Prerequisite: a background in law
The environment knows no boundaries, while national legal systems do. It is therefore of the utmost importance to develop international law approaches in order to deal with transboundary and global environmental problems. While environmental law originally focused on local problems like smoke and noise, today we are confronted with transboundary and global environmental problems like the continuing loss of biodiversity, long-distance air-pollution, and the threat of climate change. The conservation of important nature, the sound condition of air, water and soil, and the environmental safety of products and economic activities are core concerns.
Law serves as an important instrument to improve and protect the environment. The course International Environmental Law (IEL) discusses the role of international law – and the emerging body of global environmental law – in order to protect the environment. It takes a fundamental approach which means that we will examine environmental law from the perspective of principles, environmental rights, and the choice and design of regulatory instruments. Both strengths and, unfortunately, weaknesses will be discussed. As far as international law falling short, the importance of national approaches and private initiatives will be addressed. Some specific attention will go to the European Union as a regional international organisation addressing, inter alia, environmental problems. The world-wide problem of climate change serves as the leading case of this course.
This module examines both the impact of climate change on cultural expression, and of cultural texts on our attitudes towards the environment. To facilitate these two perspectives, the module intersperses weeks on contemporary climate fiction (cli-fi) with weeks on other, broader texts, from ancient to modern: theatre, visual art, music and cinema. The module will equip students with an ecocritical vocabulary and the facility and opportunity to employ that vocabulary across a range of media and forms.
