2013/06/14 by Paul Havemann · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Environmental law and policy
paper · doi:10.1093/jel/eqt008
openalex publication_date 2013/06/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This weighty, ambitious book (590 pages, 24 chapters) attempts to cover the substantial topic of indigenous peoples’ legal remedies in the context of climate change. It does so with varying degrees of success. Most topics and authors are well chosen but the book is rather crudely structured. It is divided into two parts: Part I (6 chapters) and Part II Global Perspectives (18 chapters). Part I deals with introductory aspects and principles. Chapter 1 introduces commonalties of impact on indigenous communities extremely comprehensively as well as insightfully. Chapter 5 provides a thorough analysis of the nexus between cultural sovereignty and traditional ecological knowledge and the importance of recognition for mitigating the impacts of climate change and securing indigenous peoples’ rights. Chapter 6 provides a very erudite and well-researched focus on indigenous environmental knowledge and climate change adaptation. Chapter 2 attempts to introduce the international and US regimes for climate change regulation. This chapter surprisingly stresses ‘scientific uncertainty’ rather than climate scepticism as handicapping the evolution of effective regimes. The schism between indigenous values concerning the environment and the commodification of nature ideology embodied in the post-Kyoto neo-liberal regime is not alluded to, nor are the issues of North-South climate injustice represented by ‘flexibilization’ mechanisms such as clean development mechanisms (CDMs).