This piece is based on my experience as Chair and member of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee. Here I highlight the quasi-judicial facets of the Committee and the essential elements of law, integrity, due process, dialogue, and trust that underpin its work. I also reflect on the increasing caseload of the Committee, and the Committee's relevance, outcome and impact, arguing that the Committee has delivered on promoting compliance by upholding integrity, ensuring due process and high quality in the reviews of non-compliance and follow-ups, and in engaging in dialogues with parties and non-state actors. My main concern, however, is that, due to the great number of cases, and the limited resources to manage its caseload, the Committee has not been able to live up to the message of the Convention of providing timely legal reviews. Importantly, despite its non-judicial character, the exercise of the Committee is governed by international law, and its findings of non-compliance, through the endorsements of the Meetings of the Parties, have significant legal effect for the interpretation of the Convention. The Committee, in short, is not as weak as I anticipated in 1998 when the Aarhus Convention was adopted.

The Anthropocene signifies the start of a no-analogue trajectory of the Earth system that is fundamentally different from the Holocene. This new trajectory is characterized by rising risks of triggering irreversible and unmanageable shifts in Earth system functioning. We urgently need a new global approach to safeguard critical Earth system regulating functions more effectively and comprehensively. The global commons framework is the closest example of an existing approach with the aim of governing biophysical systems on Earth upon which the world collectively depends. Derived during stable Holocene conditions, the global commons framework must now evolve in the light of new Anthropocene dynamics. This requires a fundamental shift from a focus only on governing shared resources beyond national jurisdiction, to one that secures critical functions of the Earth system irrespective of national boundaries. We propose a new framework—the planetary commons—which differs from the global commons framework by including not only globally shared geographic regions but also critical biophysical systems that regulate the resilience and state, and therefore livability, on Earth. The new planetary commons should articulate and create comprehensive stewardship obligations through Earth system governance aimed at restoring and strengthening planetary resilience and justice.

The 1972 UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) was ahead of its time in asserting that “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being”. Fifty years later, at Stockholm+50, the human rights approach to environment protection has been significantly consolidated in international law and governance. The article describes and reflects on these developments from the 1972 Stockholm Conference to the 2022 Stockholm Meeting. The consolidation of the human rights approach to environment protection results from normative advances at regional and global scales, further world summits on environment and sustainable development, international treaty-making to protect the environment and human rights, international policy documents and declarations, and remarkable jurisprudential developments. In parallel, fundamental rights relating to the environment have also been recognised in numerous national constitutions and laws. While the human rights approach is not a panacea to resolve all environmental concerns, and to ascertain due concerns for non-human species and interests that are not directly linked to human well-being, it is a key to ensure that no one is left behind in the pursuit for sustainable development and prosperity.

In 2015, the United Nations established seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that aimed 'to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all' by 2030. The chapters within this collection address each of these SDGs, considering how they relate to one another and international law, and what institutions could aid their implementation. Development has been a contentious topic since the decolonization period after World War II, and issues surrounding sustainable development are necessarily impacted by the multifaceted relationship between the Global South and Global North. Confronting the context and challenge of sustainable development, this collection outlines how the international economic system problematizes the attainment of the SDGs. Introducing a novel, cosmopolitan approach, this book offers new ways of understanding sustainable development and suggests potential solutions so that we might finally achieve it.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Agenda 2030, and international law interact in multifaceted and complex ways. On the one hand, neither Agenda 2030 nor the SDGs fundamentally question the role of the international economic system, which is entrenched in international law and supportive of activities that do not necessarily further sustainable development. On the other hand, Agenda 2030 aims to transform our world, by evoking a bold cosmopolitan understanding of sustainable development, so that no one is left behind. This cosmopolitan understanding of sustainable development should inspire the application and development of international law, if indeed no one is to be left behind. International law offers ample opportunities for implementing such an approach to sustainable development.

The 1972 UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) was ahead of its time in asserting that “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being”. Fifty years later, at Stockholm+50, the human rights approach to environment protection has been significantly consolidated in international law and governance. The article describes and reflects on these developments from the 1972 Stockholm Conference to the 2022 Stockholm Meeting. The consolidation of the human rights approach to environment protection results from normative advances at regional and global scales, further world summits on environment and sustainable development, international treaty-making to protect the environment and human rights, international policy documents and declarations, and remarkable jurisprudential developments. In parallel, fundamental rights relating to the environment have also been recognised in numerous national constitutions and laws. While the human rights approach is not a panacea to resolve all environmental concerns, and to ascertain due concerns for non-human species and interests that are not directly linked to human well-being, it is a key to ensure that no one is left behind in the pursuit for sustainable development and prosperity.

Planetary and legal boundaries can only be effective if they are observed, respected and complied with. In Chapter 10, Jonas Ebbesson addresses the critical issue of compliance with planetary boundaries in international law. He shows that although the planetary boundaries have no formal status in international law, they are legally relevant. Therefore, if they obtained a more robust status in international law, though planetary boundaries would not per se create legal standards, and it would still be problematic to hold States’ performance or compliance directly against them; they would amount to objectives to be achieved and operationalised through other norms, whether rules set out in treaty law with examinable criteria for compliance, or principles of customary law. Alternatively, the planetary boundaries could influence legal concepts, principles and obligations more subtly through jurisprudence and doctrine. The chapter shows that compliance with international environmental law involves a broad range of considerations, including practical reasons for failure to comply, the legal implications of non-compliance, the institutional procedures for compliance control, and the effectiveness of compliance reviews. The main concern in this respect is whether the planetary boundaries as such can be complied with in the first place, and if not, how can compliance in relation to planetary boundaries be meaningfully examined in legal terms?

In different ways, international law on participatory rights in environmental matters – the right to participate in decision-making, and have access to information and access to justice – is developing in Europe and Africa. In this article, I compare these legal developments.

The spatial and temporal dynamics of water resources are a continuous challenge for effective and sustainable national and international governance. The watershed is the most common spatial unit in water resources governance, which typically includes only surface and groundwater. However, recent advances in hydrology have revealed ‘atmospheric watersheds’ – otherwise known as precipitationsheds. Water flowing within a precipitationshed may be modified by land-use change in one location, while the effect of this modification could be felt in a different province, country, or continent. Despite an upwind country's ability to change a downwind country's rainfall through changes in land-use or land management, the major legal and institutional implications of changes in atmospheric moisture flows have remained unexplored. Here we explore potential ways to approach what we denote as moisture recycling governance. We first identify a set of international study regions, and then develop a typology of moisture recycling relationships within these regions ranging from bilateral moisture exchange to more complex networks. This enables us to classify different types of possible governance principles and relate those to existing land and water governance frameworks and management practices. The complexity of moisture recycling means institutional fit will be difficult to generalize for all moisture recycling relationships, but our typology allows the identification of characteristics that make effective governance of these normally ignored water flows more tenable.

The notion of security has changed significantly in international contexts since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm 1972, so as to include social-ecological concerns even at the global scale. This change is paralleled by the increasing attention to mankind's position, impact and responsibility in a global environmental context, even to suggest that we are entering into a new geological epoch where mankind is 'a major environmental force': The Anthropocene . This chapter explores international law and policy for social-ecological security in light of the notion of the Anthropocene and the planetary boundaries. In addition to planetary boundaries, international law and policy on social-ecological security must take into account the equitable distribution of burdens and benefits related to health, the environment, 'eco-services' and resource uses within any boundary. Keywords: eco-services; international law; obal environmental context; planetary boundaries; social-ecological concerns; Stockholm; The Anthropocene ; United Nations Conference

2 Planetary Boundaries, Governance and Law 263 2.1 Boundary Themes, International Regimes and International Principles 263 2.2 Climate Change 265 2.3 Ocean Acidification 266 2.4 Stratospheric Ozone Layer Depletion 268 2.5 Aerosol Loading 269 2.6 Interference with Global Phosphorous and Nitrogen Cycles ...... 270 2.7 Global Freshwater use 272 2.8 Rate of Biodiversity Loss 274 2.9 Land-system Change 277 2.10 Chemical Pollution 279

How does resilience research matter for legal scholarship and law, and the other way around, how does law and legal scholarship matter for resilience research and for socialecological resilience?Resilience research, besides describing and theorizing how social-ecological systems work, seeks to identify factors that enhance the resilience of such systems or reduce it for the sake of transformations into new development paths.It thus has an essential normative dimension and through that dimension intends to influence policy to develop in more resilient ways.Law also seeks to pursue normative ends related to concepts such as justice and the rule of law.By way of its concepts, rules, procedures, and institutions, law seeks to protect certain societal values such as equality before the law and nondiscrimination.In addition, law is used as an instrument to achieve various environmental and social objectives such as the protection of habitats, the prohibition to market and use hazardous chemicals, or the construction of buildings to withstand floods and earthquakes.However, these same concepts, rules, procedures, and institutions also affect society's capacity to address change, complexity, and adaptation.We suggest that it is therefore important for resilience researchers to engage with law and for legal researchers to engage with resilience thinking if more sustainable societal structures are to be attained.

In using the Aarhus Convention as a reference, this article examines the tension between two developments of environmental governance in the last decades: (i) the strengthening of participatory rights of members of the public in environmental decision-making; and (ii) the privatisation and outsourcing of resources, services and functions related to natural resources and the environment. It observes that privatisation may significantly affect the scope of participatory rights in environmental matters, including the right to access to information. Yet, the broad conception of ‘public authority’ in the Aarhus Convention implies a right to access to information also when corporations, as a result of privatisation, perform public administrative functions or have public responsibilities or functions in relation to the environment. The right to participate in decision-making also remains when resources and services are privatised. The Aarhus Convention does not exclude the possibility of delegating certain responsibilities in decision-making procedures to different bodies and private actors, but only to the extent that sufficient impartiality is ensured to guarantee proper conduct during the public participation procedure. In such situations, all standards for public participation apply in full. Finally, the Aarhus Convention precludes almost all attempts to privatise any function relating to access to justice. The article concludes that the effectiveness of participatory rights in case of privatisation not only depends on formal compliance with the Aarhus Convention standards, but also on the general domestic legal setting surrounding privatisation.