Article

Arguing Global Environmental Constitutionalism

Louis J. Kotzé^a1

^a1 Faculty of Law, North West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. Email: Louis.kotze@nwu.ac.za.

Abstract

The current global environmental law and governance regime has been designed primarily to attend to the worsening ecological crisis. Evidence, however, suggests that the regime is far from achieving its goal and it is failing in its efforts to solve what people perceive to be pervasive global environmental problems. There is little doubt that this regime is in need of urgent reforms and/or re-situation in a decidedly different paradigm. This article proposes that global constitutionalism, while no panacea, could contribute to these paradigm-shifting reforms by providing a new perspective through which to view the current deficient global environmental law and governance regime and, in real terms, ameliorating some of the deficiencies of the regime through a normative process of constitutionalization.

(Online publication March 13 2012)

Keywords

• Global Environmental Law and Governance;
• Sustainability;
• Globalization;
• Global Environmental Constitutionalism

Footnotes

This research was made possible through the financial assistance of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. Research for the article was conducted at the Max Planck Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, Heidelberg, Germany. The author wishes to thank the Humboldt Stiftung and the Max Planck Institut for their generous support. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers and particularly to Anna Grear, Benjamin Richardson, Jonathan Verschuuren, and Francois Venter for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. All views expressed herein and all errors remain those of the author.