Rosalind Niven Malcolm

A forma como usamos plásticos atualmente é insustentável e inerentemente prejudicial à saúde humana e planetária, pois pressupõe um fluxo linear, e não circular, de materiais. Mesmo hoje, a maioria dos produtos plásticos é produzida a partir de combustíveis fósseis, usada brevemente e depois descartada, queimada ou aterrada como resíduo, cada destinação com um custo ambiental. Abordagens inovadoras de governança são necessárias para promover uma abordagem baseada em sistemas, fundamentada na ecologia industrial, que leve em consideração os desafios em todas as etapas do ciclo dos plásticos, garantindo a retenção dos materiais em uma economia circular.

The way we currently use plastics is both unsustainable and inherently harmful to human and planetary health because it assumes a linear, not circular, flow of materials. Even today most plastic products are manufactured from fossil fuels, used only briefly and then discarded, burned or landfilled as waste, each of which has an environmental cost. Innovative governance approaches will be needed to promote a systems-based approach grounded in industrial ecology which takes into account challenges at every stage of the plastic cycle, ensuring materials are retained within a circular economy.

A solution to the ‘wicked problem’ of plastics requires their effective management, not at

end-of-life, but throughout their life-cycle. Designing plastic products with the underpinning

approach of life-cycle thinking, and as part of a plastics circular economy, is one of the solutions.

We specifically address this from a European Union (EU) perspective where the development

of life-cycle thinking within regulatory frameworks is becoming established. This sits

within the international framework presaged by UNEA Resolution 5/14, which sets out the

negotiating mandate for a global plastics treaty, and which declares that ‘plastic pollution,

in marine and other environments, can be of a transboundary nature and needs to be tackled,

together with its impacts, through a full lifecycle approach, taking into account national circumstances

and capabilities’.

Abstract
This article highlights the importance of differentiating between environmental law and climate law in India, and, in doing so, analyses what counts as climate law in that country. It identifies three overarching approaches (trickle-down; Environmental Impact Assessment as climate law; and human rights law and climate change) that the current literature adopts to study and analyse climate law in India. We argue that none of these approaches comprehensively covers climate change mitigation measures adopted in this country. We propose an alternative approach to the analysis of climate law in India, which we call 'administrative layering'. Accordingly, we outline a three-step process to identify and conceptualize climate law in India.

All creatures including birds, animals and humans are at risk from plastic waste in the environment and the challenge of preventing it entering rivers, oceans, the atmosphere and land is urgent requiring our full attention.1 Yet, at the same time, plastics are a valuable material for preserving food, and they are used in textiles, transportation, construction and personal care products. Indeed, a world without plastics is unimaginable. The challenge then, is to deal with the escape of waste plastics in a way which enhances the circular economy – a closed-loop system where endof-service-life-objects become a resource. For most plastics like packaging, closed-loop systems already exist which can be improved through increasing collection and reuse/recycling. However, there are also uncontrolled losses of plastic materials that happen as “fugitive” emissions like tyre-wear or when laundering garments made from plastic. The problem of plastics waste is linked to the issue of mass consumption in the industrialised world, which has led to increasing production, the proliferation of goods, and the generation of waste. In highly industrialised societies, products are often treated as throwaway or ‘single-use’ items which not only increase the waste burden including fugitive emissions during their use phase, but also use raw materials in their manufacture thereby depleting the virgin resources of the planet. In the developing world, these problems exist too but are often exacerbated by the import and accumulation of plastic waste from the global north despite recent bans on such trade.

In this Chapter we examine the notion of water as a common treasury, and the implications that this characterisation of water has for property rights in water. We argue that a property rights system centred on neo-liberal conceptions of absolute private ownership, allowing private dominion over water and its commodification, is inappropriate for water and subverts its role as a common treasury. To enable water to function effectively as a common treasury, we argue, a more appropriate property model is one that emphasises and facilitates collaboration and co-operation rather than competition — in other words, a property rights system which acknowledges and promotes communal property in the forms we describe below.

Conspicuous consumption has become the hallmark of the individualist model of society in the 21st century and the impacts of this consumption on the environment mean that the necessity to develop sustainable consumption patterns has become a central policy focus. Extended producer responsibility has already begun to focus on the product and its environmental impact. A new approach has now been canvassed by the European Community which proposes a radical revision in the way in which environmental impacts should be evaluated and controlled. Integrated product policy (IPP) is a proposal which reflects the problems of a society driven by consumerism. In this article the author outlines IPP and the principles behind it; looks at the European evolution of IPP; describes the White Paper proposals for establishing the framework conditions for continuous environmental improvement; and, examines the current framework and the viability of the new paradigm before providing some conclusions.