Until recently, international environmental law was largely the focus of diplomatic discussions, treaty negotiations, and academic debates of interest to a group of passionate and patient attorneys working for governments and international nongovernmental organizations. But, increasingly, understanding international environmental law is becoming a core skillset for every environmental attorney. As companies and clients necessarily become multinational in nature and must confront a rapidly emerging and confusing regime of international environmental laws, there is a growing need for the attorneys who represent them to understand the unique ramifications of international environmental law, regardless of where they practice and whom they represent.

International Environmental Law: The Practitioner's Guide to the Laws of the Planet provides practitioners with a comprehensive and practical analytical framework for meeting this growing demand and placing practitioners in a position to advise clients, whether from law firms, in house, or within government and nongovernmental organizations. The focus of the book is to provide pragmatic information that is most likely to be relevant when answering international environmental law questions.

Section I provides insight into several key issues to orient attorneys to the current state of play of international environmental law and to describe the framework for approaching an international environmental law issue.

Section II provides a template for considering comparative and international environmental law questions. These chapters cover eleven subtopics: (a) air and climate change; (b) water; (c) the handling, treatment, and disposal of chemicals and hazardous materials; (d) waste and site remediation; (e) response to emergencies; (f) natural resource management and protection; (g) the measurement and recovery of natural resource damages; (h) the protection of particular species of flora and fauna; (i) environmental review and decision-making; (j) transboundary pollution; and (k) civil and criminal enforcement and penalties.

Section III then uses this eleven-subtopic template to digest the environmental and
natural resource legal regimes in twenty-six key markets spanning the globe.

Finally, Section IV addresses global and cross-border issues.