmania, let alone environmental rights, the Tasmanian experience offers particularly important insights because it prompted submitters (unlike in other consultations) to consider whether and why they supported a human right to the environment. As a result there is a rich and a relatively comprehensive engagement in the Tasmanian reports and submissions concerning the view of the community about human rights and the environment that does not exist elsewhere in Australia or New Zealand. The environmental discourses discernible from the Tasmanian consultation process can be understood as symbolizing the start of a thoughtful and critical public engagement with human rights to a healthy environment in the region.

Environmental Discourses in Public and International Law: Using discourse theory to untangle public and international environmental law

The world is talking, pondering, and strategising about the environment. Ever more of the environment has been identified, publicly contemplated, or designated for despoliation and resource extraction. Remote and ‘wild’ places like the rugged Australian Kimberley and the far reaches of North America are now subject to advanced plans for fossil fuel extraction. Environmental disasters, including fires, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunami, and schemes to alleviate or prevent future human suffering from catastrophe, have occupied governmental and organisational attention. Meanwhile, concerns about environmental degradation, and in particular human-induced climate change, dominate Western media and national and international politics, and are connecting communities through conversation and localised action. The nature, breadth and extent of global responses to climate change are also points of contention between the developing and developed worlds.

Introduction: using discourse theory to untangle public and international environmental law

The world is talking, pondering, and strategising about the environment. Ever more of the environment has been identified, publicly contemplated, or designated for despoliation and resource extraction. Remote and ‘wild’ places like the rugged Australian Kimberley and the far reaches of North America are now subject to advanced plans for fossil fuel extraction. Environmental disasters, including fires, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunami, and schemes to alleviate or prevent future human suffering from catastrophe, have occupied governmental and organisational attention. Meanwhile, concerns about environmental degradation, and in particular human-induced climate change, dominate Western media and national and international politics, and are connecting communities through conversation and localised action. The nature, breadth and extent of global responses to climate change are also points of contention between the developing and developed worlds.

Using discourse theory to untangle public and international environmental law

The world is talking, pondering, and strategising about the environment. Ever more of the environment has been identified, publicly contemplated, or designated for despoliation and resource extraction. Remote and ‘wild’ places like the rugged Australian Kimberley and the far reaches of North America are now subject to advanced plans for fossil fuel extraction. Environmental disasters, including fires, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunami, and schemes to alleviate or prevent future human suffering from catastrophe, have occupied governmental and organisational attention. Meanwhile, concerns about environmental degradation, and in particular human-induced climate change, dominate Western media and national and international politics, and are connecting communities through conversation and localised action. The nature, breadth and extent of global responses to climate change are also points of contention between the developing and developed worlds.

The Journey of Environmental Justice Through Public and International Law

The environmental justice discourse has its origins in the 1980s. Then, United States academics and activists advocated an alternative environmental concept that promoted the creation of an environmental justice movement. This social movement was characterised by its opposition to potentially harmful industries and activities being permitted in less advantaged neighbourhoods and regions throughout the country. ‘Environmental justice’ demanded equal access to environmental services and a sharing of potentially environmentally harmful land uses. The social movement argued that governments were discriminating against coloured, ethnic and poor communities by permitting pollution in their environments in greater proportion than in other places. There was a miscarriage of environmental justice even though environmental laws were used and applied to the controversy. In the early 1990s the environmental justice movement successfully agitated for change in United States domestic policy and law.

Environmental Discourses in Public and International Law: Discourses in the commons

In 2009 the 1959 Antarctic Treaty celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Its resilience in managing the Antarctic continent and parts of the adjacent Southern Ocean is generally seen as one of the great ‘success stories’ of contemporary international law. This is especially the case when it is considered that the treaty was negotiated during the height of the Cold War at a time when the USSR and US had significant interests in Antarctica, and that the treaty never sought to resolve simmering sovereignty tensions over parts of the continent especially those between Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom over their competing claims to parts of the Antarctic Peninsula. Now, in the early part of the Twenty First century and notwithstanding the lack of recognition which has been granted to the seven territorial claims to the Antarctic continent, the Antarctic Treaty now includes not only the original 12 states parties, but an additional 36 states parties from varied parts of the globe, and retains its capacity to effectively manage Antarctic affairs.Introduction: using environmental discourses to traverse public and international law Brad Jessup and Kim Rubenstein Part I. Theories and Rights as Discourses in Environmental Law: 1. Justice for future generations: environment discourses, international law and climate change Peter Lawrence 2. The journey of environmental justice through public and international law Brad Jessup 3. The political discourse of land stewardship reframed as a statutory duty Mark Shepheard and Paul Martin 4. Dephysicalisation and entitlement: legal and cultural discourses of place as property Nicole Graham Part II. Discourses in Environmental Decisions: 5. Perspectives on discourse in international environmental law: expert knowledge and challenges to deliberative democracy Jaye Ellis 6. Getting to yes: structuring and disciplining arguments for and against transgenic agricultural products in European Union authorisations Bettina Lange 7. Nuclear narratives, environmental discourse and UK energy policy and legislation, 1970-2008 Elizabeth Rough Part III. Environmental Discourses in Legal Institutions: 8. International courts and sustainable development: using old tools to shape a new discourse Tim Stephens 9. The discourse of environmental security in the ASEAN context Kheng-Lian Koh 10. Public participation in transboundary environmental impact assessment: closing the gap between international and public law? Simon Marsden Part IV. Discourses in Climate Law: 11. Climate change: limits discourses at the interface of international law and environmental law Lee Godden 12. The national interest or good international citizenship? Australia and its approach to international and public climate law Owen Cordes-Holland 13. The Asia-Pacific partnership: a deepened market liberal model for the international climate regime? Jeffrey Mcgee and Ros Taplin 14. Global gazing: viewing markets through the lens of emissions trading discourses Sanja Bogojevic Part V. Discourses in the Commons: 15. Polar opposites: environmental discourses and management in Antarctica and the Arctic Donald R. Rothwell 16. Heritage discourses Ben Boer and Stefan Gruber 17. Environmental principles and social change in the ocean dumping regime: a case study of the disposal of carbon dioxide into the seabed Afshin Akhtarkhavari 18. Environmental discourses in the ocean commons: the case of ocean fertilisation Julia Mayo-Ramsay Concluding remarks: discourse versus strategy Thomas Pogge.

Environmental Discourses in Public and International Law

In 2009 the 1959 Antarctic Treaty celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Its resilience in managing the Antarctic continent and parts of the adjacent Southern Ocean is generally seen as one of the great ‘success stories’ of contemporary international law. This is especially the case when it is considered that the treaty was negotiated during the height of the Cold War at a time when the USSR and US had significant interests in Antarctica, and that the treaty never sought to resolve simmering sovereignty tensions over parts of the continent especially those between Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom over their competing claims to parts of the Antarctic Peninsula. Now, in the early part of the Twenty First century and notwithstanding the lack of recognition which has been granted to the seven territorial claims to the Antarctic continent, the Antarctic Treaty now includes not only the original 12 states parties, but an additional 36 states parties from varied parts of the globe, and retains its capacity to effectively manage Antarctic affairs.Introduction: using environmental discourses to traverse public and international law Brad Jessup and Kim Rubenstein Part I. Theories and Rights as Discourses in Environmental Law: 1. Justice for future generations: environment discourses, international law and climate change Peter Lawrence 2. The journey of environmental justice through public and international law Brad Jessup 3. The political discourse of land stewardship reframed as a statutory duty Mark Shepheard and Paul Martin 4. Dephysicalisation and entitlement: legal and cultural discourses of place as property Nicole Graham Part II. Discourses in Environmental Decisions: 5. Perspectives on discourse in international environmental law: expert knowledge and challenges to deliberative democracy Jaye Ellis 6. Getting to yes: structuring and disciplining arguments for and against transgenic agricultural products in European Union authorisations Bettina Lange 7. Nuclear narratives, environmental discourse and UK energy policy and legislation, 1970-2008 Elizabeth Rough Part III. Environmental Discourses in Legal Institutions: 8. International courts and sustainable development: using old tools to shape a new discourse Tim Stephens 9. The discourse of environmental security in the ASEAN context Kheng-Lian Koh 10. Public participation in transboundary environmental impact assessment: closing the gap between international and public law? Simon Marsden Part IV. Discourses in Climate Law: 11. Climate change: limits discourses at the interface of international law and environmental law Lee Godden 12. The national interest or good international citizenship? Australia and its approach to international and public climate law Owen Cordes-Holland 13. The Asia-Pacific partnership: a deepened market liberal model for the international climate regime? Jeffrey Mcgee and Ros Taplin 14. Global gazing: viewing markets through the lens of emissions trading discourses Sanja Bogojevic Part V. Discourses in the Commons: 15. Polar opposites: environmental discourses and management in Antarctica and the Arctic Donald R. Rothwell 16. Heritage discourses Ben Boer and Stefan Gruber 17. Environmental principles and social change in the ocean dumping regime: a case study of the disposal of carbon dioxide into the seabed Afshin Akhtarkhavari 18. Environmental discourses in the ocean commons: the case of ocean fertilisation Julia Mayo-Ramsay Concluding remarks: discourse versus strategy Thomas Pogge.