European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series – Webinar 3 – From Environmental Law in Context to Comparative Environmental Governance: Justice, Sustainability, and the Rule of Law

The European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on EU and International Rule of Law is pleased to announce the next event in its Webinar Series:

Webinar 3 – From Environmental Law in Context to Comparative Environmental Governance: Justice, Sustainability, and the Rule of Law

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 — 10:00–11:30 a.m. Central Time
11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Online

Participation is free and open to all, but advance registration is required.

Register

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScKS_RsTB59jOEBtuSR1M9uDOPMaVHiRcfsAW5RVqxhEERMTw/viewform?usp=dialog

More information, including the detailed event description, speakers’ biographies, and a selected bibliography, is available here https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/2026/09/05/european-society-of-international-law-esil-interest-group-on-european-and-international-rule-of-law-webinar-series-webinar-3-from-environmental-law-in-context-to-comparative-environme

About the Webinar

The ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series is conceived, chaired, and moderated by Professor Paolo Davide Farah, Chair of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law.

More information, including the detailed event description, speakers’ biographies, and a selected bibliography, is available [here].

This Webinar 3 brings into dialogue two important recent books examining how environmental law should be understood, compared, taught, and transformed at a time of accelerating climate change, ecological degradation, widening inequality, energy transition, and profound institutional and regulatory change:

Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen G. Gonzalez, Teaching Environmental Law in Context (Edward Elgar, 2026);

and

Tseming Yang, Anastasia Telesetsky, and Sara K. Phillips, eds., Comparative Environmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2025).

Although the two books approach environmental law from different perspectives, they share a central concern with how legal systems identify environmental problems, allocate regulatory authority and responsibility, incorporate scientific and other forms of knowledge, respond to unequal distributions of environmental harms and benefits, and develop institutions capable of confronting rapidly changing ecological and social conditions.

Teaching Environmental Law in Context, by Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen G. Gonzalez, challenges approaches that treat environmental regulation primarily as a collection of complex statutes, doctrines, and technical rules. By locating environmental law within its historical, political, scientific, economic, and distributive contexts, the book places environmental justice at the center of legal analysis and pedagogy. It examines how environmental problems and regulatory responses are shaped by inequality, political economy, institutional structures, scientific knowledge, and differing distributions of environmental risk and decision-making power.

In parallel, Comparative Environmental Law, edited by Tseming Yang, Anastasia Telesetsky, and Sara K. Phillips, broadens the inquiry across jurisdictions, legal traditions, and regulatory systems. The volume explores both convergence and divergence in environmental law and governance and brings comparative analysis to areas including environmental impact assessment, access to information, environmental and human rights, Indigenous peoples, rights of nature, environmental courts and litigation, compliance and enforcement, renewable energy and energy transition, water, biodiversity, pollution, and natural-resource governance.

Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen G. Gonzalez will discuss the conceptual and pedagogical foundations of Teaching Environmental Law in Context, including the importance of environmental justice, historical and institutional context, inequality, scientific expertise, and the relationship between environmental law and the communities most directly affected by environmental decision-making.

Tseming Yang, Anastasia Telesetsky, and Sara K. Phillips will discuss Comparative Environmental Law and the possibilities opened by comparative analysis for understanding environmental institutions, regulatory choices, legal transplantation, convergence and divergence among legal systems, and the different ways jurisdictions respond to shared environmental challenges.

Ayano Y. Mekonnen, University at Buffalo School of Law, and Chinonso Tansi Anozie, University of Houston Law Center, will serve as discussants. Drawing on their respective scholarship and expertise, they will engage with the books from complementary perspectives and situate their arguments within broader debates concerning comparative and international environmental law, environmental justice, climate governance, sustainable development, natural-resource governance, human rights, Global South perspectives, and the institutional dimensions of the rule of law.

The conversation will be chaired and moderated by Paolo Davide Farah of the University of Tulsa College of Law, who will also serve as a discussant. Drawing on his scholarship on international and comparative environmental law, climate change, energy and natural-resource governance, international economic law, Indigenous peoples, emerging technologies, sustainable development, global administrative governance, China and emerging powers, and epistemic governance, Professor Farah will engage directly with the arguments developed in the two books.

His contribution will examine the relationship between comparison and context in environmental governance; the interaction between domestic, international, and transnational environmental law; the allocation of regulatory, scientific, and epistemic authority; and the broader implications of environmental law for legitimacy, accountability, participation, environmental justice, sustainability, energy transition, Indigenous knowledge, human rights, and the international rule of law.

Bringing these two works together creates an opportunity to ask broader questions about what comparative inquiry reveals when environmental institutions and regulatory choices are examined across jurisdictions and what may be obscured when environmental law is separated from its historical, social, scientific, and distributive settings.

How do different legal traditions determine what counts as an environmental problem and which forms of knowledge are authoritative in addressing it? How do political economy, inequality, scientific expertise, regulatory capacity, and institutional design shape environmental law? What can jurisdictions learn from one another without overlooking differences in history, culture, development, institutional capacity, and social structure? And how should environmental law itself be taught when the field is being transformed by climate change, energy transition, environmental justice, technological change, and evolving understandings of rights and public responsibility?

The webinar will therefore move beyond the books themselves to consider the interaction among comparative environmental law, environmental justice, legal education, climate governance, energy transition, sustainability, human rights, Indigenous peoples and Indigenous knowledge, rights of nature, natural-resource governance, scientific expertise, and Global South experiences.

Particular attention will be devoted to the relationship between domestic, international, comparative, and transnational environmental law; the ways different institutions allocate authority, expertise, responsibility, and participation in environmental decision-making; the growing importance of climate and energy transitions; and the challenge of designing environmental institutions that are both capable of responding effectively to ecological change and attentive to distributive justice, participation, and regulatory legitimacy.

The discussion will also examine the role of knowledge and expertise in environmental governance. Environmental law depends heavily upon scientific assessment, technical expertise, regulatory judgment, traditional and Indigenous knowledge, and decisions about which risks and forms of evidence legal institutions recognize. These questions raise broader issues concerning epistemic authority, participation, transparency, accountability, and the ability of affected communities to understand, challenge, and influence environmental decision-making.

At the center of the conversation is a fundamental rule-of-law question:

How can environmental legal systems remain legitimate, accountable, inclusive, and capable of responding to rapidly changing ecological and social conditions while addressing the unequal distribution of environmental harms, benefits, knowledge, expertise, and decision-making power?

Taken together, the two books provide a distinctive opportunity to consider environmental law not merely as a specialized regulatory field, but as a central component of contemporary domestic and global governance. They invite reflection on how environmental institutions can reconcile ecological protection, economic and social development, scientific complexity, democratic participation, human rights, distributive justice, and the demands of the rule of law.

By bringing together the perspectives of Rebecca Bratspies, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Tseming Yang, Sara K. Phillips, Ayano Y. Mekonnen, Chinonso Tansi Anozie, and Paolo Davide Farah, the webinar seeks to foster an interdisciplinary and comparative dialogue across environmental law, international law, comparative law, climate and energy governance, environmental justice, human rights, Indigenous perspectives, sustainable development, scientific and epistemic governance, legal education, and the international rule of law.

The event is organized as part of the ESIL Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series and is co-sponsored by the American Branch of the International Law Association Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order and the International Law Association Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance.

Participation is free and open to all. Registration is required.

Professor Paolo Davide Farah, PhD
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East Fourth Place
Tulsa, OK 74104

https://paolofarah.com/
https://paolofarah.wordpress.com/
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=629289

Selected Bibliography

Books in Dialogue

Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen G. Gonzalez, Teaching Environmental Law in Context (Edward Elgar, 2025) – provides tools, guidance, and historical context for teaching environmental law in a time of turmoil, including resources to seamlessly integrate racial and economic justice into every topic. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/teaching-environmental-law-in-context-9781035333899.html

Tseming Yang, Anastasia Telesetsky, and Sara K. Phillips, eds., Comparative Environmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2025)

Other Suggested Materials

Blog symposium on Teaching Environmental Law in Context:

https://progressivereform.org/cpr-blog/?cat=914

#RaceClass podcast on Teaching Environmental Law in Context:

Gonzalez and Bratspies on The Unbearable Whiteness of Environmental Law – Center for Progressive Reform (2023), https://progressivereform.org/cpr-blog/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-environmental-law/

Book authors and editors

Related Scholarship by Carmen G. Gonzalez

Climate Migration and Reparations: Reflections on the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, Pace Environmental Law Review (forthcoming)

The Color of Carbon: Racial Capitalism, Climate Change, and Law (with Sumudu Atapattu), 5 Journal of Law and Political Economy 635 (2025), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5976814

Racial Capitalism, Climate Change, and Ecocide, 41 Wisconsin International Law Journal 479 (2024), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4835218

The Right to a Healthy Environment and the Global South, 117 AJIL Unbound 173 (2023), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4527384

Mapping Racial Capitalism: Implications for Law (with Athena D. Mutua), 2 Journal of Law and Political Economy 127 (2022), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4576365

The Sacrifice Zones of Carbon Capitalism: Race, Expendability, and Loss and Damage, in Research Handbook on Climate Change Law and Loss and Damage (Edward Elgar, 2021, Meinhard Doelle and Sara L. Seck, eds.), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3838069

The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development (Cambridge University Press, 2021, Sumudu Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez, and Sara L. Seck, eds).

Racial Capitalism, Climate Justice, and Climate Displacement, 11 Oñati Socio-Legal Series 108 (2021), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3626490

Migration as Reparation: Climate Change and the Disruption of Borders, 66 Loyola Law Review 402 (2020), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3727725

Energy Justice: US and International Perspectives (Edward Elgar, 2018, Raya Salter, Carmen G. Gonzalez, and Elizabeth Kronk Warner, eds.)

Environmental Racism, American Exceptionalism, and Cold War Human Rights, 26 Transnat’l L. & Contemp. Problems 281 (2017), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2992269

Carmen’s SSRN Author Page: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=476828

Related Scholarship by Rebecca M. Bratspies

SSRN author page | Official Tulane profile

With Carmen G. Gonzalez, Teaching Environmental Law in Context (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026).
With Carmen G. Gonzalez, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Environmental Law” (Center for Progressive Reform Symposium, 2023).
“Access to Environmental Information under International Law,” in Tseming Yang, Anastasia Telesetsky and Sara K. Phillips, eds., Comparative Environmental Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025).
“‘Underburdened’ Communities,” 110 California Law Review 1933–1989 (2022).
“Do I Really Have the Right to Breathe Clean Air?” (2025).
“Climate Justice Begins at Home,” 37 New York International Law Review 13 (2024).
“The Human Rights Fulcrum: Using Environmental Rights as Leverage for Change,” 38 Pace International Law Review 229 (2026).

With Tseming Yang and Anastasia Telesetsky, eds., Comparative Environmental Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025).
With Tseming Yang and Anastasia Telesetsky, “Introduction to Comparative Environmental Law,” in Comparative Environmental Law (2025).
“Mining Law and Governance: Structures and Challenges,” in Comparative Environmental Law, pp. 389–415 (2025).
“The Legal Construct of Mining Conflicts,” 109 Resources Policy, article 105706 (2025).
“Strategic Engagement and Legal Pluralism: Navigating Knowledge and Expertise in Mining Disputes,” 56(1) Chulalongkorn University Journal of Social Sciences 177–196 (2026).
Rights-Based Claims and Extractive Industries in Asia: An Assessment and Ways Forward (Stockholm Environment Institute Working Paper, 2020).
“Building Business, Human Rights and Climate Change Synergies in Southeast Asia: What the Philippines’ National Inquiry on Climate Change Could Mean for ASEAN,” 13(1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 238–264 (2022).

Discussants

Related Scholarship by Mekonnen Firew Ayano

SSRN author page | Official University at Buffalo profile | Google Scholar

“Understanding the Local Complexities in Land Law Reforms: The Case of Land Inalienability in Ethiopia, 1991–2018,” 49 Law & Social Inquiry 2398–2438 (2024).
“Law and Land Conflict in Emerging Market Economies: Ethiopia, 2014–2018,” 18 International Journal of Constitutional Law 988–1012 (2020).
“Rural Land Registration in Ethiopia: Myths and Realities,” 52 Law & Society Review 1060–1097 (2018).
“Decolonizing Legal Influence: China’s Role in the Changing Landscape of the Ethiopian Legal Profession, 2000–2018,” 13 Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law 1 (2023).
“Tenants Without Rights: Immigrants’ Experiences in the U.S. Low-Income Housing Market,” 28 Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy 159–200 (2021).

Related Scholarship by Chinonso Tansi Anozie

SSRN author page | Official University of Houston profile | Google Scholar

“Left Behind: Funding Climate Action in the Global South,” 11 Texas A&M Law Review 333–363 (2024).
“Equalizing Remediation,” 2023 Wisconsin Law Review 919 (2023).
“Energy Sanctions Hegemony” (SSRN working paper, 2026).
“United States,” in Oil Wealth and Federal Conflict in American Petrofederations (Elsevier, 2022).
“Ownership of Natural Resources Beneath the Surface: An Appraisal of the American and Nigerian System” (2017).
“Parallel Application of Monopoly and Competition in Nigeria’s Energy Sector: A Malediction to Energy and Economic Development” (2017).

Chair, moderator, and discussant

Related Scholarship by Paolo Davide Farah

SSRN author page | Official University of Tulsa profile | Google Scholar | Publication profile

“Epistemic Governance” (SSRN working paper, posted and revised in 2026).
Globalization, Environmental Law and Sustainable Development in the Global South: Challenges for Implementation (Routledge, 2021; open access).
“Indicator Species and the Future of Environmental Law,” in Globalization, Environmental Law and Sustainable Development in the Global South: Challenges for Implementation, pp. 305–313 (Routledge, 2021).
“Urgenda vs. Juliana: Lessons for Future Climate Change Litigation Cases,” 84(3) University of Pittsburgh Law Review 547–584 (2023). Also available on SSRN.
“Climate Justice in the Anthropocene and Its Relationship with Science and Technology: The Importance of Ethics of Responsibility,” 55 Connecticut Law Review 819–860 (2023).
“Energy Justice, Just Transition and International Environmental Law,” in “Just Energy Transition: Legal Challenges Associated with Coal Phase Out,” 117 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law Annual Meeting 255–267 (2023; Cambridge University Press, 2024).
“Water-Energy-Food Nexus in International Law: A Legal Analysis,” in Floor Brouwer, ed., Handbook on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus, pp. 381–397 (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022).
“When John Locke Meets Lao Tzu: The Relationship Between Intellectual Property, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Knowledge and the Implications for Food Security,” 33 Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum 77–112 (2024).
“The Anthropocene and Climate Change in the Post-Paris Agreement Debate,” in Anu Valtonen, Outi Rantala, and Paolo Davide Farah, eds., Ethics and Politics of Space for the Anthropocene, pp. 197–210 (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020).
“China’s Water Environmental Management Towards Institutional Integration: A Review of Current Progress and Constraints vis-à-vis the European Experience,” 113 Journal of Cleaner Production 285–298 (2016).
“China’s Energy Policies and Strategies for Climate Change and Energy Security,” 13 Journal of World Energy Law & Business 141–156 (2020).
“A Comparison Between Shale Gas in China and Unconventional Fuel Development in the United States: Water, Environmental Protection, and Sustainable Development,” 41 Brooklyn Journal of International Law 579–654 (2016).
“The Principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities in the International Regime of Climate Change,” in Paolo Davide Farah and Elena Cima, eds., China’s Influence on Non-Trade Concerns in International Economic Law, pp. 146–157 (Routledge, 2016).

European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on European and International Rule of Law Webinar Series – Webinar 3 – From Environmental Law in Context to Comparative Environmental Governance: Justice, Sustainability, and the Rule of Law

Register

About the Webinar

Related Scholarship by Rebecca M. Bratspies

Related Scholarship by Tseming Yang

Related Scholarship by Anastasia Telesetsky

Related Scholarship by Sara K. Phillips

Discussants

Related Scholarship by Mekonnen Firew Ayano

Related Scholarship by Chinonso Tansi Anozie

Chair, moderator, and discussant

Related Scholarship by Paolo Davide Farah