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"Preface" [2017] ELECD 1019; in Hutter, M. Bridget (ed), "Risk, Resilience, Inequality and Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) x

Book Title: Risk, Resilience, Inequality and Environmental Law

Editor(s): Hutter, M. Bridget

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781785363795

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 3

Extract:

Preface
Environmental changes have generated some of the most pressing and dif-
ficult challenges of the 21st century. There has been a growing appreciation
of their scale and interconnectedness and the ways in which they are the
result of human activities. Environmental law used to represent one of the
most important regulatory regimes in modern societies, but there are now
questions about its ability to manage transnational risks and about the
compatibility of law with major strategies for managing the environment.
In this collection we focus on two important approaches: one which con-
siders environmental challenges in terms of risks and another which has
arisen as we have become increasingly aware of the levels of uncertainty
involved in environmental management, namely resilience.
The relationship between resilience and inequality is central to this col-
lection. Resilience approaches to environmental challenges appear to be
more democratic and egalitarian than risk approaches, and this forms part
of their attraction for some authors and policy-makers. The collection will
subject these claims to some scrutiny. Resilience strategies may offer solu-
tions to inequality but they are not without their difficulties, for example
they too have uneven social effects. Moreover, there may be tensions
between the law and its expectations of certainty, and resilience with its
emphasis upon flexible responses to environmental risks and uncertainties.
This collection will address the role of law within this changing land-
scape and from a socio-legal perspective. The social, economic and politi-
cal environments we live in are ...