Environmental Law Review

This paper explores Kenya's pursuit of just transition through the integrated lens of Women's, Children's, and Nature's (WCN) rights. The paper applies intersectionality, environmental justice, and rights-based frameworks to explore how Kenya's constitutional and policy frameworks address equity. It considers how principles of equality, participation, and sustainability shape climate action in Kenya. The paper traces the evolution of environmental governance in Kenya and assesses the gendered and generational vulnerabilities. Connecting global commitments, such as the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2063, with national initiatives, the paper reveals the centrality of WCN rights in achieving inclusive, low-carbon development. The paper examines the concept ‘just transition’ through the lens of women's, children's, and nature's rights. It argues that while Kenya has a robust legislative and institutional framework governing just transition, implementation of just transition interventions remains a challenge because the law in the books continues to be at variance with the laws in action and the lived realities of Women, Children, and Nature rights in the Kenyan socio-political context. The paper unmasks the assumptions inherent in just transition discourses and provides recommendations on how gender, child, and ecological justice can be part of the green transformation in Kenya. The paper concludes that strengthening data, research, participatory monitoring, and policy coherence is important in ensuring that the transition is just and sustainable.

The Nuclear Regulatory Review represents a significant milestone in the critique that judicial review contributes to sclerosis in the delivery of infrastructure. This analysis piece sets out and contextualises the theory of judicial review it adopts, which resonates with a strand of thinking I have elsewhere termed ‘litigant power’. It engages with the Review's proposed solutions to the challenge of judicial review in the nuclear sector, suggesting that some proposals, such as the targeted indemnification of projects under challenge, may represent creative responses which do not unduly impact access to justice. However, it contests the wisdom of some of the Review's recommendations in relation to the Aarhus environmental costs capping regime, suggesting there are concerns as regards their fairness, workability, and likelihood of achieving desired outcomes.

Climate change is a major driver reshaping patterns of human mobility, generating both movement and immobility across different regions and populations. While much of the existing literature has focused on displacement and migration, comparatively less attention has been paid to populations who stay in place, whether by choice or due to structural constraints. This article examines climate-related immobility with particular emphasis on the emerging concept of the “right to stay,” understood as the entitlement of individuals and communities to stay in their territories under conditions of safety, dignity, and habitability. It distinguishes between voluntary immobility and situations in which immobility is shaped by structural barriers, arguing that safeguarding the right to stay requires differentiating between autonomous decisions to stay and conditions that constrain meaningful choice. The article situates the right to stay within international human rights law, climate governance, and principles of climate justice, highlighting its connection to the right to freedom of movement, including the freedom to choose one's residence. Drawing on international and national climate litigation from the Americas, Oceania, and Europe, it evaluates how courts have addressed claims related to habitability, displacement risk, and State obligations in the context of climate change. It argues that, although legal frameworks increasingly acknowledge the need to protect populations at risk, significant gaps persist in the effective operationalization of the right to stay. The article concludes that safeguarding this right requires an integrated approach combining legal strategies, public policies, and community-based adaptation measures to ensure that individuals and communities can stay safely and with dignity in the face of climate change.

Following the success of Daniel Billy v. Australia at the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), and its potential implications on rights-based climate litigation, this paper examines the possibility of similar litigation by African applicants at the HRC. The decision of the HRC in Daniel Billy v. Australia highlights the significance of human rights-based climate litigation and is a pointer to the potential prospects and challenges African litigants may face before the HRC. The case is significant as it represents the first instance in which victims of climate change were successful in invoking the provisions of the international human rights instruments before the HRC. The author observes that despite the increasing impacts of climate change on human rights in Africa, there has been a paucity of cases before domestic and regional courts, and none before international human rights bodies. In anticipation of climate litigation before the HRC, the article identifies the challenges and prospects African applicants may face before it. The article argues that African Applicants now have an additional avenue in the HRC to seek climate change-redress against African States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its First Optional Protocol.

The polar regions are of paramount environmental importance and are highly vulnerable to climate change, with far-reaching implications for other regions of the planet. It was their remoteness and extreme climate that helped to preserve them. However, growing economic interests challenge or conflict directly their environmental protection. While certain geostrategic considerations weaken or fragment polar cooperation frameworks. The dynamics of environmental cooperation differ in both regions. In the Arctic, national jurisdiction is a defining element, while territorial claims in the Antarctic are frozen.