Sara Seck

• Dalhousie University

In 2021, the Research Handbook on Climate Change Law and Loss & Damage was published. Co-edited by myself and my late colleague Meinhard Doelle, the Handbook seeks to clarify the need for legal systems, both within and beyond the climate regime, to evolve so as to fairly and equitably address climate loss and damage claims. The Handbook considers t...

International environmental law-making (IEL) now increasingly highlights the importance of ensuring that women are enabled to play a key role in environmental management and decision-making at all scales, including in relation to the marine environment. This article examines narratives of women in international environmental law, with a focus on th...

Le droit international de l’environnement, souvent présenté comme un droit empreint de jeunesse, a en fait atteint une certaine maturité. Né dans la mouvance de la Conférence des Nations unies sur l’environnement humain qui s’est tenue à Stockholm en juin 1972, il s’est depuis considérablement développé au gré de l’adoption de nombreux accords et i...

This research article provides a law and policy summary of climate change adaptation initiatives in Canada at the ocean-climate nexus. Three levels of governance are examined (national, provincial, and Indigenous) with a focus on the Atlantic region. The research method was the review of relevant and newly amended laws, regulations and policy state...

In this tribute to our friend and colleague, Dr Meinhard Doelle, we bring together three strands of work that we each undertook in collaboration with Meinhard: social cost of carbon, climate change loss and damage, and climate impact assessment. We first introduce social cost of carbon estimates as a form of carbon valuation used in decision-making...

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the world is fac-ing a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss, and pollution and waste, with grave implications for human well-being. While the triple plan-etary crisis affects both marine and terrestrial ecosystems, understanding of human rights in the ocean governance context...

Elisabeth Mann Borgese is often referred to today as the ‘Mother of the Oceans’. She advocated for the inclusion of the principle of common heritage of mankind (CHM) in UNCLOS, and established the International Ocean Institute to enhance interdisciplinary dialogue and training on ocean law. She believed the CHM principle to be of fundamental import...

Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces? introduces forty-two textual and visual portraits of individuals or groups: professors of law, judges, diverse assistants, civil society activists, legal experts, diplomats, wives, librarians, novelists, and philosophers from all continents from the 14th century onwards. The ex...

The Arctic has been home to Indigenous peoples since long before the international legal system of sovereign states came into existence. International law has increasingly recognized the rights of Indigenous peoples, who also have status as Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council. In northern Canada, the majority of those who live in the Arcti...

In this article, we explore what intersectionality, as an analytic tool, can contribute to business and human rights (BHR) scholarship. To date, few BHR scholars have explicitly engaged in intersectional analysis. While gender analysis of BHR issues remains crucial to expose inequality in business activity, we argue that engagement with intersectio...

In line with global trends, there has been an increase in human rights-based climate litigation brought in Canadian courts in recent years. Some litigants invoke human rights as found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to push federal and provincial governments to take seriously the implementation of their climate obligations. Other lit...

The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law offers a comprehensive compendium for the field of transnational law by providing a unique and unparalleled treatment and presentation in an area that has become one of the most intriguing and innovative developments in legal doctrine, scholarship, theory, and practice today. This in itself constitutes an am...

Despite the global endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals, environmental justice struggles are growing all over the world. These struggles are not isolated injustices, but symptoms of interlocking forms of oppression that privilege the few while inflicting misery on the many and threatening ecological collapse. This handbook offers critic...

A coherent theory of climate justice must answer the question of “who owes what to whom, and why?” This paper considers the human rights responsibilities of business enterprises for climate injustice. I first introduce a relational approach to legal analysis, drawing upon the work of diverse theorists who confront the dominant yet unacknowledged pr...

Despite the global endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals, environmental justice struggles are growing all over the world. These struggles are not isolated injustices, but symptoms of interlocking forms of oppression that privilege the few while inflicting misery on the many and threatening ecological collapse. This handbook offers critic...

Despite the presence of guiding legislation such as the United Nations Guiding Principles, respect for human rights is subject to the conscience of organizational actors. Given that some transnational corporations are more powerful than nation states, they play an important role in the economies in which they operate, often with far-reaching impact...

In this article we examine legal perspectives on remedies for harm caused by climate related loss and damage. We start by discussing the meaning of loss and damage, and its relationship to climate mitigation and adaptation. We then consider, at a conceptual level, how those harmed by loss and damage from human-induced climate change may pursue reme...

On associe les exploitations du secteur minier aux injustices environnementales et climatiques, à l’échelle locale et mondiale, allant fréquemment de pair avec des violations des droits fondamentaux des femmes et des filles. Dans le présent article, j’utilise plusieurs approches d’analyse juridique, y compris les travaux portant sur la vulnérabilit...

At present, there is no law in Canada comparable to France’s recently adopted “proposition de loi sur le devoir de vigilance” nor is there currently any proposal for such a law before Canadian legislatures. However, in 2018, the federal government announced the creation of a Corporate Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE), that will invest...

Export credit agencies (ECAs) have gained dominance in the financing of foreign corporate investments in developing and emerging economies, particularly large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects. However, reports have documented numerous allegations of severe adverse human rights impacts associated with ECA-funded projects, including viola...

Cambridge Core - Human Rights - The Future of Business and Human Rights - edited by Jernej Letnar Cernic

INTRODUCTION In March 2014 Amnesty International published Injustice Incorporated: Corporate Abuses and the Human Rights to Remedy. Injustice Incorporated details four case studies described by Amnesty as ‘emblematic’ for the way in which they demonstrate how ‘corporate political and financial power intertwined with specific legal obstacles … allow...

Labour and environmental law operate in silos. This is equally true in the transnational sphere, despite the 2011 endorsement of UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Labour rights as human rights appear easier to grasp than environmental human rights, and the UNGPs specifically highlight the work of the ILO. Due to egregious events s...

This contribution seeks to respond to two questions posed in this volume. First, what role should be played by Indigenous values and legal traditions in treaty implementation? Second, should we look to other forums to implement treaties and resolve treaty disputes? This chapter explores whether explicit embrace of international norms by Indigenous...

The 2014 Climate Justice Report by the International Bar Association (IBA) makes many recommendations designed to contribute to the fight against climate change. One important step forward is its explicit recognition of the responsibility of business to respect human rights affected by climate change. This commentary explores the extent to which th...

This paper will explore the dynamics of home State policies and practices relating to multinational enterprises in the extractive industries. The paper will first outline the Canadian experience, with a view to understanding the potential relationship between home State regulation and international frameworks. The content of the international corpo...

The unprecedented degradation of the planet's vital ecosystems is among the most pressing issues confronting the international community. Despite the proliferation of legal instruments to combat environmental problems, conflicts between rich and poor nations (the North-South divide) have compromised international environmental law, leading to deadl...

This paper will consider whether the polycentric governance approach of the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights has the potential to achieve the goal of transnational corporate compliance with human rights responsibilities including, importantly, the goal of access to remedy and justice for those who have been harmed...

This article examines the challenges of paying for loss caused by climate change. It discusses how weather-related harms might become uninsurable by private companies in the future as the adverse effects of climate change increase in severity. Additionally, this article recognizes the difficulty in imposing civil liability on wrongdoers for climate...

Home state mechanisms designed to address harms arising from overseas resource extraction have recently been considered in Canada. This paper will examine whether such mechanisms could be viewed as an example of transnational private regulatory governance, and the implications of doing so for our understanding of both public international law and t...

Between 2005 and 2011, there was much debate within Canada and at the United Nations over what role home states should play in the regulation and adjudications of human rights harms associated with transnational corporate conduct. In Canada, this debate focused upon concerns associated with global mining, and led to a series of government, oppositi...

The merits of corporate criminal liability as opposed to individual liability for corporate wrong-doing have been frequently debated at the domestic level in many jurisdictions and regulatory contexts. In international human rights law recent debates have focused upon whether corporations can bear direct obligations for violations of international...

The Special Representative to the UN Secretary General on Business and Human Rights (SRSG) has identified the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by non-State actors, including business, as one of the fundamental pillars of the Protect, Respect, Remedy Framework [Framework].1 The Framework ‘rests on differentiated but complementary re...

The state duty to protect human rights from abuses by non-state actors including business is one of the three differentiated but complementary pillars that make up the UN Protect, Respect, Remedy Framework for Business and Human Rights. Yet the jurisdictional scope of the duty to protect is disputed. This chapter explores both the permissibility of...

Home state reluctance to engage in the regulation of international corporate activities in the human rights context is sometimes expressed as a concern that it would constitute an imperialistic infringement of host state sovereignty. This concern may be explicit, or it may be implicit in an expressed desire to avoid conflict with the sovereignty of...

Home states that are actively engaged in global mining have considered and rejected calls to regulate the conduct of transnational mining corporations so as to prevent and remedy human rights and environmental harms. This reluctance to regulate is often expressed as a concern that extraterritorial regulation will conflict with the sovereignty of fo...

Canadian mining companies, stock exchanges, mining professionals, and the Canadian government itself, play a significant role in global mining. This unpublished PhD dissertation, completed in January 2008, explores whether Canada has a legal obligation to regulate to prevent and remedy human rights and environmental harm associated with Canadian mi...

This article addresses the responsibility of Canada for ensuring that Canadian transnational mining corporations do not cause environmental harm in other countries. The author discusses the liability of parent companies under Canadian law for the actions of their subsidiaries abroad and considers the jurisdictional and choice of law problems in bri...

International law divides global ecological issues into different categories of harm depending on the spatial dimensions of the problem. This chapter explores the problem of transnational ecological harm, that is, cases where despite the “activity and physical damage” all occurring within a single host state, there is a clear “transnational involve...