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Reflexive environmental law (REL) techniques create potential for reflexivity by regulated companies. This reflexivity is fundamental to overcoming various regulatory hurdles posed by complex and dynamic sustainability challenges, such as plastics circularity. However, even when European Union (EU) environmental legislation incorporates REL techniques, Member State transposition may either undermine or enhance these techniques' potential for driving regulatee reflexivity. This article examines REL's evolution within complex, transnational legislative frameworks, taking the EU's Single-use Plastics Directive (SUPD) as a case study. It compares reflexivity techniques in the SUPD to those in transpositions by France and Germany. Our analysis is based on the coding of 11 REL techniques and three overarching reflexive drivers—autonomy, accountability and adjustability—within four SUPD instruments. Identifying divergence in REL between the SUPD and Member State transpositions allows us to highlight three explanations as to why REL evolves in certain ways through the transposition process.

The Sustainable Development Goals are intended to be implemented in an indivisible manner, underlining the importance of interlinkages and interdependencies between different SDG-relevant policy areas. The complexity of synergies and trade-offs that are inherent to SDG interactions increases the risk that governments cherry-pick the SDGs that align with current policy interests and priorities, while neglecting others. No development actor can single-handedly ensure the integrated implementation of sustainable development's economic, environmental and social dimensions. To advance integrated development processes, we therefore seek to answer the following question: what governance mechanisms enable development actors, located in different sectors, in different jurisdictions and at different governance levels, to align their efforts? Drawing on public governance and international development literature we identify ten alignment mechanisms that can be used to create inter-departmental alignment, public–private alignment, donor-recipient alignment and inter-donor alignment. To understand how the different mechanisms manifest themselves in practice, we illustrate how they are used to create synergies and negotiate trade-offs in forest and landscape restoration governance in Ethiopia. Through 20 interviews with public and private actors in Ethiopia, we observe a movement toward more integrated forest and landscape restoration efforts, but also that important mechanisms to create synergies and negotiate trade-offs between different objectives are still missing or do not function as intended. In the discussion and conclusion, we provide insights on how the ten mechanisms can contribute to greater multi-actor alignment at different stages of the policy cycle.

This conceptual and exploratory research study investigates, systematically and holistically, climate-adaptive spatial design interventions for high-density informal urban areas in hot arid climates, which remain understudied despite their vulnerability to heat stress and the heat-vulnerable groups populating them. Five streetscape design prototypes are proposed that include climate-adaptive spatial interventions appraised qualitatively with consideration to relevant feasibility matters: land use planning, equity, affordability, mobility, and sense of place. The study shows that there is potential for climate-adaptive interventions in informal urban areas in hot arid climates, but that these interventions also present challenges. Common climate-adaptive design strategies can be used to address heat stress in these areas but, for example, increasing vegetation might be challenging due to water stress. As a conceptual study, the findings presented and the discussion raised on feasibility are targeted at opening avenues for future research, and at informing decision-makers and spatial designers.

This conceptual and exploratory research study investigates, systematically and holistically, climate-adaptive spatial design interventions for high-density informal urban areas in hot arid climates, which remain understudied despite their vulnerability to heat stress and the heat-vulnerable groups populating them. Five streetscape design prototypes are proposed that include climate-adaptive spatial interventions appraised qualitatively with consideration to relevant feasibility matters: land use planning, equity, affordability, mobility, and sense of place. The study shows that there is potential for climate-adaptive interventions in informal urban areas in hot arid climates, but that these interventions also present challenges. Common climate-adaptive design strategies can be used to address heat stress in these areas but, for example, increasing vegetation might be challenging due to water stress. As a conceptual study, the findings presented and the discussion raised on feasibility are targeted at opening avenues for future research, and at informing decision-makers and spatial designers., Urban Development Management

An important goal of EU energy policy is to ensure energy justice during the green transition. The Commission considers the functioning and competitiveness of the retail energy market for households to be proxies for justice and consumer welfare. The European Barriers in Retail Energy Market Project (the EB Project) is instrumental in assessing and ensuring this competitiveness. The EB Project centres on the creation of the Barrier Index (BI), which identifies barriers to entry in the national markets for electricity and gas suppliers across the EU and ranks Member States on the basis of eight indicators. This article critically assesses the reliability of the BI. A faulty BI could lead Member States down the wrong path or towards bad decisions with respect to the regulation of the retail energy market in light of the EU's policy goals. This research identifies problems with the methodology and data collection regarding the construction of the BI indicators in the electricity market specifically. The latter is exemplified through case studies of the Dutch and Portuguese national reports. The identified issues call into question the reliability of the BI as a whole. Possible measures to improve the quality of indicators are discussed in the conclusions.

The sustainability of complex contractual governance in “hotbeds” depends on steering principles. Ostrom’s design principles provide an analytical framework for robust institutions that enable collective action and cooperative behaviour. The success of Ostrom’s design principles depends on the capacity of social entities to self-govern. This article explores the potential of Ostrom’s design principles as such steering principles for contractual governance in “hotbeds”. We find that the preconditions for successful contractual networks in “hotbeds” and the empirical situations underlying Ostrom’s design principles are comparable. Building on this comparability, we apply Ostrom’s design principles to contractual networks in “hotbeds” area theoretically, and then go on to demonstrate its applied value to three situations in West Papua, Indonesia.

Climate litigation has become a permanent fixture in the climate law and policy landscape. Across jurisdictions, climate litigation takes different shapes, with actions based on administrative, civil, or criminal law. An increasing number of cases incorporate human rights, leading to courts inter alia imposing more onerous mitigation obligations on governments and private actors in light of human rights provisions. Several landmark cases in this domain have come from European jurisdictions and have been argued with reference to both the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights. An analysis of case law from the European Member States shows that the emerging picture is one of the Charter playing a secondary role to the ECHR. Based on this jurisprudential analysis, this article reflects on the future role of the Charter in climate litigation, and by extension, in shaping environmental human rights.

The European Union’s (EU) approach to safeguarding seed quality and ensuring agricultural productivity includes a range of regulatory measures related to seed marketing, including the restriction of market access to seed varieties that are properly certified. In order for varieties to be properly certified, they have to be registered in a Plant Variety Catalogue. EU seed laws, and their Member State implementation, have traditionally favoured uniform crop production of commer-cialised breeds over conservation varieties, which has been a contributing factor to crop genetic erosion. The United States’ (U.S.) approach to seed marketing regulation is often presented as an alternative model to the EU’s approach. In the United States, any seed can be indistinctly marketed if properly labelled. In this regulatory framework, certification and registration of seed is voluntary. In light of the continued issues regarding crop genetic erosion and the recent developments in EU seed law reform, this article examines the key elements of both regimes and considers their different approaches to market access for conservation varieties. The most important differences relate to in truth-in-labelling (U.S.) and ex ante quality control mechanisms (EU). These differences highlight that EU and U.S. seed laws must be placed in their respective broader regulatory context and that their relative comparability hinges on policy aims related to seed quality. This raises the broader question as to what the key policy aims of seed laws are and whether these oft-compared regimes are in fact analogous in terms of goals and structure.

In Milieudefensie et al. v Royal Dutch Shell, the District Court in the Hague ordered the respondent company to cut its global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030, as compared with 2019 levels. The landmark judgement represents the first imposition of a specific mitigation obligation on a private company over and above reduction targets set by existing ‘cap-and-trade’ regulations and/or other governmental mitigation policies. In interpreting Royal Dutch Shell's duty of care under Dutch tort law, the Court referred extensively to international soft law, including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This note considers the implications of this case for corporate responsibility for environmental and human rights.

Emissions trading is a market-based instrument aimed at achieving environmental targets in a cost-effective way by allowing legal entities, primarily firms, to buy and sell emission rights. The limited but steadily growing international diffusion of emissions trading schemes underlines the political relevance of this instrument. There are three basic design variants of emissions trading: cap-and-trade, credit trading, and international offsets. They operate differently in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and political acceptability. A few greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes have already been linked to increase low-cost abatement opportunities and to work towards a global carbon price. Nevertheless, doubts about emissions trading schemes remain, mainly due to the many implementation problems they face, including an emissions price that is either too volatile or too low to incentivise environmentally-friendly technologies. Despite these drawbacks, emissions trading schemes are functioning with moderate success and continue to spread across the globe.