Article impact statement: Questions regarding freshwater ecosystem conservation, role of social structure in human-environment interactions, and impacts of conservation need more attention. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.[3] AbstractIn 2008, a group of conservation scientists compiled a list of 100 priority questions for the conservation of the world's biodiversity [Sutherland et al. (2009) Conservation Biology, 23, 557-567]. However, now almost a decade later, no one has yet published a study gauging how much progress has been made in addressing these 100 high-priority questions in the peer-reviewed literature. Here we take a first step toward re-examining the 100 questions and identify key knowledge gaps that still remain. Through a combination of a questionnaire and a literature review, we evaluated each of the 100 questions on the basis of two criteria: relevance and effort. We defined highly-relevant questions as those which -if answered -would have the greatest impact on global biodiversity conservation, while effort was quantified based on the number of review publications addressing a particular question, which we used as a proxy for research effort. Using this approach we identified a set of questions that, despite being perceived as highly relevant, have been the focus of relatively few review publications over the past ten years. These questions covered a broad range of topics but predominantly tackled three major themes: the conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems, the role of societal structures in shaping interactions between people and the environment, and the impacts of conservation interventions. We see these questions as important knowledge gaps that have so far received insufficient attention and may need to be prioritised in future research. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.[4]

This chapter uses the example of the tree as a ‘natural object’ to reflect on how the categories of object and subject of international law are ill-suited to protect living entities. The image of authority that the tree projects in peoples’ imaginations has not translated into an international regulatory regime protecting the tree from over-exploitation, or, in other words, from becoming a lifeless object. Fragmented and disconnected international regimes regulate certain aspects of the tree but fail to capture the tree’s complexity in full. International environmental law often loses sight of the tree per se and focuses on derivative objects which represent a smaller part of the tree (such as timber) or a bigger ensemble (such as a forest). Overall, the chapter reveals how the natural object, by falling between the categories of object and subject, challenges the core constructs of international law, and in particular its theory of subjects.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Although the climate crisis is the result of a failure to prevent environmental harm, the principle of prevention has thus far remained discrete in domestic climate litigation.Similarly, in the context of international climate adjudication, reliance on the prevention principle could seem limited by two main obstacles: its anchor in bilateralism and its normative indeterminacy. This article argues that, on the contrary, the prevention principle could serve important functions in international climate adjudication. First, it shows that climate change falls within the reach of the prevention principle, which aims to protect the environment per se as a community interest. Then it explores two argumentative scenarios that are based on different constructions of the prevention principle, conceived either as a customary duty or as a general principle of international law. In both cases, recourse to the prevention principle can offer numerous advantages, which vary depending on the objectives strategically pursued.