Louis J Kotzé
Biographic Data
| ID | 1317879 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Louis J Kotzé |
| GIVEN NAMES | Louis J |
| FAMILY NAME | Kotzé |
| SIGNATURE | KOTZÉ L J |
| AFFILIATIONS | North-West University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5820-168X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 162 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Harnessing legal system complexity for radical shifts to sustainability
Courts, climate litigation and the evolution of earth system law
Numerous scientific reports have evidenced the transformation of the earth system due to human activities. These changes – captured under the term ‘Anthropocene’ – require a new perspective on global law and policy. The concept of ‘earth system law’ situates law in an earth system context and offers a new perspective to interrogate the role of law in governing planetary challenges such as climate change. The discourse on earth system law has not …
Towards a Non-Use Regime on Solar Geoengineering
In recent years, some scientists have called for research into and potential development of 'solar geoengineering' technologies as an option to counter global warming. Solar geoengineering refers to a set of speculative techniques to reflect some incoming sunlight back into space, for example, by continuously spraying reflective sulphur aerosols into the stratosphere over several generations. Because of the significant ecological, social, and pol…
Earth steward
The Right to a Healthy Environment and Law's Hidden Subjects
In this essay I reflect upon whether and how the recent international recognition of the right to a healthy environment might--or might not--provide greater support for efforts to define and protect the rights of what one could term "law's hidden subjects," namely future generations and nature. Although there are several examples of rights-based regimes that aim to protect future generations and nature, few would disagree that these hidden subjec…
Towards planetary nexus governance in the Anthropocene
Nexus governance recognises that sustainability concerns such as water, energy, and food security are interlinked and provides an alternative to fragmented governance. Although it has been applied mostly in the domestic context, the need for nexus governance is also apparent at a planetary scale, as highlighted by interacting planetary boundaries, global telecoupling, and global tipping cascades. However, international environmental law is unable…
The Cambridge Handbook of the Sustainable Development Goals and International Law
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 issue…
The Political Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
Written by an international team of over sixty experts and drawing on over three thousand scientific studies, this is the first comprehensive global assessment of the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were launched by the United Nations in 2015. It explores in detail the political steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals on the UN system and the policies of countries in the Global North and Global South; on…
Reimagining international environmental law for the Anthropocene
Concerns have been raised regarding the ability of international environmental law to respond to potentially irreversible earth system transformations in the Anthropocene. We argue that in order for international environmental law to have the capacity to respond to the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene, it should embrace an earth system perspective. Earth system law, which is grounded in an earth system perspective, has been propose…
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering is gaining prominence in climate change debates as an issue worth studying; for some it is even a potential future policy option. We argue here against this increasing normalization of solar geoengineering as a speculative part of the climate policy portfolio. We contend, in particular, that solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international polit…
Environmental Law and the Unsustainability of Sustainable Development
In this article we argue that sustainable development is not a socio-ecologically friendly principle. The principle, which is deeply embedded in environmental law, policymaking and governance, drives environmentally destructive neoliberal economic growth that exploits and degrades the vulnerable living order. Despite seemingly well-meaning intentions behind the emergence of sustainable development, it almost invariably facilitates exploitative ec…
Friend or foe?
In this paper, we focus on the structural complicity of international environmental law (IEL) in causing and exacerbating climate injustices. We aim to show that although the intentions behind IEL may be well-meaning, it often inadvertently, but also deliberately at times, plays a role in creating, sustaining and exacerbating the many paradigms that drive climate injustice in the Anthropocene. We focus on three aspects: IEL’s neoliberal anthropoc…
Neubauer et al. versus Germany
The recent decision by the German Constitutional Court in Neubauer et al. versus Germany has been attracting considerable attention around the globe. The Court ordered the German legislature to correct and to significantly tighten up existing climate law provisions, to increase the ambition of these provisions, and to strengthen future mitigation pathways. Several commentators have hailed it as an example of what is possible when the judiciary st…
Earth system law
The Anthropocene requires of us to rethink global governance challenges and effective responses with a more holistic understanding of the earth system as a single intertwined social-ecological system. Law, in particular, will have to embrace such a holistic earth system perspective in order to deal more effectively with the Anthropocene's predicaments. While a growing number of scholars have tried to reimagine law and legal scholarship in a more …
The potential and pitfalls of the vulnerability concept for human rights
In the past decade or so, vulnerability has become a fairly prominent concept in human rights law. It has evolved from being an underlying notion to an explicit concept. This column takes stock of vulnerability's relationship to, and possible influence on human rights law, assessing the concept's potential and pitfalls. It focuses on the not altogether unrelated issues of migrants’ social rights and on the role of human rights in environmental pr…
Earth system law
While the focus of earth system governance is on the human-social aspects of Earth system changes, law has played a peripheral part in the earth system governance scientific agenda. Earth system governance perspectives have also not significantly infiltrated the juridical domain. In this paper we seek to initiate a debate on the juridical dimensions of earth system governance. We make out a case in support of developing a new overarching legal ph…
The Anthropocene, Earth system vulnerability and socio-ecological injustice in an age of human rights
Despite important victories, human rights have been unable to respond effectively to the many deeply intertwined socio-ecological injustices in the Anthropocene. In particular, human rights have failed to practically address, in a meaningful way, the plights of billions of oppressed human beings (and failed to address the vulnerability of non-human beings), while conceptually human rights are proving to be ill-suited for the epistemic demands of …
A Global Environmental Constitution for the Anthropocene
International environmental law (IEL) has been unable to respond effectively to the Anthropocene's global socio-ecological crisis, which is critically existential and requires radical interventions and regulatory reform. This article explores the potential of the recent United Nations (UN)-backed initiative to adopt a Global Pact for the Environment as an opportunity to reform IEL. It does so by (i) reflecting on the Anthropocene's demands for a …
Sustainable Development Goals
A critique of the Global Pact for the environment
In May 2018, the process which may ultimately lead to the negotiation of a legally binding Global Pact for the environment formally commenced under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly. Expectations for the Pact are high, evidenced in particular by its multiple and overlapping objectives: to serve as a generic binding instrument of international environmental law (IEL) principles; to integrate, consolidate, unify and ultimately ent…
Living in Harmony with Nature? A Critical Appraisal of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia
Juridical protection of the rights of nature is steadily emerging in several legal systems and in public discourse. Building on a recent publication inTransnational Environmental Lawin which we interrogated Ecuador's constitutional experiment with the rights of nature, we critically reflect in this contribution on Bolivia's legal regime providing for the rights of Mother Earth. We do so, first, by sketching the juridical-political context within …
Somewhere between Rhetoric and Reality
Today, numerous constitutions provide for a rights-based approach to environmental protection. Based as they are on an instrumentalist rationality that seeks to promote human entitlements to nature, the majority of these rights remain anthropocentric. Although there are growing calls within academic and activist circles to reorient rights alongside an ecocentric ontology, only one country to date has taken the bold step to bestow rights on nature…
Environmental justice and slow violence
South Africa has come a long way since the constitutional revolution that swept the country in the early 1990s. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 introduced and continues to drive far-reaching changes to the political, social and juridical landscape and it aims to create a more just and equal society for all; one where respect for human rights is paramount. On 16 August 2012 the country was rocked to its core when the South A…
A Gold Rush to Nowhere? The Rights-based Approach to Environmental Governance in South Africa's Mining Sector in Question
VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee , Seite 447 - 481
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering is gaining prominence in climate change debates as an issue worth studying; for some it is even a potential future policy option. We argue here against this increasing normalization of solar geoengineering as a speculative part of the climate policy portfolio. We contend, in particular, that solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international polit…
Living in Harmony with Nature? A Critical Appraisal of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia
Juridical protection of the rights of nature is steadily emerging in several legal systems and in public discourse. Building on a recent publication inTransnational Environmental Lawin which we interrogated Ecuador's constitutional experiment with the rights of nature, we critically reflect in this contribution on Bolivia's legal regime providing for the rights of Mother Earth. We do so, first, by sketching the juridical-political context within …
Somewhere between Rhetoric and Reality
Today, numerous constitutions provide for a rights-based approach to environmental protection. Based as they are on an instrumentalist rationality that seeks to promote human entitlements to nature, the majority of these rights remain anthropocentric. Although there are growing calls within academic and activist circles to reorient rights alongside an ecocentric ontology, only one country to date has taken the bold step to bestow rights on nature…
Arguing Global Environmental Constitutionalism
The current global environmental law and governance regime has been designed primarily to attend to the worsening ecological crisis. Evidence, however, suggests that the regime is far from achieving its goal and it is failing in its efforts to solve what people perceive to be pervasive global environmental problems. There is little doubt that this regime is in need of urgent reforms and/or re-situation in a decidedly different paradigm. This arti…
A critique of the Global Pact for the environment
In May 2018, the process which may ultimately lead to the negotiation of a legally binding Global Pact for the environment formally commenced under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly. Expectations for the Pact are high, evidenced in particular by its multiple and overlapping objectives: to serve as a generic binding instrument of international environmental law (IEL) principles; to integrate, consolidate, unify and ultimately ent…
Human rights and the environment in the Anthropocene
Human rights are considered ethical demands that operate at an elevated juridical level. They have become popular legal constructs that contribute to the traditional instrumentalist and the more esoteric functions of law. While there is often considerable criticism leveled against human rights, as creatures of law and as legal mechanisms possessing unique characteristics, they are also uniquely situated and able to perform a singular mediating ro…
Earth system law
The Anthropocene requires of us to rethink global governance challenges and effective responses with a more holistic understanding of the earth system as a single intertwined social-ecological system. Law, in particular, will have to embrace such a holistic earth system perspective in order to deal more effectively with the Anthropocene's predicaments. While a growing number of scholars have tried to reimagine law and legal scholarship in a more …
Earth system law
While the focus of earth system governance is on the human-social aspects of Earth system changes, law has played a peripheral part in the earth system governance scientific agenda. Earth system governance perspectives have also not significantly infiltrated the juridical domain. In this paper we seek to initiate a debate on the juridical dimensions of earth system governance. We make out a case in support of developing a new overarching legal ph…
The Anthropocene, Earth system vulnerability and socio-ecological injustice in an age of human rights
Despite important victories, human rights have been unable to respond effectively to the many deeply intertwined socio-ecological injustices in the Anthropocene. In particular, human rights have failed to practically address, in a meaningful way, the plights of billions of oppressed human beings (and failed to address the vulnerability of non-human beings), while conceptually human rights are proving to be ill-suited for the epistemic demands of …
Environmental Law and the Unsustainability of Sustainable Development
In this article we argue that sustainable development is not a socio-ecologically friendly principle. The principle, which is deeply embedded in environmental law, policymaking and governance, drives environmentally destructive neoliberal economic growth that exploits and degrades the vulnerable living order. Despite seemingly well-meaning intentions behind the emergence of sustainable development, it almost invariably facilitates exploitative ec…
The potential and pitfalls of the vulnerability concept for human rights
In the past decade or so, vulnerability has become a fairly prominent concept in human rights law. It has evolved from being an underlying notion to an explicit concept. This column takes stock of vulnerability's relationship to, and possible influence on human rights law, assessing the concept's potential and pitfalls. It focuses on the not altogether unrelated issues of migrants’ social rights and on the role of human rights in environmental pr…
Reimagining international environmental law for the Anthropocene
Concerns have been raised regarding the ability of international environmental law to respond to potentially irreversible earth system transformations in the Anthropocene. We argue that in order for international environmental law to have the capacity to respond to the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene, it should embrace an earth system perspective. Earth system law, which is grounded in an earth system perspective, has been propose…
A Global Environmental Constitution for the Anthropocene
International environmental law (IEL) has been unable to respond effectively to the Anthropocene's global socio-ecological crisis, which is critically existential and requires radical interventions and regulatory reform. This article explores the potential of the recent United Nations (UN)-backed initiative to adopt a Global Pact for the Environment as an opportunity to reform IEL. It does so by (i) reflecting on the Anthropocene's demands for a …
The Right to a Healthy Environment and Law's Hidden Subjects
In this essay I reflect upon whether and how the recent international recognition of the right to a healthy environment might--or might not--provide greater support for efforts to define and protect the rights of what one could term "law's hidden subjects," namely future generations and nature. Although there are several examples of rights-based regimes that aim to protect future generations and nature, few would disagree that these hidden subjec…
A Gold Rush to Nowhere? The Rights-based Approach to Environmental Governance in South Africa's Mining Sector in Question
VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee , Seite 447 - 481
Phiri, the plight of the poor and the perils of climate change
Africa is a water-stressed country where scarce water resources are unequally available to South Africans. It seems inevitable that climate change will in future severely affect the availability of water resources and the ecological and socio-economic aspects of water uses in the country. It is especially the poor, indigent and marginalized sectors of the population that have inadequate access to water and it is these people who would also be mos…
Phiri, the plight of the poor and the perils of climate change
Africa is a water-stressed country where scarce water resources are unequally available to South Africans. It seems inevitable that climate change will in future severely affect the availability of water resources and the ecological and socio-economic aspects of water uses in the country. It is especially the poor, indigent and marginalized sectors of the population that have inadequate access to water and it is these people who would also be mos…
Arguing Global Environmental Constitutionalism
The current global environmental law and governance regime has been designed primarily to attend to the worsening ecological crisis. Evidence, however, suggests that the regime is far from achieving its goal and it is failing in its efforts to solve what people perceive to be pervasive global environmental problems. There is little doubt that this regime is in need of urgent reforms and/or re-situation in a decidedly different paradigm. This arti…
The Heat is On
Departing from the fact that climate change poses localized effects, this article critically considers from a legal perspective the role of local authorities in the South African government's response to climate change. A brief review of the relevance of climate mitigation and adaptation is followed by an explanation of what these concepts mean for local government. The article then discusses the extent to which the country's environmental and lo…
Human rights and the environment in the Anthropocene
Human rights are considered ethical demands that operate at an elevated juridical level. They have become popular legal constructs that contribute to the traditional instrumentalist and the more esoteric functions of law. While there is often considerable criticism leveled against human rights, as creatures of law and as legal mechanisms possessing unique characteristics, they are also uniquely situated and able to perform a singular mediating ro…
A Gold Rush to Nowhere? The Rights-based Approach to Environmental Governance in South Africa's Mining Sector in Question
VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee , Seite 447 - 481
Environmental justice and slow violence
South Africa has come a long way since the constitutional revolution that swept the country in the early 1990s. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 introduced and continues to drive far-reaching changes to the political, social and juridical landscape and it aims to create a more just and equal society for all; one where respect for human rights is paramount. On 16 August 2012 the country was rocked to its core when the South A…
Somewhere between Rhetoric and Reality
Today, numerous constitutions provide for a rights-based approach to environmental protection. Based as they are on an instrumentalist rationality that seeks to promote human entitlements to nature, the majority of these rights remain anthropocentric. Although there are growing calls within academic and activist circles to reorient rights alongside an ecocentric ontology, only one country to date has taken the bold step to bestow rights on nature…
Sustainable Development Goals
A critique of the Global Pact for the environment
In May 2018, the process which may ultimately lead to the negotiation of a legally binding Global Pact for the environment formally commenced under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly. Expectations for the Pact are high, evidenced in particular by its multiple and overlapping objectives: to serve as a generic binding instrument of international environmental law (IEL) principles; to integrate, consolidate, unify and ultimately ent…
Living in Harmony with Nature? A Critical Appraisal of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia
Juridical protection of the rights of nature is steadily emerging in several legal systems and in public discourse. Building on a recent publication inTransnational Environmental Lawin which we interrogated Ecuador's constitutional experiment with the rights of nature, we critically reflect in this contribution on Bolivia's legal regime providing for the rights of Mother Earth. We do so, first, by sketching the juridical-political context within …
Earth system law
While the focus of earth system governance is on the human-social aspects of Earth system changes, law has played a peripheral part in the earth system governance scientific agenda. Earth system governance perspectives have also not significantly infiltrated the juridical domain. In this paper we seek to initiate a debate on the juridical dimensions of earth system governance. We make out a case in support of developing a new overarching legal ph…
The Anthropocene, Earth system vulnerability and socio-ecological injustice in an age of human rights
Despite important victories, human rights have been unable to respond effectively to the many deeply intertwined socio-ecological injustices in the Anthropocene. In particular, human rights have failed to practically address, in a meaningful way, the plights of billions of oppressed human beings (and failed to address the vulnerability of non-human beings), while conceptually human rights are proving to be ill-suited for the epistemic demands of …
A Global Environmental Constitution for the Anthropocene
International environmental law (IEL) has been unable to respond effectively to the Anthropocene's global socio-ecological crisis, which is critically existential and requires radical interventions and regulatory reform. This article explores the potential of the recent United Nations (UN)-backed initiative to adopt a Global Pact for the Environment as an opportunity to reform IEL. It does so by (i) reflecting on the Anthropocene's demands for a …
Friend or foe?
In this paper, we focus on the structural complicity of international environmental law (IEL) in causing and exacerbating climate injustices. We aim to show that although the intentions behind IEL may be well-meaning, it often inadvertently, but also deliberately at times, plays a role in creating, sustaining and exacerbating the many paradigms that drive climate injustice in the Anthropocene. We focus on three aspects: IEL’s neoliberal anthropoc…
Neubauer et al. versus Germany
The recent decision by the German Constitutional Court in Neubauer et al. versus Germany has been attracting considerable attention around the globe. The Court ordered the German legislature to correct and to significantly tighten up existing climate law provisions, to increase the ambition of these provisions, and to strengthen future mitigation pathways. Several commentators have hailed it as an example of what is possible when the judiciary st…
Earth system law
The Anthropocene requires of us to rethink global governance challenges and effective responses with a more holistic understanding of the earth system as a single intertwined social-ecological system. Law, in particular, will have to embrace such a holistic earth system perspective in order to deal more effectively with the Anthropocene's predicaments. While a growing number of scholars have tried to reimagine law and legal scholarship in a more …
The potential and pitfalls of the vulnerability concept for human rights
In the past decade or so, vulnerability has become a fairly prominent concept in human rights law. It has evolved from being an underlying notion to an explicit concept. This column takes stock of vulnerability's relationship to, and possible influence on human rights law, assessing the concept's potential and pitfalls. It focuses on the not altogether unrelated issues of migrants’ social rights and on the role of human rights in environmental pr…
Towards planetary nexus governance in the Anthropocene
Nexus governance recognises that sustainability concerns such as water, energy, and food security are interlinked and provides an alternative to fragmented governance. Although it has been applied mostly in the domestic context, the need for nexus governance is also apparent at a planetary scale, as highlighted by interacting planetary boundaries, global telecoupling, and global tipping cascades. However, international environmental law is unable…
The Cambridge Handbook of the Sustainable Development Goals and International Law
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 issue…
The Political Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
Written by an international team of over sixty experts and drawing on over three thousand scientific studies, this is the first comprehensive global assessment of the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were launched by the United Nations in 2015. It explores in detail the political steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals on the UN system and the policies of countries in the Global North and Global South; on…
Reimagining international environmental law for the Anthropocene
Concerns have been raised regarding the ability of international environmental law to respond to potentially irreversible earth system transformations in the Anthropocene. We argue that in order for international environmental law to have the capacity to respond to the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene, it should embrace an earth system perspective. Earth system law, which is grounded in an earth system perspective, has been propose…
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering is gaining prominence in climate change debates as an issue worth studying; for some it is even a potential future policy option. We argue here against this increasing normalization of solar geoengineering as a speculative part of the climate policy portfolio. We contend, in particular, that solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international polit…
Environmental Law and the Unsustainability of Sustainable Development
In this article we argue that sustainable development is not a socio-ecologically friendly principle. The principle, which is deeply embedded in environmental law, policymaking and governance, drives environmentally destructive neoliberal economic growth that exploits and degrades the vulnerable living order. Despite seemingly well-meaning intentions behind the emergence of sustainable development, it almost invariably facilitates exploitative ec…
Earth steward
Political science (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Environmental law and policy (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Environmental ethics (16 works) · Climate Change and Geoengineering (13 works) · Corporate governance (13 works) · Environmental law (12 works) · Human Rights and Development (12 works) · Law and economics (12 works)