Volume 22
Nate Palmer
Biocultural Rights in the Biodiversity Regime: Relationality and the Limits of Instrumentalism
The biodiversity regime has attempted to navigate conflicting
conceptualisations of human–nature relations, straddling instrumental,
intrinsic and relational valuations of Nature. Yet, from the inception of the
Convention on Biological Diversity, instrumental value has been given
primacy, shaping not only the goals of the regime but also the tools it uses
for implementation. Against this backdrop, this article traces the doctrinal
emergence of biocultural rights within the Convention on Biological Diversity’s
traditional knowledge architecture, focusing on Article 8(j) and the ‘family’
of related decisions as governance conditions. The article then examines the
regime’s instrumentalist hegemonic valuation of Nature in practice. Access
and Benefit Sharing act as one of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s main
goals, while translating biodiversity governance into transactions organised
around access, consent and benefit flows. Ecosystem services underpin
the science–policy interface of the regime, and turn entire ecosystems
into market mechanisms while rendering biodiversity governable through
measurements and indicators. The result is a pattern in which relational
commitments are repeatedly acknowledged while being filtered through
economic and technocratic logics, risking performative pluralism. Finally,
reading the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as a critical
moment, the article argues that its implementation considerations must
operate as a cross-cutting constraint on targets, indicators and finance,
and that community protocols and mutually agreed terms can function as
interfaces for legal and value pluralism. The key point is that resolving the
regime’s tensions is less about choosing between diverse value systems,
and more about clarifying how these value systems are meant to interact in
practice.
Muhamad Muhdar et al.
Indonesian Coal Mining Governance: Distribution of Risk and Environmental Injustice on Small Islands
Coal mining activities on small islands, undertaken to increase national
production, have caused significant environmental degradation and infringed
upon civil rights to a healthy environment. These activities distribute the risks
associated with mining waste to both local communities and ecosystems.
Sludge and waste contaminate agricultural areas, thereby compromising
food security, while direct discharge into coastal and marine environments
disrupts fish farming and fishing grounds. Targeting small islands for coal
mining not only contravenes the principle of legal certainty regarding the
prohibition of mining on small islands but also perpetuates environmental
injustice. The licensing system, intended as a regulatory safeguard, fails to
adequately protect vulnerable communities and small islands. Inadequate
licensing procedures, tolerance of regulatory violations, and weak law
enforcement contribute to persistent patterns of injustice.
Pag-yendu M. Yentcharé
Patentability of Traditional Medicinal Knowledge from Below: An Account of the Batwa Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives
This article contributes to ongoing debates on the legal protection of
traditional knowledge (TK) by examining how Batwa Indigenous Peoples in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) assess patents as potential tools for protecting traditional medicinal knowledge (TMK). Drawing on a qualitative study, this article investigates how Batwa peoples – after a community discussion on legal options for protecting TMK – expressed a preference for individual or collective patent ownership over other mechanisms such as benefit-sharing or a sui generis intellectual property system. The findings reveal sustained interest in patents as potential sources of recognition, dignity, and economic autonomy, thereby complicating dominant assumptions regarding their inadequacy for protecting TMK. By foregrounding the Batwas’ own perspectives in a field often dominated by valuable, if sometimes prescriptive, expert opinion, this sociolegal study argues for a more nuanced and empirically grounded debate on the legitimacy, desirability, and efficiency of l egal mechanisms for protecting TK.
Tran Nguyen Phuoc Thong
Public Governance and Sustainable Urban Development under Vietnamese Law on Environmental Protection: Perspective of Cross Ownership Structures
Administrative management approached through the logic of cross ownership is not a familiar category within classical administrative theory, yet it opens an interdisciplinary perspective that is well suited to the context of contemporary public governance in Viet Nam. In economics and finance, cross ownership reflects the mutual holding of interests and controlling rights
among actors in order to create strategic networks and disperse risk. In the field of state administration, particularly environmental governance under the Vietnamese Law on Environmental Protection of 2020, this logic can be transformed into a mechanism of shared and mutually binding responsibility among public authorities. Instead of each agency operating solely within a closed sphere of competence, this model presupposes an interweaving of legal obligations, information flows, and supervisory powers among actors such as environmental authorities, local governments, and specialised inspectorates. Within the environmental legal framework, this approach allows decisions on licensing, environmental impact assessment, and pollution control to be embedded in a network of reciprocal accountability, thereby limiting the evasion of obligations, strengthening transparency, and
enhancing the effectiveness of environmental protection in the process of economic development and urbanisation.
Comments
Aligning Ghana’s Carbon Credit Regulation with International Climate Commitments: Legal Gaps and Institutional Imperatives
By Patrick Atiawin Akeba* and Al-Amin Sharrif Abubakar
Ghana’s Environmental Protection Act 2025 (Act 1124) establishes the
first statutory framework for carbon market participation in the country’s history. This comment argues that the Act creates a formally adequate but structurally incomplete regime: it builds an international trading architecture on top of an unresolved property rights question generated by Ghana’s pluralist land tenure system. Approximately eighty per cent of Ghana’s land is held under customary tenure by stools and skins, yet the Act defers the definition of carbon rights and ownership to future regulations. This deferral is not a technical gap alone; it reflects a fundamental tension between the Article 6 market logic, which presupposes clear, state-authorised, tradeable entitlements, and the customary legal order in which land and resource rights are communally held and fiduciarily administered. Drawing on doctrinal analysis of Act 1124 and Ghana’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (2021), this comment contends that durable carbon market governance in Ghana requires not merely supplementary regulations but a coherent mediation of two normative orders. Legal pluralism provides the analytical lens for this diagnosis and for the reform framework the article proposes.
Book Reviews
Research Handbook on Plastics Regulation: Law, Policy and the Environment
Edited by Elizabeth A. Kirk et al.
Reviewed by Eva Lohse
