Interview Transcript
Transcribed by Otter AI
Kimberly White
Hello and welcome to Common Home Conversations. Today we are joined by Klaus Bosselmann, Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law at the University of Auckland. Thank you for joining us today!
Klaus Bosselmann
Thank you.
Kimberly White
So you’ve been the Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law since it began in 1999. Could you tell us more about NZCEL and your work there?
Klaus Bosselmann
Yes, the New Zealand Center for Environmental Law has its working model, working for sustainability. It’s an interdisciplinary Institute involving scientists, political scientists, sociologists, lawyers, all united in the pursuit of making sustainability a reality in the legal system. And what that means, of course, first of all, sustainability needs to be clearly defined. And that has shaped my work in the 1990s, as somebody who has joined the Rio Earth Summit where sustainable development was first negotiated. And in essence, what we do at the NZCEL is, we are finding practical ways how to implement sustainability at the various levels of law, domestically, internationally, and so forth. And we have done it, I think, quite successfully. So, let’s just give you an example regarding New Zealand. New Zealand was the first country back in 1991 to incorporate the concept of sustainability into its leading environmental law called the Resource Management Act. And what it means there is that rephrasing someone, the purpose of this description of this act is to allow any sorts of activities within society and within an economic system, as long as the fundamental integrity of ecological systems are not affected. And this is a nice capture of what sustainability really means. It means the duty of states to protect and preserve the integrity of earth ecological systems. That was for the first time incorporated into the Rio Declaration, 1992. And so ever since we have been working on this, and we have done this, once internationally in the form of being a founding research center, that formed the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, which is really the global umbrella organization for all environmental law scholars and environmental law research centers. So that has been a very gratifying experience. We’re working obviously, with research centers around the world, all in pursuit of basically transforming our current system of rather fragmented environment law. So that’s what we are doing.
Kimberly White
That’s really interesting. And New Zealand has been at the forefront,
leading globally with climate law and what you guys are doing, that’s fantastic. You’re the Co-Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Common Home of Humanity. Now, one of the main innovations that CHH has brought for public and academic discussion was conceptualizing one global common without borders, the earth system. As a professor and expert in international environmental law, how do you see the concrete legal solution that goes beyond the soft law declarations?
Klaus Bosselmann
Yeah, the notion of a global common without borders is a real challenge to the existing system of international law. We are more familiar with global commons in plural, acknowledging areas outside national jurisdictions such as oceans, Antarctica, the atmosphere. The notion of global commons harbors a certain duty, a degree of moral duty in terms of stewardship or guardianship. It has further been expressed in the notion of common heritage of humankind, which acknowledges a shared responsibility for areas that are subject to common heritage. So there is a certain familiarity with the notion of global commons. And as such, it can be incrementally implemented in international law. Now, when it comes to singular, global common without borders, this is the real challenge. And, of course, it’s a reflection of earth as a whole and a physical reality, a spiritual reality, and yet, the law has largely been ignorant of this phenomenon called earth or mother earth. The closest thing that lawyers tend to accept as a description of reality can probably be described as the earth condominium, right? The idea that sovereign states, they own little apartments in a huge condominium that they all share just a situation that we have you rent an apartment, or you even own an apartment. But you also have to take care of the overall house that, you know, your apartment only forms part off. And this image tells us that by virtue of being interested in protecting your own apartment dash country, you need to have followed the logic of wanting also a healthy apartment next door. And furthermore, the functioning of the entire building that your apartment sits in. So this stipulates the need or sort of articulates very nicely what states by virtue of being part in this complex system called planet earth are up to and what their responsibilities really are, they need to go past responsibilities that you have as neighbors, right sort of one state to the others, we need to have common responsibilities for the global common is this notion is, is articulating this. So this is the new challenge, and of course, has been expressed in some ways, some way or other, not necessarily in soft law declarations per se, but in a number of international documents. And of course, the discussion continues, and it is very exciting to see some developments in that area.
Kimberly White
Absolutely. So what exactly does this mean in terms of the history of international law?
Klaus Bosselmann
Yes, this is the heart of the matter is that international law is, of course, a legal construct, defining the relationships between sovereign states. So the assumption is that somehow the 189 or so current existing sovereign states can sort out all matters through this vehicle called, quote, international law. And this means they’re using a notion of state sovereignty that has a certain history. In fact, it was created under the Westphalian peace treaty from 1648 and served the main purpose that states in Europe at the time ought to recognize each other’s sovereignty in order to respect each other so that the citizens of one given country can be protected by their own government without fearing the threat of being attacked by people from a neighboring country. So historically, the concept of state sovereignty was all meant to provide a certain peace order, and that’s all very well, even though, as you all know, hasn’t very well functioned in practice, but nevertheless, the principle of state sovereignty has its absolute legitimacy. However, what do you do in a situation when these sovereign states discover a problem that cannot be dealt with with a pure notion of a sovereign state? This is a phenomenon that we all share the natural environment. The environment does not know any national boundaries. And in fact, we are talking about one global environment or the earth system. And this is what the idea of state sovereignty is not geared for is not invented for. We today speak of the sovereignty paradox, and this describes a situation that we are finding ourselves with a legal construct that is largely outdated because it does not inherently cater for shared responsibilities and, you know, enforceable responsibility of a sovereign state towards the global environment, yet, the well-being of each state and their citizens of course, it utterly depends on the so-called functioning of ecological systems, including climate change. So this kind of dichotomy between a rather restrictive and absolute concept of sovereign state, which does not know an inherent duty to protect the global environment on the one hand side, and the physical reality of a shared earth is that the crux of the matter and needs to be addressed, and it can be addressed in many ways. But this is, if you like the historical legacy that we are dealing with, the history of international law was mostly shaped by concerns for security and maintaining peace. But in more recent times, over the last 70 or so years, of course, we have this phenomenon of international human rights. And ever since there’s an increased argument, of course, politically, but just as well, legally, that to say that a sovereign state does not have any kind of jurisdiction over limiting universal human rights and human rights principles. So this would be an example where we can today meaningfully say that any state can pretty much do what they like, except for in any way threatening the fundamental entitlements of human beings, namely, to be protected and their freedom and well being and so forth. So this seems to be the essence of today’s understanding of international jurisprudence. And the challenge for the earth as a whole is to expand this understanding a little bit by saying we also need to realize that the well being of human beings depends on the protection of the natural environment. So, in addition to human rights concerns, we need to have concerns towards the protection of the natural environment expressed in the context of the sovereign state. So this is jurisprudence. But I hope you can sort of follow the argument that we are beginning to realize, and one has to be, you know, very cautious here because there’s always politics in the way. But we can sort of certainly see the trend in international law that goes increasingly towards protecting two fundamental interests of human beings, one’s expressed in the concept of human rights and human dignity, and the other expressed in our dependence on the natural world in our need to be protected and our desire to flourish in our lives, protected from environmental pollution and degradation. So there’s a lot of traction for this kind of reasoning in the legal literature. The gap is stood between what we can learn in law schools and legal scholarship, on the one hand side, and then in translating this kind of knowledge are these ideas to governmental level and finding enough resonance there. This is, of course, the real challenge, because politics certainly right now, is not ready for it. We’re in the pandemic times, we see pretty much the opposite effect, that states are increasingly operating on their own national terms rather than cooperating. And yet, of course, the pandemic would be the perfect example of why we are failing. We are failing largely; we’re suffering literally, under the current pandemic situation, because of a lack of cooperation and lack of understanding of how fundamental it is that states take responsibility for the, in this instance, protection of wilderness, of wildlife. This is sort of not a directly related matter, but it has to do with the kind of legacy of international law that we are talking about here.
Kimberly White
And with COVID-19, we really see that the pandemic did not respect borders. And I think for those people who may not have realized, climate change is truly a global issue, not just happening in some far off land. It is impacting everybody. COVID has been a way for people to maybe start to get to that realization.
Klaus Bosselmann
Yes, I can’t agree more. It is rather peculiar, isn’t it, that, for some reason, states tend to act rather quickly with all the money thrown in when it comes to the perception of oh, our human health is directly affected, people are dying, and so forth. But that kind of urgency that’s found here and rightly so is not being easily enough translated to the urgency of climate change, where you have the same phenomenon. People are already dying in many parts of the world, and it only gets worse. And the excuse you’re hearing from governments, right is climate change is too complex, and who knows what’s really happening and so forth, are no longer excused, that’s just the politics, the science is absolutely clear and is somewhat really astonishing, that we do not see the same urgency yet, I should say, with respect to climate change, as we have been seeing with respect to the COVID over the last eight months or so.
Kimberly White
Eight months, it’s hard to believe it’s been almost this entire year. Our health is tied in with our environment. So I’m hopeful that with these talks of the green recovery plans, we’re going to start to move the needle a little bit more. I guess we will have to wait and see. Although we really don’t have time to wait and see, we need action now. Do you think that we need a conceptual evolution of law to enhance its capacity to explain and represent our highly interconnected and interdependent earth system? And what could be the implications of such a conceptual evolution?
Klaus Bosselmann
Yeah, it is an intriguing notion, the conceptual evolution of law, and that certainly is what’s required. I translate this notion to transformation of law, which describes a similar phenomenon, and here’s how it goes. I am rather optimistic here, but then again, being a legal scholar, you do not have the troubles with making it happen in the reality of politics. And yet, of course, we need to be realistic in what can be achieved and how to achieve it. So what lawyers tend to try is having a clear understanding of what the law can do, and equally a clear understanding of how we get there. And there are certain steps to be followed. Now with your question relating to the earth system, how we can sort of increasingly adopt the consideration of common concern of humankind, or, you know, or similar ideas, common heritage of humanity with respect to the earth, there are certain things that are fundamental here. One is what we call soft law. This is just a production of agreements among states, where they declare certain commonalities and shared responsibilities. The famous example would be the Rio declaration, from 1992, on the Environment and Development. And I just give you an example here, principle seven of the Rio declaration talks about the obligations of states to cooperate, in order to protect the integrity of earth ecological system, that we have the acknowledgement of the earth system already in 1992. And not only that, it’s defined as a duty, a duty of care, and, arguably, a legal obligation of all states to take this duty seriously, meaning, legally enforceable. So this is a soft law notion repeated in some 25 international agreements all the time, you have the reminder of the drafters, and again, the drafters were states, right representatives of countries, to say that states have a responsibility to protect the integrity of earth’s ecological systems. That next step, in order to make it more real, would be to what we call hard law, having a convention or an internationally binding treaty that particularly articulates these notions. We do not have such a treaty as yet. There is a development towards the Global Pact for the Environment, which potentially could have this acknowledgment of a fundamental obligation of states, but not in the current text, but this is sort of a work under construction, so to speak. So this is your instrument of a future convention that might be having this function. But then there is another level that is, in many ways, even more, important than, you know, treaty law. And that is the level of fundamental norms, and we are all familiar today about the universal acceptance and importance of human rights, by and large, a shared responsibility, at least as a legal responsibility, and we could expand this to mean also an overarching obligation to protect the physical conditions under which human beings are only able to live and thereby having reference to the environment. Now, these things to do with so-called general principles of international law; human rights is seen, as you know, as one of those general principles that exist regardless of any specific treaties that states may have or not have signed. So, this is the underpinning concept of sources of international law, and one very important one would be such a general principle or overall objective or a grundnorm. A grundnorm is an understanding that certain issues have such fundamental importance that they are taken for granted, they do not have to be specifically spelled out in a treaty, and the example here would be again, human rights, right that they are having certain grundnorm character. So that has to do with the general understanding in international law, what, what states are asked to follow soft law, hard law in general principles and grundnorms. And then, more practically, what’s required here, under the notion of, you know, conceptual evolution of law, it needs to make a real difference. And it would only make a real difference if we have specific institutions that take our obligations towards the natural environment, at heart, so-called trusteeship institutions.
The conceptual evolution of law is certainly not an effort that we can hope for to be done within the next five or ten years. Evolution, of course, takes its own time, and who knows how long it might take. But it seems to me; it is quite clear that the idea of an earth system will sink in, right? It shapes the minds and imagination of lawyers in this instance. We really, what are we doing in quite practical terms, and what I’m working with as my students, lawyers are normally trained from a state-centered perspective, right? They just have an understanding of what can be done with your local government or central government and what can be done taking over this kind of perspective from an existing state. And that needs to be shifted to an earth-centered perspective and then becomes quite clear what our challenges are. Again, it is a gradual step. But there’s also a transformational evolution involved if we increasingly adopt an earth-centered concept of understanding of our responsibilities in the design of law. So this will be my sort of rather lengthy take of what I think the conceptual evolution of law could mean.
Kimberly White
A stable climate is a manifestation of a well functioning earth system. However, climate is currently considered a common concern of humankind. Is this the moment to reopen the discussion around the legal status of the climate Earth system and recover the 1988 Malta proposal to apply the legal regime of common heritage to a stable climate Earth system as a single whole?
Klaus Bosselmann
Yeah, that’s a good question. Really, I’m grateful because the 1988 Malta proposal was pretty much the time when I started to get involved in climate change law, at the time as a member of the German negotiation team, towards the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And I remember very well, that was the initiative of the smaller country of Malta, that called for a concept to describe climate change. And at the time, there was, of course, these two fundamental ideas to relate to climate change as a common concern of humankind, in the other proposal, traditionally strongly advocated by Malta and other states as well, to consider climate change or climate, a common heritage of humankind. Now, the difference between those tools is still controversial. At the time, the common concern notion was celebrated as being more stringent, you know, if you’re concerned about anything, or something, then you’re committed to certain actions. So this is behind the notion of common concern. And those advocates of common concern were dismissing the notion of common heritage as not being so stringent. And I would argue the other way around, because historically, and might I again, is a good example, because that’s where the scholarship over centuries, I should add thanks to Catholicism into the theology of, of several centuries to fundamentally consider the earth as a heritage meaning, we have in Christian terminology, you know, earth has been given to us human beings, so we can enjoy it, but not in any way destroyed, because we have a fundamental obligation to pass it on to future generations as is the notion of heritage. So automatically, the enjoyment of nature or the, you know, the enjoyment of air in this instance, right, it comes with the obligation to provide for effective protection of the atmosphere. So I think there is, in fact, a need for being more clear about the notion of common heritage as a concept to describe the climate of a stable climate, and by association, a stable earth system. So the common heritage model is popular, not only in the literature but also expressed in international law. Even though in a very rudimentary form, it was, again, the ambassador of Malta, Arvid Pardo, who gave a famous address to the United Nations General Assembly back in 1967, I believe it was, where he advocated the recognition of all the oceans, the high seas to be a common heritage of mankind, as the terminology was, at the time. Vehemently, arguing along those lines that you and I are interested in, namely, that we need to take good care of the earth as a whole. In this instance, the oceans, Arvid Pardo was regarded as the father of the oceans, and the mother of the oceans was a German scholar, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, who was equally an advocate of common heritage principles with respect to the oceans. So that’s how it found its entry into international decision making. And we eventually ended up with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the seas, which does not acknowledge the high seas as a common heritage, but the sea bed or ocean floor is in fact acknowledged as a common heritage, which is not enough obviously, to address the complexities of climate change and so forth. But it’s a very good example of what’s meant, at least historically meant, by having a reference to common heritage or intangible heritage with respect to the earth system. It fundamentally means in law that in order to benefit from this heritage, we need to have effective protection mechanisms. The reason is that, of course, these areas we are talking about whether it’s oceans, the atmosphere, climate, right, or the earth system as a whole, does not belong to anyone, is not subject to any property cannot be, by definition, it is freely accessible to all of us. But it has the question of who’s in charge of protecting it? The answer is we all are expressed in the notion of common heritage. So I would think, you know, with respect to the effective climate regime, which we desperately need, we can’t rely on the Paris Agreement and ongoing negotiations, there needs to be a far more fundamental understanding that the atmosphere as a whole requires a legal status and the legal status would indeed be the common heritage notion rather than the common concern notion, which I think is too weak and has certainly not done anything. Essentially, it only means, you know, common concern only means yes, we are concerned, but how concerned we are, and what we need to do about it, it’s up to us, it’s up to the sovereign state. Common heritage law is much stronger than that. But again, like everything in politics and law, it’s not so much the labels we put on things but what we really associate with it. I would suggest there’s a strong philosophical and legal support for the notion of the intangible common heritage as one of the most forceful ideas that require what I call trusteeship responsibilities of everybody who’s associated with it. So let’s just hope that you know, the climate debate, especially in the pandemic, and post-pandemic time, will increasingly focus on the subject matter, the atmosphere or the climate as a whole and not, you know, Paris Agreement and not kind of, you know, negotiations that are ongoing, we need to have a far more fundamental understanding that we have a shared responsibility for the atmosphere expressed best your question in the context of a common heritage.
Kimberly White
Absolutely. Can the innovation of recognizing the existence of one intangible global common be the base for a new global governance regime of planetary stewardship?
Klaus Bosselmann
Yeah, so this raises the issue of legal status or institutionalization of care for the environment. Now, I would suggest that the global common as a base for global commons would lead us through a regime of earth trusteeship, which is a little bit more than just a different name to planetary stewardship. I would think that planetary stewardship rightly addresses the morality of the situation, like we need to organize our societies and our lives as human beings within the boundaries within the planetary boundaries. But in order to have a stronger sense of what it means, you know, to live within the boundaries that the planet gives us.
Yes, we need to have a stewardship or guardianship understanding of our responsibilities, which basically is the situation if you like, like, you know, parents look after their children, right, they’re minors if you are younger than 18. Parents have a guardian role in legal terms. However, I would suggest the notion of trusteeship is stronger than both stewardship and guardianship. Mainly because the concept of trusteeship is one of the oldest legal concept we know from Roman law times in order to express in civil law, countries and the continent of Europe and common law in England to mean basically, that trusteeship is a form of government where a person institution acts on behalf of others who cannot act themselves for all sorts of practical reasons. And under this notion, the right to only to act on behalf of others but in the best interests of others, again, a parents-children relationship comes to mind. But it goes far deeper. There was an understanding in German legal context, for example, that you have responsibilities towards future generations expressed as trusteeship duties. You have to have the best interests of future generations in mind in whatever you do today. And in more recent times, trusteeship governance, as I said earlier, has been introduced into international law in the context of the trusteeship council and attempts of sovereign states to take good care of those people who are not governed by sovereign states, and this taking good care is expressed as a trusteeship responsibility acting on behalf and in the best interest of another entity or other people. So the notion of earth trusteeship is closely associated, in my opinion, with the notion of intangible global common or earth system governance. It’s a logical institutionalization of our responsibility towards the earth system. And it can be done in practical terms, right? The trusteeship responsibility is expressed at the United Nations levels with new institutions. And I mentioned earlier the possibility of the UN Earth Trusteeship Council. But equally, it could be expressed at national levels, either expressed in a constitution, where it’s then clear that the state would have a legally enforceable trusteeship responsibility towards the natural environment so that citizens can actually take their government to court if they’re not discharging of these duties appropriately or in other countries, such as New Zealand that do not have the same constitutional understanding, they do not have a written constitution that’s per se, supreme law. New Zealand isn’t a sort of common law country like the UK and others. We do not have a written constitution per se, but we do have interesting developments in law such as the Whanganui River trusteeship model that I explained earlier. In this way, New Zealand would be in the position to commit to the legally enforceable trusteeship governance. So that’s my take of planetary stewardship. Simply, in my terminology, and not just me, there is an earth trusteeship initiative. This is a group of more than 100 human rights and environmental organizations we have been working towards a new declaration. That’s called a declaration of, well, the full name of this document that we have drafted during the period between 2016 and 2018, The Principles for a Universal Declaration of Responsibilities for Human Rights and Earth Trusteeship, it’s a bit of a mouthful, but it was meant to be a historical advancement from the famous Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, which had its 70th anniversary on the 10th of December in 2018. And on that particular day, we adopted, and that’s the Earth Trusteeship Initiative adopted the Hague principles in the Peace Palace in The Hague. We’re also the Earth Charter, I should add, as Earth Charter was very much behind the idea of the Hague principles. The Earth Charter was adopted in the Peace Palace in The Hague in the year 2000 and has greatly influenced our thinking about, you know, responsibilities for the earth. So I need to mention the earth charter here and the context not only because I think it is a very fundamental document, probably the best document we have today because it is crafted by non-governmental organizations, by civil society organizations over a period of eight years between 1992 and 2000. The Earth Charter came about and personally closely associated with it, and out of the Earth Charter thinking came eventually the idea of, you know how can we articulate our responsibilities for the earth in a more sort of stringent way. So the idea of earth trusteeship came out of it all in parallel to the other very exciting development, namely earth system science. Today, we talk meaningfully about an earth system as a whole, which, 20 to 25 years ago, hardly anybody would have heard of. Of course, they are very close developments earth system, earth system science, earth system approach, earth charter, earth trusteeship, as always, the earth is at the focal point of it all. So to me that the notion of, you know, the global common as a base of new global governance and planetary stewardship has really a lot of legal meaning, and I’m very hopeful that we can articulate this very clearly. I wouldn’t visit in the first place in the context of the Global Pact for the Environment that’s currently being looked at at the UN level, even though not much progress has been made. But an opportunity would be the Stockholm plus 50 summit in July 2022. And hopefully, we as civil society, with the support of maybe some states, will be able to provide some really strong text calling for the recognition of the earth system as an intangible common heritage of humankind. And associated with it, the idea or the need to, you know, provide for legal and institutional means to actually protect the earth system as a whole.
So there are interesting times ahead. And I personally, rather optimistically, would say that the pandemic has been such an inspiration to many people around the world, knowing that we need to do things far better. In fact, in a far more stringent and overarching way, as we have done it in the past. In the past, states have operated in a rather fragmented and uncoordinated coordinated way. But the pandemic has been such a defining experience where we can see how we are mutually dependent on the same things caused by a ridiculous small virus. And all of a sudden, we see the entire word sort of dancing to the tune of the virus. So that’s something somehow and sings in what we are doing to ourselves and how we react to it. And furthermore, seeing that the incredible need of taking science seriously, and acting in accordance with, you know, the laws of nature, we really need to be mindful here, then I would be rather optimistic when it comes to, you know, a meaningful global governance model that protects the earth as a whole. And not just the climate, by the way, climate is much talked about, but of course, is intrinsically connected with the oceans and biodiversity, you cant meaningfully separate these things, and that’s where the strength of earth system thinking comes, comes in. So in the long run, I think this is, you know, this is the way where we will be going. The only question is, of course, whether it will be too late or not, but the kind of framing of Earth System Science and system governments that has a great future.
Kimberly White
And I think, you know, just as you said with the pandemic, it’s been terrible. But I think in a way, it’s really almost brought us together in this way of, we need to take what we’ve learned, and we need to build back better. And I’m hopeful that we can gather that political will quickly enough to avoid issues like this in the future. I saw a recent report stating there are a lot more viruses similar or even more severe than COVID, and if we keep going the way we’re going, it’s not a pretty picture.
Klaus Bosselmann
Yeah.
I mean, in recent months, we had so many meetings around the world about this phenomenon. And it seems to me so obvious, is almost a symbol, right that we have blurred the boundary between wildlife and human settlements. And what previously was seen as oops, you know, something we shouldn’t do, and maybe there is some value in having untouched nature and not straining everything. We are talking, of course, the wildlife trading, a huge exploitation of wildlife; it’s a multibillion industry and all the rest of it. And all of a sudden, we are realizing what has gone wrong. We have overstepped the incredibly important boundaries between natural spheres and humans spheres rather than, you know, blending in into natural spheres. Humans have expanded their own spheres all the time, and, of course, greatly accelerated by the mobility that we are having the spread of the pandemic, just, you know, everything was foreseeable, and, of course, has been predicted by so many experts. But there you are. I’d like to see a positive in all this; it could be the great unifier, could really be leading to a situation where this notion of common responsibility, shared responsibility, global governance really makes sense. So this, I mean, it’s too early to tell. Obviously, we are in the middle of the pandemic, and it probably gets worse before it gets better. But if there’s anything to learn, it would have to do with making the notion of cooperation and global governance and mutual trust and so forth utterly, utterly important. Let’s hope that governments will learn this. So I think the pandemic will have a great effect on being far more responsible in the way how we govern ourselves.
Kimberly White
All right, and there you have it. We currently find ourselves with an outdated legal construct that does not cater to the shared enforceable responsibilities of a sovereign state towards our global environment, even though the functioning of these ecological systems is vital to our survival and how recognition of the earth system as an intangible common heritage of humankind can provide the legal and institutional means to protect the earth system as a whole. It’s time to take science seriously and act in accordance with the laws of nature. That is all for today, and thank you for joining us for this episode of Common Home Conversations Beyond UN75. Please subscribe, share, and be sure to tune in on December 30th to continue the conversation with our special guest, Ana Barreira, lawyer and Director and founding member of the International Institute for Law and the Environment (IIDMA). And visit us at www.ThePlanetaryPress.com for more episodes and the latest news in sustainability, climate change, and the environment.
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