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In 2020, Northern Ireland (NI) was ranked 12th worst out of 240 countries for biodiversity loss. The scale of the crisis in this jurisdiction cannot be underestimated. A number of factors have contributed to NI's poor record in environmental governance but, as this thesis highlights, prevailing beliefs about the content and meaning of agricultural landholding have perhaps been overlooked in this narrative. This thesis seeks to understand more clearly the relationship between agricultural landholding and nature conservation in this jurisdiction and explores how property might be reconceptualised in a way that is more attuned to conservation concerns. The thesis argues that property, or more specifically, property ideology, is a critical factor in shaping environmental outcomes. The project suggests that a progressive conception of property, with a focus on social values, may produce more positive environmental outcomes than a conservative, law and economics approach. However, implementation of this view of property is hindered in NI due to a particularly complex property ideology, which is further complicated by the dynamics that relate to agricultural land as a specific form of property. Drawing on the work of Hanoch Dagan, the thesis proposes that conceptualising property as institutions may help to manage this complexity. It argues further that these efforts can be enhanced, from an environmental perspective, by incorporating the concept of resilience. This resulting view of property serves to inform the design of optimal governance frameworks, which can help to produce better environmental outcomes. The view of agricultural landholding set out in this work could have both theoretical and practical implications in NI, as the thesis will explain, but also further afield.

Since the discovery of the commercial hydrocarbon deposit in 1956, activity of Nigeria's petroleum industry has dramatically increased. The industry now contributes an average of two million barrels of crude oil daily to the global oil market. However, while bringing this development, the industry has become a source of misery for the oil-producing host communities, whose survival is endangered by the scourge of pollution from associated gas flaring. Associated gas (AG) flaring is widely acknowledged as a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, negatively impacting the environment and economy. Given its adverse effects, governments of oil-producing nations and industries have a responsibility to end flaring. Nevertheless, only a few such nations have significantly reduced flaring, while in most other jurisdictions like Nigeria, flaring continues to rise with increased oil production. In this regard, this study critically investigates the appropriateness and effectiveness of the design and enforcement of anti-gas flaring laws and the policy regimes currently operating in Nigeria. The study provided a general overview of the research context, and emphasised the role of effective law and policy regimes in reducing flaring in Nigeria. It critically analysed and addressed the following key issues, among others: the role of appropriately designed anti-gas flaring law and policy regimes; the effectiveness of regulatory enforcement; and the institutional characteristics of an effective flaring regulatory agency. It also addressed other relevant factors that affect flaring volumes, like penalties, incentives and the effects of contractual rights in addressing AG flaring issues. The study argues that Nigeria currently has appropriately designed law and policy regimes, but the enforcement is ineffective. The study finds several reasons that have led to the ineffectiveness and recommends measures that would help the country end gas flaring. The study suggests that oil-producing nations should design and establish clear and precise policies and legislation with independent regulatory agencies to avoid interference and conflict of interest. It also recommends adequate penalties and incentives to encourage effective enforcement of the AG flaring regulations.

This thesis studies how courts encounter and engage with Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ) in litigation pursued by Indigenous communities in Australia, Brazil, and Canada. The thesis advances IEJ as a principle that may be framed, used and developed in juridical spaces. The research draws from existing scholarship, primarily Indigenous scholarship, and offers an intellectual map of IEJ that is a receptacle for, amongst others, plural sovereignties, Indigenous epistemologies, and land-environment-cultural relationships. To this end, the thesis proposes a conceptual understanding of law as a narrative and adjudication as knowledge production. It argues that legal knowledge production enables courts to be a part of epistemic communities that remedy present environmental harms and past injustices that are engendered in settler colonialism. Indigenous voices become paramount for such knowledge production. The thesis explores how Indigenous voices are received within adjudication through doctrinal analysis of Indigenous environmental litigation in the three jurisdictions. Further, it examines what implications such reception has for the outcome of the litigation and the framing of IEJ. The materials studied here testify to the innate ability of courts to draw from existing laws generously and innovate where necessary in order to answer the difficult questions of justice and sovereignty raised by Indigenous environmental litigation. Whilst courts are accustomed to certain forms of litigation, contemporary environmental pressures demand conceptual apparatus of a different kind. Although legitimacy and integrity are highly valued within juridical spaces, they are not immutable concepts. The thesis argues that IEJ provides an opportunity to reconfigure juridical integrity by including Indigenous voices and challenging settler colonial legality through settler courts. In addition, it also makes a case for juridical openness, where present courts may deal with questions of Indigenous sovereignty more sympathetically to allow future jurisprudence to assume more radical standpoints.

The Appellate Tribunal for Electricity ('APTEL') is a statutory adjudicative institution tasked with responding to appeals against orders taken by the central and state electricity regulatory commissions in India. As such, it is uniquely positioned in the legal landscape of India's ongoing transition to renewable energy to both stabilize legal, administrative and regulatory disruption caused by this process, and substantively develop the law. Despite its central and indispensable role in this energy transition, the APTEL remains hidden in plain sight. The invisibility of this tribunal in legal scholarship is surprising, but also revealing of the need to expand our legal imagination as lawyers and law scholars in thinking about the role and contributions of law and tribunalised adjudication during transformative change. This includes the need for scholarly recognition of the simple fact that the law can develop in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. The legal present is complex, and how this present is being reasoned and understood by the APTEL is not only developing an understanding of it but also crafting an understanding of the energy future desired of transition. To foster the legal imagination of tribunals like the APTEL, we need to develop a robust mental picture of the legal present, with all of its rich legal complexity. This means focusing away from lofty narratives and focusing onto the routine and everyday legal matters brought before legal institutions tasked with resolving them. To that end, this thesis navigates a body of case law that has never been mapped before and tells the story of a tribunal that has been largely overlooked in legal scholarship. By bringing APTEL's role, contributions, adjudicative competence, and complexity front and centre, this thesis offers a thicker legal picture of the tribunalised adjudication of energy transition in India and highlights the importance of taking APTEL's legal work seriously.

As the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is currently developing new regulations for the forthcoming commercial exploitation of hard deep sea minerals, this thesis investigates how liability can be constructed to protect the international seabed 'Area' beyond national jurisdiction, and its non-living resources that are the 'common heritage of mankind' (CHM). Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the rights in these resources belong to no state but are shared by all of mankind. According to the dominant interpretation, this entails that mankind as a whole has a right to the ecological as well economic benefits from these resources, which must be shared equitably between current and future generations. Economic benefit sharing primarily in the form of global financial redistribution under UNCLOS thereby serves to compensate for the hazardous and permanent removal of these life-sustaining resources. Rules on benefit sharing also state that there should be a special consideration for disadvantaged states to compensate for past exploitation of former colonies, which created global inequality. This thesis argues that what is currently missing from contemporary approaches to discussion about deep sea mining is an explicit account of how alternative responsibility and liability models relate to the CHM principle, and how they directly or indirectly will affect models and rates of global redistribution-which is to make this industry worthwhile for mankind beyond individual contractors. Providing such an account in Part II (Comments in relation to the forthcoming regulations) and III (Conclusion), whilst also proposing concrete solutions for remaining liability gaps, are the most original contributions of this thesis. The point of this scrutiny is to prevent that one hand takes back what the other gives by lowering either environmental safety standards or royalty rates. It is throughout argued that both aspects must be jointly considered against a justifying aim, which should be to create a net-benefit for mankind.

The Governments of the constituent parts of the UK have, in recent years, considered promoting the exploitation of UK shale formations via fracking in order to recover oil and gas. In all jurisdictions, this has been met with opposition groups citing environmental risks. Various groups have called for either an outright ban on this process or for regulatory reform to address specific concerns. In Scotland, this led to an impasse, with the Scottish Government eventually announcing an "effective ban" on fracking in October 2017 following an extensive period of moratorium and public consultation. In announcing its ban on fracking, the Scottish Government cited a lack of "social licence" for the activity, despite expert evidence that the activity could be safely regulated. As the social licence is commonly conceived of as non-legal, the Scottish Government's reliance upon the concept as part of its rationale for banning fracking merits legal analysis. Accordingly, the research considers the relationship between the social licence concept and law in the context of the Scottish fracking debate. Informed by the researcher's use of literal and thematic coding of academic literature as a basis for defining the social licence as an objective concept, this relationship is considered via a textual, comparative content analysis of the environmental and planning law governing onshore oil and gas authorisations in Scotland. The results of this analysis are utilised by the researcher in order to establish and evidence a new model for conceptualising the social licence as capable of acting as a tool of measuring law.

In the last half century there has been an environmental turn in the perspective and priorities of the international community regarding the oceans, with a novel focus of protection of the marine environment and its ecosystems and habitats. This thesis analyses the significance of the adoption of marine protected areas (MPAs) in areas within national jurisdiction (AWNJ) and argues this is one important manifestation, in the law of the sea, of the environmental turn, in this instance as a turn away from a primarily exploitative perspective on coastal states' marine AWNJ towards one prioritizing their obligations to protect and preserve them. The thesis explores the designation and regulation of the large, diverse and still expanding array of AWNJ MPAs and MPA networks and how this has gone hand in hand with the rise of a complex web of environmental legal and policy instruments and regulations, at international, regional and national levels, all playing somewhat differing roles, but, collectively mandating, encouraging and facilitating them, and whose interpretation's evolution, both in case law and more generally, has, simultaneously, been influenced by them. Specifically, the roles played in this process by UNCLOS, both as the overarching framework for the law of sea and through its detailed provisions in the various different marine AWNJ zones and the interpretation of it by international tribunals, the CBD, which mandates 'protected area's, the IMO and instruments under it, the FAO's Port State Measures Agreement, the WHC, CITES, UNFSA and RFMO/A, which provide a range of tools for states to adopt in order to improve regulation of marine activities, the CMS and regional seas programmes such as the Barcelona, Cartagena and OSPAR Conventions, which both encourage collaboration between states and enable individual state parties, the activities of the COPs of all these various instruments and of the UNGA, and the practices of states under the aegis of such regional agreements, of an illustrative national state MPA network and of a variety of contrasting, states' large scale MPAs, are investigated. The thesis concludes that as a result of this evolving legal framework, coastal states have, through the adoption of AWNJ MPAs and MPA networks, gradually been able to re-orientate/improve the balance between marine conservation and other marine uses, including flag state activities, and to protect AWNJ environments, and, thus, that the adoption of AWNJ MPAs is indeed an important, law of the sea instantiation of the environmental turn.

Engineering UK's 2018 report on the state of engineering records that in 2016, engineering enterprises generated 23.2% of the UK's total turnover of £5.3 trillion (£1.23 trillion) and construction had a turnover of £171.91 billion, representing 14.0% of the total turnover produced within the engineering sectorial footprint. The congruence and distinction between the law underpinning construction and engineering in academia and industry is uncertain. The research aim therefore is construction and engineering law compared and contrasted from academia to industry. The author adopted a constructionist or subjective epistemology and relativist ontological stance. Constructivist and pragmatic philosophical paradigms and qualitative methodologies were selected including document analysis, interviews, case studies and focus groups. The construction and engineering law required by professional institutions to be taught in academia to undergraduates were analysed. Some similarity between the legal topics mandated by engineering and construction professional institutions was identified; for example, the legal framework, contract, environmental and health and safety law. The differences are that engineering bodies also require intellectual property awareness and construction institutions incorporate dispute resolution and land law. It was also argued that the importance of European Law should be recognised. Guidance for construction expert witnesses, who are engaged in dispute resolution, arising from three relevant significant documents that were published in 2014 by the Civil Justice Council, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Society of Construction Law was researched. The following were suggested as barriers affecting experts: regulations, budgetary controls, availability of evidence and deadlines. Construction-specific legal risks relevant to SMEs in Europe with a view to manage them were identified. The study confirms that the relevant legal risks for construction SMEs in Italy are: procurement, building regulations, construction contract and dispute resolution. The civil engineering SME case study touched on contract terms, regulations and dispute resolution and the additional issue of intellectual property protection was recognised. Environmental law issues surrounding the regeneration of brownfield land including contaminated land, waste management, water pollution, regulators, environmental impact assessment issues were investigated. Contractors' standard of design responsibility in current standard forms of contract was analysed and recent relevant case law was reviewed. In conclusion, the overlap in academia, between construction and engineering law of legal topics including legal framework, contract, environmental and health and safety law has been identified. They differ in that engineering bodies additionally require intellectual property awareness and construction institutions include dispute resolution and land law. These findings in academia are reflected in industry. Although framed in a construction law context, the research on expert witnesses also applies to engineering expert witnesses. However, as identified by the accrediting professional bodies, there is a greater requirement for dispute resolution in the construction industry. Environmental law is relevant to both engineering and construction industries. Similarly, current standard forms of contract and recent case law are pertinent to both industries. The congruence and distinction between the law underpinning construction and engineering in academia and industry has been clarified. Subsequent research developed a design, manufacture and construct procurement model for volumetric offsite manufacturing in the UK housing sector and examined the introduction of Brownfield Land Registers in England. Topical and timely research examined the impact of BREXIT and the COVID-19 pandemic on construction law.

This thesis explores and promotes the need to incorporate host community participation into the legal and institutional frameworks of oil and gas industry of Nigeria. The industrial activities associated with the exploration and production of petroleum have related to substantial environmental degradation, pollution, and social crisis, posing a potential threat to Niger Delta's sustainable development. The Niger Delta region which is the engine of Nigeria's economy because of its immense oil wealth is now left with a polluted environment and rife poverty. This thesis argues that the historical failure of governance at all levels, and the limited participatory opportunities or biased policies that disregard the affected local communities from participating in shaping the decisions that govern their lives that has led to the supposed 'resource curse' hampering the Niger Delta. As a general objective to advance sustainable development in the Niger Delta and conflict resolution in the management of the oil and gas industry, this thesis explores public participation in environmental decision-making. In so doing, it highlights the need for host community participation in the oil and gas industry of Nigeria. The thesis adopts a theoretical approach to evaluate access to environmental information and representation in the public participation process by studying frameworks on public participation. Thus, it identifies the various groups and subgroups of the oil host communities in Nigeria and fosters the inclusion of all groups in the participatory process to promote effective participation in environmental decision-making. The thesis considers the 1992 Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Act of Nigeria including its strengths and weakness, as the main framework which formally gives participatory rights in the environmental decision-making process in oil and gas projects. This ensues in a comparative analysis of the public participation methods in the EIA systems of other countries (UK, US, and South Africa). The lessons learned are used as a guide to address effective public participation in Nigeria.

Oil and gas resource exploitation has hugely contributed to Nigeria's revenue. This is therefore an important contributor to the Nigerian economy. Nigerian oil and gas business has been mainly facilitated by multinational and indigenous oil companies operating in the industry. The study regards them as participants in the industry. It is noteworthy that this study will refer to company and corporation as one and the same entity. It has been observed that some oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria have clearly violated regulatory standards established in the Nigerian environmental regime. It has further been observed that the violations are repeated and persistent in nature. This is interesting considering that the Nigerian environmental regime has provided criminal sanctions (as a regulatory tool) to prohibit a violation of such standards and stipulates penalties that can be imposed for such violations. Moreover, other relevant regulatory administrative enforcement mechanisms have been established in relevant legislation to enforce the standards. Hence, the regime has established enforcement agencies to carry out the enforcement. The persistent violations therefore, show evidence that the Nigerian regime has failed to utilise criminal sanctioning and administrative enforcement to prevent or control violations of environmental standards, hence has been unable to guarantee the required compliance. This study therefore, seeks to identify deficiencies in the regime that have limited its utilisation of these regulatory options to ensure compliance with the standards. Beyond seeking to identify these deficiencies, this study will explore the UK and USA regimes towards identifying aspects of their criminal sanctioning and regulatory enforcement that could inspire a correction to the non-performance of the Nigerian regime.

Over the past five decades, Nigeria has witnessed immense ecological disaster arising from unsustainable environmental exploitation of its natural resource. Evidence can be seen from the oil and gas sector. Oil and gas activities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria have not only left the environment in a deplorable state but have also distorted its delicate ecosystem, thus leaving local communities and wildlife without a healthy environment. The country has therefore lost a significant amount of its rich ecological diversity for risky economic gains. This research questions the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework adopted for the hydrocarbon sector in Nigeria. The study reviews current debates on environmental regulations, regulatory role and compliance. This research examines the Nigerian oil and gas regulatory framework and the style of compliance with environmental regulations by oil companies that operate in the country. It focuses on the role of regulators and the value of environmental compliance in oil and gas projects. It further examines how noncompliance increases production costs, loss and/or damage to assets. Compliance methodologies of companies, delayed compliance actions and outright non-compliance is highlighted and investigated in this research. The methodology adopted was a qualitative approach, whereby feedback via semi-structured interviews with veterans in the industry were used as the primary means to understand the concept of regulations and compliance. This interpretative approach studies the social reality of noncompliance in the oil sector by the interactions of groups within the industry. This interpretation of these reactions gave the basis for the conceptual model that was developed to explain the phenomenon. This primary data source was subjected to thematic content analysis, facilitating the identification of new constructs in compliance theory from the views and experiences of the twenty-seven research respondents sampled. The rich narratives from a range of seven groups across the value chain of the oil and gas sector provided valuable insights to compliance with environmental regulations in Nigeria, the lead regulatory agency, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), and the relationship between the regulator and the regulated. This research also demonstrated the key challenges faced with reference to compliance with environmental regulations in Nigeria, and highlighted the central role played by partnerships across all levels of government in filling the human resource/capacity gap currently experienced in the sector. The thesis recommends a strategy for enhanced compliance with environmental regulations and emphasises the need for community participation in broader regulatory functions. This research also recommends clear intent of policy and regulatory outcomes as important driving factors for ensuring enhanced compliance with environmental regulations in the oil sector in Nigeria. However, the research further notes regulatory capture as a threat that can impede full compliance with regulations as well as the multidisciplinary role of several oversight agencies in the oil sector in Nigeria, with recommendations addressing these challenges.

This thesis offers a new conceptual framework - the environmental rule of law - to describe weaknesses in the development of Indian environmental law, and uses this description to critique the dominant discourse on environmental institutional reform. A secondary framework-fragmentation is also used to supplement the analysis of Indian environmental law. Part I develops the conceptual framework of the environmental rule of law by considering the special challenges that the inherent polycentric and interdisciplinary nature of environmental law present for commonly understood rule of law values such as clarity, certainty and consistency. It also relies on Jeremy Waldron's conception of articulated governance to demonstrate that the rule of law is linked to the principle of separation of powers. This conception lays emphasis on the role of the three institutions of government - the legislature, the executive and the judiciary - in strengthening or weakening the rule of law. To determine institutional contribution to the rule of law, I develop three broad indicators to assess the legal quality of the instruments of each of these institutions of government. These indicators are: a) capacity of statutes to guide executive and judicial behaviour by goal-setting and balancing competing interests; b) the ability of the executive to make flexible yet reasoned decisions grounded in primary legislation; and c) the use of statutory interpretation and consistent standards of judicial review by the courts as they give effect to environmental rights and principles. Through the use of case studies in Part II that span environmental impact assessment, forest conservation, and indigenous rights, I demonstrate that the lack of adherence to these indicators produces a body of environmental law that is fragmented i.e. one characterised by multiple overlapping yet self-contained legal regimes with conflicting provisions and the absence of unifying norms. In Part III, I use this understanding of fragmentation to critically analyse environmental legal and institutional reform proposals. I show that existing proposals address only the structure, rather than the process of functioning of the institutions of government. The rule of law framework that I develop also has potential for application to other areas of the law.

This thesis is an exploration of the evolution of State regulation of upstream oil and gas activities, whether this evolution reflects the emergence of a change in the content of the permanent sovereignty over natural resources doctrine as a rule of customary international law and what the implications of that would be for international law. The study of the evolution of State regulation is carried out through case studies of State practice of twenty-five countries in three specific areas that are: government take, nationalizations, and local development, with regard to hydrocarbon upstream activities. These changes in regulation are looked at from the point of view of the justifications that States have given for them, either domestically or in international fora. These justifications are then assessed under rules of international law that could affect the scope of the primary norms or secondary rules of State responsibility. As regards the former concepts such as legitimate expectations, energy security, equity, and conflicts of rules are analysed. As to the latter, circumstances precluding wrongfulness including state of necessity and force majeure are the key elements. These case studies are then analysed and compared in the light of these concepts. The conclusion of the thesis is that there is evidence that State practice in relation to upstream hydrocarbon activities has evolved to the extent that the concept of permanent sovereignty over natural resources has evolved to include concerns such as the protection of local communities, but continues to include the long-standing concern with regard to energy security.

The growing awareness of the inadequacy of international law as a means of addressing current environmental problems has led to calls for a new approach. In view of the links between the protection of the environment and the protection of human rights, according to the Stockholm Declaration of the United Nations Conference 1972, one such approach has been to focus on the development of international human rights law concepts and mechanisms to address environmental concerns. This thesis assesses the possible approaches and the limitations of the protection of the human rights to a healthy environment under the International Bill of Rights. The current international human rights law does not expressly provide for the human rights to a healthy environment. The thesis considers how the environment may be protected both through the application of presently accepted human rights and through the establishment of new human rights to a healthy environment. This thesis goes on to discuss the relationship between the international human rights law and the international environmental law, thereby giving an example of regime interaction. This is of strategic importance to understanding the meeting point of the two areas of law in this thesis. The need for sustainable development and the challenge of climate change have come to the fore and they both give urgency to the need for a human rights approach for the protection of the environment. There are concerns about whether there is a need for the provision of the human rights to a healthy environment in the international human rights law as existing rights are considered robust in themselves to protect the environment. This thesis will investigate the claim whether there are currently binding human rights to a healthy environment under the international law while building a solid argument on the need for a Convention on the human rights to a healthy environment. The thesis addresses the doctrinal and conceptual issues challenging the institutionalisation of the human rights to a healthy environment in the international human rights law. The thesis makes a case on the need for a Convention on the Human Rights to a Healthy Environment. It bolsters the point that the human rights to a healthy environment are long due; however what is lacking, is the doctrinal precision on the best way to institutionalise these rights. The research will attempt to proffer a proposal on the way forward by providing the institutional framework of the rights in a Convention. Before that, there is the need to discuss and settle several other possibilities and their limitations for the protection of the said human rights to a healthy environment. The proposed Convention could serve as a channel to offer a more coordinated, detailed, and well-documented approach for dealing with the linkages between human rights and the environment, as opposed to the fragmented approaches adopted across national and regional levels.

The 24-hour day/night cycle naturally helps to maintain balance and stability within a nocturnal ecosystem. While the rhythms of the natural light-dark cycle of day and night are able maintain a stable balance with ecological and human-made activities in relation to the nature of lighting and darkness, light pollution still significantly reduces average human well-being, impacts on the visibility of faint night sky objects during the night with the naked eye and telescope, and damages the night environment. It can be defined as “every form of artificial light in the wrong place at the wrong time which creates a sky glow, glare, nuisance, and other relevant causes of environmental degradation including some properties of artificial light which emit non-environmentally friendly or inappropriate light.” Light pollution can reduce human health, interfere with the nocturnal and/or dark-sky environment, reduce transportation safety and waste lighting energy consumption. Therefore, hard laws and soft laws from international and national jurisdictions established a duty on local authorities to manage outdoor lights and control all key elements of light pollution so as to ensure that people are not exposed to risks to the night environment. These also include environmental risks arising from a sky glow when measuring the non-environmentally atmospheric smog that hangs over urban areas at night where the level of exterior lighting from outdoor light sources is relatively high. However, English law does not contain stage processes and responsibilities for local authorities to deal with all aspects of outdoor light pollution. It also does not contain powers concerning the use of certain measurable degrees of non-environmentally friendly light metric, together with powers for the Government to approve a single framework for the minimisation of sky glow in public atmospheric areas at night. The main purpose of this study is to use comparative law studies to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of light pollution laws in different jurisdictions where adopted legislation has been designed to limit light pollution from outdoor light fixtures and design, and to improve national or local light pollution regulatory frameworks by providing better outdoor lighting practices through making valuable contributions to a comparison of international, European, national and local light pollution laws and to the improvement of regulatory measures in English legal system. It also proposes to do so by illustrating key differences between England and other jurisdictions and examining a set of necessary or proportional regulatory standards to combat light pollution. This research’s review of the jurisdictions and the legal systems available for both light pollution control and sustainable lighting practices has highlighted the recent evidence of such influence of hard and soft law on legislation in selected countries. When comparative law on different jurisdictions is discussed, the influence of a comparative approach in each national or municipal light pollution law is, at most, one of finding inspiration in the procedure of establishing a number of necessary steps to reforming the English law of light pollution control in favour of a better solution. Taking legal action to reduce the effects of non-environmentally friendly or unnecessary lights at night provides an excellent opportunity to deliver further benefits to both environmental lighting practices and energy efficiency. This research also highlights the key legal aspects concerning light pollution and outlines the ways in which regulators and policy makers can make the most of the interconnections between regulatory measures to address key elements of outdoor light pollution, such as sky glow, glare and intrusive light. It is intended to outline a wider vision for how English law can prevent all key elements of light pollution. This research also comparatively examines why England should be committed to ensuring that the English regulatory measures compare favourably with the global and regional light pollution control standards in the highest performing jurisdictions, and establishes stringent legal requirements for light pollution control which measure up to the highest standards set internationally. In the final Chapter we present useful recommendations which highlight instances in which England should be able to promote the application of necessary principles and stage processes through comparative effectiveness for outdoor lighting practices by applying international, regional and national criteria for different forms of outdoor lighting practices.

This thesis discusses issues affecting contemporary nuisance law from an historical standpoint. It is recognised that there is a considerable volume of literature relating to the nineteenth century antecedents of the law today. Yet nuisance is a most ancient tort, dating back almost a thousand years, and likewise the environmental problems it addresses date back to antiquity. Thus there is scope for a deeper historical analysis of this area of the common law which looks beyond industrialisation and the revolutionary nuisances of that period to the developments in the law applicable to environmental nuisances of feudal and post-feudal agrarian times. That is the aim of this thesis. It examines the lessons scholars and practitioners can learn by revisiting the origins of the law, and by critically reflecting on key evolutionary milestones which have shaped the law up to the present day. Four specific areas of current debate regarding nuisance doctrine are the focus of attention. Standing is one, concerning who has the right to sue in private nuisance. What types of injury are remediable with private nuisance is another, with particular reference to the question of the actionability of personal injury. The relationship between private nuisance and negligence is another, with reference to the issue of ‘reasonableness’ within private nuisance. The remedy of an injunction is the fourth area. Throughout the discussion of each of these issues the discussion follows a common pattern, beginning with identification of a leading late twentieth or early twenty-first century case which is the subject of debate and exploring the law at issue from an historical perspective, including the ‘original position’ in medieval case law. Nuisance law is currently encountering difficulties which not only prevent it from having a stable doctrinal identity in relation to other torts (and in relation to ‘its own’ history), but which also cast doubt on its scope for it continuing to provide worthwhile environmental protection in a modern age characterised by the emergence and proliferation of environmental regulatory bodies. It is not argued that the solution to nuisance law’s problems lies in returning to an original position and re-applying it to changing political realities. Nonetheless, it is argued that there is a ‘simple form’ of the law to discover from within a millennia of case law, and it is in many – but not all – respects different from the law as it now stands (or is thought to stand). Many judges and scholars have misunderstood and even to some extent misused history and this has contributed to the difficulties the law is faced with today. This research advocates that when the tort is considered from a historical perspective – where we can find its simplest form - there is scope for its traditional ‘green credentials’ to again be realised.

The protection of human health and the environment are two major goals of international environmental law. However, there has been little coherent scrutiny of their scope or implementation at international and domestic levels in developing countries and Africa in particular. This thesis shows that international environmental law regimes with a health protection objective have not maximized opportunities to reinforce the promotion and protection of public health in Africa. Through inter alia a study of sustainable management of shared freshwaters, trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal and international climate law, the thesis shows that a range of legal frameworks comprised of substantive, institutional and procedural law mandates States to advance the health objective in international environmental law. However, the thesis demonstrates the limits of these regimes and suggests options to enhance their potential in promoting and protecting public health. An enhanced framework of adaptive governance is proposed to improve environmental health governance. The thesis illustrates how the discourse on health in international environmental law can strengthen international environmental health governance to improve environmental and public health outcomes. It contains seven publications that analyse the strengths and weaknesses and options for reform of the international environmental law regime for health. The implications of these findings for theory, practice and public policy are discussed.

Within the context of UK company law, this thesis proffers a robust solution to the problem of: (1) corporate shareholders utilising the limited liability attained from their shareholding in a subsidiary; and (2) group companies utilising the separate legal personality of an affiliated company, to avoid financial liability under EU environmental law. Analysis is confined to the framework of environmental liability implemented by the Environmental Liability Directive (the ‘ELD’). The ELD is based on the polluter-pays principle. This principle seeks, inter alia, to ensure that the person(s) responsible for environmental damage or the imminent threat of such damage bear the costs of remedying and preventing it. Perversely, two doctrines of UK company law may hinder this and may even incentivise UK companies to externalise their ELD-related costs to society. First, each company is treated as a separate legal person with its own rights and obligations, distinct from those of its shareholder(s). Secondly, under the doctrine of limited liability, when the assets of a company are exhausted, generally, the liability of the shareholder(s) is limited to the amount, if any, unpaid on the share(s) in the company held by them. It is concluded that UK group companies engaged in the most environmentally dangerous activities could be prevented from avoiding financial liabilities arising under the ELD by mandating that they deposit unencumbered assets into an Environmental Damage Trust Fund in favour of the relevant competent authority as security and where funds remained insufficient, attributing the remaining costs to any entity within the corporate group which participated in, or constrained the decision-making of the polluter in relation to the environmentally damaging activity. It is contended that the proposed framework may establish a network of: (1) self-monitoring companies within the corporate group; (2) companies from which funds may be obtained for the satisfaction of the financial liability. This may have two self-perpetuating effects: first, it may promote the prevention of environmental damage by incentivising potentially responsible group members, through the threat of financial liability, to monitor the activity of a high-risk group entity so as to ensure that the activity is conducted in a safe manner. Secondly, it may aid the private remediation of environmental damage by expanding the pool of funds available to meet the financial liability.

This study argues that the basis of all environmental justice variations is the consideration of fairness, equity and justice in the environmental processes that resolve environmental problems. A Procedural Environmental Justice Model (PEJM) has been developed for the purpose of evaluating the procedural environmental justice content of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) legislation in South Africa and Zambia. EIA as a tool for mitigating adverse environmental impacts arising from development activities aims at identifying, predicting, evaluating and mitigating the bio-physical, social, and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken. This makes it an apt case study for evaluating how procedural environmental justice works. The PEJM developed in this thesis is important because it can be used as a mechanism for evaluating how procedural environmental justice works in practice. Apart from developing the PEJM, this research provides an in- depth evaluation of procedural environmental justice and proceeds, in a novel manner, to focus on South Africa and Zambia. The concept of environmental justice originates from the civil liberties campaigns of the 1960s and the more recent Environmental Justice Movement in the United States. It was historically concerned with widespread distributive inequalities which manifested as discrimination mainly on the basis of race and economic status in environmental matters. In more recent years, environmental justice concerns have become more profound owing to the diversity and gravity of global environmental problems such as global warming and climate change, natural resources depletion and widespread air and water pollution. The effects of these global environmental problems have been predicted to affect inhabitants of developing countries more than those of the developed ones, thereby emphasising procedural environmental justice concerns.This research shows that in the present day environmental parlance, environmental justice should be increasingly used to connote inclusiveness in addressing global, national and grassroots environmental problems. There has been a distinct tendency to move beyond the traditional description of environmental justice as being distributive, or primarily concerned with the allocation of environmental advantages and disadvantages. This is due to the realisation that distributive environmental justice aspects are inadequate in addressing historical and present day environmental challenges. This research emphasises that environmental justice incorporates procedural, corrective and social aspects of justice. The promotion of inclusive participation or procedural environmental justice transcends all conceptions of the concept. Therefore, in order to promote environmental justice, environmental legislation must focus on procedural features that incorporate effective public participation mechanisms.

Over the last four decades emissions trading has enjoyed a high profile in environmental law scholarship and in environmental law and policy. Much of this regulatory discussion is promotional, preferring emissions trading above other regulatory strategies without, however, engaging with legal complexities embedded in conceptualising, scrutinising and managing emissions trading schemes. The combined effect of these debates is to create a perception that emissions trading is a straightforward regulatory strategy, imposable across various jurisdictions and environmental settings. This thesis shows that this view of emissions trading is problematic for at least two reasons. First, emissions trading responds to distinct environmental and non-environmental goals, including creating profit-centres, establishing a governance regime aimed at substituting state control of common resources, and ensuring regulatory compliance. This is important, as the particular purpose entrusted to a given emissions trading regime has, as its corollary, a particular governance structure, according to which the regime may be constructed and managed. Second, the governance structures of emissions trading regimes are culture- specific, which is a significant reminder of the importance of law in understanding not only how emissions trading schemes function but also what meaning is given to them as regulatory strategies. This is shown by deconstructing emissions trading discourses: that is, by inquiring into the assumptions about emissions trading that feature in the literature and in debates involving law- and policymakers and the judiciary at the EU level. Ultimately, this thesis makes a strong argument for reconfiguring the common understanding of emissions trading schemes as regulatory strategies, and sets out a framework for analysis to sustain that reconfiguration.

The thesis is a comparative legal analysis of environmental principles in environmental law. Environmental principles are novel concepts in environmental law and they have a high profile in environmental law scholarship. This high profile is promoted by two factors – the high hopes that environmental law scholars have for environmental principles, and the increasing prevalence of environmental principles in legal systems, particularly in case law. This thesis analyses the latter, mapping doctrinal developments involving environmental principles in two jurisdictions and court systems – the courts of the European Union and the New South Wales Land and Environment Court. This doctrinal mapping has both narrow and broad aims. Narrowly, it identifies the legal roles in fact taken on by environmental principles within legal systems. Broadly, and building on this assessment, it responds to scholarly hopes that environmental principles (can) perform a range of significant roles in environmental law, including solving both environmental problems and legal problems in environmental law scholarship. These hopes are based on assumptions about environmental principles that have methodological weaknesses, including that environmental principles are universal and that they fit pre-existing models of ‘legal principles’ drawn from other areas of legal scholarship. The thesis exposes these methodological problems and concludes that environmental principles are not panaceas for pressing and perceived problems in environmental law. It does this by showing that the legal roles of environmental principles, which are significant in environmental law and its current evolution, can only be understood by closely analysing the legal cultures in which they feature. This is a conclusion for environmental law scholarship generally – while environmental issues and problems may be urgent and often global, legal analysis of the law that applies to those problems requires close engagement with legal systems and cultures, as they are and as they develop.

This thesis represents an analysis of the concept of environmental justice with the aim of identifying possible legal remedies.  The thesis does so through an analysis of the history of environmental justice as well as an analysis of the theories behind environmental justice.  The thesis analyses the concordance between environmental justice and existing principles of environmental law and policy, while also analysing environmental justice in a UK as well as a European and international context. From the outset, environmental justice deals with the negative effects that environmental decisions have on certain minority populations.  In the US, the concept emerged as a response to what was perceived as discriminate targeting of African-American communities through the siting of environmental harms.  In the UK, where environmental justice is emerging on policy and grassroots level, environmental justice has been given an entirely different connotation relying on social justice arguments and concerns for low-income groups.  The thesis sets out to establish and uncover the specific meaning of environmental justice and its implications in a UK context. The thesis argues that environmental justice is as much a problem in the UK as elsewhere.  Despite empirical shortfalls of some of the work that environmental justice advocates rely upon, environmental justice is a real issue.  In light of this, the thesis argues in favour of the specific utilisation and application of human rights norms as well as an improved framework of corporate social responsibility in the attempt to address environmental injustices.  Such legal approaches can be utilised alongside established tools of public participation and access to environmental information in order to secure an aim of environmental justice.

This thesis brings together six works published between 2003 and 2007 which consider public involvement in environmental matters. The later works focus on access to justice, one of three elements of public involvement. The works support the thesis that aspects of public involvement and, in particular access to justice in environmental matters, remain elusive for many individuals and groups in society; something that is inconsistent with both domestic and international law. They include analysis of why the need for participation arises and how it should be secured. By publishing primary research and new commentary the publications identify the gaps in the provision of public involvement in environmental matters and offer options for change. They have also informed further research and debate. The publications are brought together in this submission in chronological order, which illustrates how the hypothesis develops. The works are critically appraised in an introductory chapter. Public involvement is first discussed in The Prestige oil disaster, another example of the West living beyond its means (Environmental Law & Management 15[2003]1 16 (Jan 2003). LawText Publishing, Banbury, UK) and sets the backdrop for the later works. It highlights some of the key environmental problems of our time including, for instance, that environmental protection remains subservient to the pursuit economic development. Getting to the real EIA (Journal of Environmental Law, (2003) Vol 15, No. 2, p. 141 Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK) considers the role of public involvement in major land use development decision making by analysing one of the key participatory areas of public involvement; environmental impact assessment (EIA). EIA places emphasis on access to information and public participation in helping to prevent rather than alleviate adverse socio-environmental impacts. It is argued in Getting to the real F£IA that for the major development projects requiring EIA, public participation is nominal in nature and that, often, IS entirely absent. While Getting to the real EIA considers information and participation, access to justice is the focus of the third work; Civil law aspects of environmental justice ((2003) Environmental Law Foundation, London, UK). The work is based upon primary research which was necessary once it became evident that there was little, if any, data on how effective the judicial system is in securing access to environmental justice. The search conclusions were critical of the present judicial system highlighting that, in practice, a legal remedy was often unavailable to individuals and communities in challenging environmental decisions and resolving environmental problems; the most significant barrier being prohibitive expense. This was to such an extent that the UK Government was not meeting its international obligations. The failure to provide effective access to the courts as highlighted in Civil law aspects prompted the publication of the later work; The cost of doing the rights thing (Environmental Law & Management 16[2004]2 p. 59 (Mar 2004). LawText Publishing, Banbury, UK) which reviews the problems of access to environmental justice and then proposes innovative ways of starting to resolve those inherent in the legal justice system, including liability for an opponent's costs' if any legal challenge is ultimately unsuccessful. As the arguments surrounding funding constraints on access to justice were crystallising, the need to produce a substantive text clarifying the environmental rights and responsibilities of all interested parties became clear. This prompted the publication of A Practical Approach to Environmental Law ((2005). OUP, Oxford, UK) which is, in the main, a practitioner's text. However, the text also seeks to explain and raise awareness of the environmental rights that are available in the UK and the notion that public involvement in environmental decision-making has a central role. For instance, Chapter .2 Environmental rights and principles which is incorporated into this submission, outlines the main aspects of information, participation and access to justice and explains their relevant judicial and governmental application. While A Practical Approach to Environmental Law is novel in its comprehensive approach, its primary purpose is to inform readers, in an objective way, of the present legal position. Its inclusion in this submission is to illustrate how the arguments raised in the earlier publications have been presented to a wide audience. The final published work, ‘Current concerns in environmental decision making’ (Journal of Environment and Planning Law [2007] p. 536 Sweet & Maxwell, London, UK), places the argument of limitations of access to justice alongside the parallel and associated problems of an unwilling public protector and a conservative judiciary. It revisits the need for public participation in environmental matters by highlighting the reluctance of public bodies and the courts to take the issue of environmental justice seriously. It also argues that recent efforts in access to justice are largely superficial and that fundamental change remains necessary. The final paper was presented at the University of Kent, Critical Lawyer's Conference on 24 February 2007. The submitted works follow a distinct .theme by exploring the application of public involvement in environmental matters highlighting what is the main criticism of the public participatory provision in the UK the provision of access to the courts without prohibitive expense. The works have also been directly related to practical experience and work in seeking to improve the position. In drawing the published works together in one volume it has been helpful to outline some of the underlying issues relating to public involvement including what is meant by public participation, any levels and limitations to the rights now said to be conferred. This analysis has been provided in an expanded introduction which also includes a' critical appraisal of the main published works. Paul Stookes 22nd April 2008

The reforms initiated in the global energy industry since the late 1980s have been seen as phenomenal and radical. In the main, the changes are perceived as the manifestation of the inexorable retreat of the state, apparently due to its failings, from the energy business. This thesis argues that the real position in the industry is not conterminous with that postulate. The unique character of the energy industry guarantees that the state's influence may change, but not swept away. Even when methods change, the objectives of state participation - efficiency, equity and stability - remain unalterable. This is demonstrated in three forms: First, domestic regulation of the industry, second, the exploitation of energy resource from a source shared by two or more countries, and third, international trade in energy. Indeed, the ubiquitous presence of the state in the energy industry has yielded varying results in different countries, and as in the case of Ghana, for different utilities. This thesis proposes that good governance is the critical variable that accounts for the difference. The need for stable governance, not characterised by the endurance of dictatorship, but exhibited in the form of competitive democracy, effective bureaucracy, rule of law, discretion and decentralisation, form the macro foundation for the efficient, equitable and stable operation of the energy business.