Part II Analytical Tools and Perspectives, Ch.12 Critical Approaches

‘Critical approaches’ relevant to international environmental law do not lend themselves to easy identification. A critical approach in a broad sense might be seen as any approach that challenges the fundamental assumptions of the discipline: the state-based international order, anthropocentrism and/or utilitarianism as the basis for relationships between humans and the natural world, and the standard definition of progress in terms of the current state of Northern industrial development, among others. These assumptions, of course, run through not only mainstream...