This book, the first in a series that focuses on treaty implementation for sustainable development, examines key legal aspects of implementing the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at national and international levels. The volume provides a serious contribution to the current legal and political academic debates on biosafety by discussing key issues under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety that affect the further design of national and international law on biosafety, and analyzing progress in the development of domestic regulatory regimes for biosafety. In the year of the fifth UN Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, at the signature of a new Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Protocol on Liability and Redress, this timely book examines developments in biosafety law and policy.

This book analyzes international and Chinese regulatory approaches addressing environmental risks that may be caused by GM crops and examines how China implements its international obligations in its policies and laws. Using the legal doctrinal method, the book discusses the precautionary principle and the public involvement principle, as well as several legal measures at the international law level and in Chinese law. It observes that legal principles and measures as provided for in China’s GMO legal framework have generally implemented the international obligations regarding the prevention of environmental risks that may be caused by the cultivation of GM crops and related activities. However, the book argues that Chinese law lacks an explicit codification of the precautionary principle, and the same is true with regard to public participation; the regulatory framework lacks specific obligations. It concludes that future research should focus on the application and enforcement of the relevant Chinese legislation, and that it is also important to investigate how the environmental risks that may be caused by new techniques, such as genome-editing techniques, could be prevented, given the experience gained by regulating the cultivation of GM crops and related activities.

Wer haftet, wenn sich selbst ausbreitende Gentechnik grenzüberschreitende Schäden verursacht? Mit Gene Drives und ähnlichen Verfahren wird es bald möglich sein, das Erbgut wild lebender Arten, Keime und Nutzpflanzen direkt in der Umwelt zu verändern. Dies könnte helfen, drängende Probleme in der öffentlichen Gesundheit, im Naturschutz und in der Ernährungssicherheit zu lösen. Allerdings bergen diese Verfahren auch das Risiko einer unkontrollierten Ausbreitung über Staatsgrenzen hinweg. Anhand einer grundlegenden Untersuchung der einschlägigen Verträge und des Völkergewohnheitsrechts zu Prävention und Haftung für grenzüberschreitende Schäden wird aufgezeigt, dass das derzeit geltende Völkerrecht dieser Herausforderung noch nicht gewachsen ist.

The new edition of this essential text offers a comprehensive, critical and future-thinking commentary on international environmental law.

This open access book aims to elaborate on the legal prerequisites to establish the liability of corporations for transboundary environmental harm, not only by identifying existing liability rules, principles and standards but also by analysing their potential for further legal development. The authors consider international and transboundary liability law to currently be an underutilised tool for international environmental protection. The book seeks to address this by exploring what is needed in terms of legislative action and identifying options for judicial pliability, thereby providing an important legal contribution in furthering the development of an effective international and transnational environmental liability law regime.

This book examines the development of international law applicable to Transboundary Aquifers (TBAs) considering the Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRWS). The purpose is to determine how International Water Law (IWL) and the HRWS can be harmonized in the context of TBAs. This is important given rules and instruments adopted to address this topic are relatively nascent, and the field itself is still in the process of developing regulatory frameworks. Taking the application of the HRWS to shared aquifers as a case study, the work discusses whether IWL and International Human Rights Law complement each other. The response to this question requires an analysis of the development of International Groundwater Law and its challenges, the evolution of the HRWS, the nature of transboundary groundwaters, and the interplay between these two fields. The author argues that IWL agreements should contain a provision related to the HRWS to ensure the protection of this right with a stipulation included in the nonbinding instrument that tackles shared groundwaters: the Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers adopted in 2008 through the United Nations General Assembly Resolution. The book will be of interest to international lawyers, water and human right experts, geologists, and anyone interested in water and human rights issues.

The Research Handbook on Environment and Investment Law examines one of the most dynamic areas of international law: the interaction between international investment law and environmental law and policy. The Research Handbook takes a thematic approach, analysing key issues in the environment–investment nexus, such as freshwater resources, climate, biodiversity, biotechnology and sustainable development. It also includes sections which explore regional experiences and address practice and procedure, and offers innovative approaches and critical perspectives, including the interface between foreign investment and the environment with human rights, gender, indigenous peoples, and economics.

Biotechnology is a field that inspires complex legal and ethical debates on an international scale. Taking a fresh approach to the subject, Matthias Herdegen provides a comprehensive assessment of the regulation of biotechnology processes and products from an international and comparative perspective.

Technology for modifying the genotypes and phenotypes of insects and other arthropods has steadily progressed with the development of more precise and powerful methods, most prominently transgenic modification. For many insect pests, there is now almost unlimited ability to modify phenotypes to benefit human health and agriculture. Precise DNA modifications and gene drive have the power to make wild-type populations less harmful in ways that could never have been performed with previous transgenic approaches. This transition from primarily laboratory science to greater application for field use has also necessitated greater development of modeling, ethical considerations and regulatory oversight. The 2nd Edition of Transgenic Insects contains chapters contributed by experts in the field that cover technologies and applications that are now possible. This edition includes increased attention to associated challenges of risk assessment, regulation, and public engagement. This book will be very valuable to students and researchers in entomology, molecular biology, genetics, public health and agriculture, and will also appeal to practitioners who are implementing the technology, and to regulators, stakeholders and ethicists.

Sustainable development, as defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development, is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." More specifically, sustainable development is a process of change that seeks to improve the collective quality of life by focusing on economically, socially, and environmentally sound projects that are viable in the long-term. Sustainable development requires structural economic change and the foundation of that change is investment. In developing nations with low levels of domestic savings, investment predictably comes from abroad in the form of foreign direct investment. A large and ever expanding number of international investment agreements are in place to govern these transactions. While these accords seek to foster development while mitigating the risk involved in these types investments, many questions remain unresolved. This highly insightful book reflects the contributions of a variety of world renowned experts each of which is designed to provide the reader with valuable perspective on recent developments in investment law negotiations and jurisprudence from a sustainable development law perspective. It offers answers to pertinent questions concerning advancements in investment law, including the negotiation of numerous regional and bilateral agreements as well as the increasing number of disputes resolved in the World Bank's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), from different developed and developing country perspectives. It lays out future directions for new treaty negotiations and dispute settlement proceedings, as well as ongoing investment promotion efforts, against a background of rapidly evolving international relationships between economic, environment and development law. It focuses on key issues in investment laws which have emerged as priorities in the negotiation of bilateral and regional investment agreements, and have been clarified through recent decisions of the ICSID and other arbitral panel awards.