International Environmental Law: Cases, Materials, and Problems

This book provides a contemporary overview of this rapidly expanding field of law. It is designed to foster critical thinking about the subject as a whole and the precise details of particular "real world" problems. The problem-centered nature of the text encourages students to discern issues and to reflect on the application of a wide range of pertinent materials, both in the text and accompanying Documentary Supplement, to complex solutions. It hones the skills of analysis and synthesis in a way that rote learning of doctrine cannot.

The authors include a wide range of documents and readings from diverse disciplines that interact with formal legal materials to form a web of intertwined and related ideas and events. Problems and materials have been designed to enable students to master the historical development, legal doctrine, contemporary problems and institutional structures that affect the protection, conservation, and sustainable development of the shared global environment.

International Environmental Law: Cases, Materials, and Problems comprises two complementary sections. Part One provides a basic analytical framework that students will need in order to work through any particular international environmental problem. Part Two focuses on challenges for law in international environmental protection using a variety of contemporary problems involving pollution, climate change, the marine environment, polar regions, biological diversity, fresh water sources, and synergies between international trade and the environment.