Transnational Environmental Law and the Future

The re-election of United States (US) President Donald Trump in November 2024 has evoked a sense of dj vu.In 2017, a Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) editorial following his initial election expressed deep concerns about potential upheavals in environmental law while highlighting the resilience that polycentric mechanisms might offer in the face of disrupted US environmental policies. 1Since then, scholarly interest in the interplay between populism and environmental law has flourished. 2 A subsequent TEL editorial lamented the ongoing challenges to established environmental legal systems, including Trump's rollback of US environmental protections as well as the impact of Brexit on United Kingdom (UK) environmental law. 3 Today, those reflections gain renewed relevance, illustrating that revisiting the past is often essential for navigating the future.Indeed, it can feel as if progress in environmental law is caught in a loop.Familiar debates resurface, and old obstacles reappear.The 2023 emissions gap report of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), aptly entitled 'Broken Record', captured this sentiment: the world faces a 'disturbing acceleration' of climate records, 4 but calls for decisive action remain unanswered, as underscored by the, expectedly, conservative outcomes of the 29 th Conference of the Parties (COP-29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 5 As we assess what transnational environmental law might look like in coming years, the outlook is sobering.Short-term prospects appear fraught, and long-term projections of environmental degradation paint a bleak picture.Nevertheless, the international community has begun to set its sights on long-term governance.The Pact for the Future, adopted in September 2024 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), outlines 56 objectives aimed at protecting the interests of present and future generations. 6 The pact aims to strengthen multilateral