Acknowledging that human activities have had, and continue to have, an unsustainable impact on the functioning of the earth is no longer a view limited to marginal groups in society. Of the nine planetary boundaries identified as being necessary to maintain the delicate balance of Earth’s functioning ability, we are outside the safe zone of four (Rockström, Steffen, Noone et al., 1973 pp. 472-475). We are experiencing a so-called ‘triple planetary crisis’ of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, which the United Nations indicates needs to be resolved “if we are to have a viable future on this planet” (unfccc.int). In addition, there is widespread acceptance that the Earth has left its natural geographical epoch because of human activities and that we have moved into the era of the Anthropocene (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Kotzé, 2014). As the UN SecretaryGeneral said, when July 2023 became the hottest month on record, we are no longer in the era of global warming - the “era of global boiling has arrived”. Addressing these impacts accordingly is no longer a luxury. Since business-as-usual approaches have caused the problem, urgent and far-reaching changes are By its nature, structuring the international environmental law module through an ecopedagogical lens requires ongoing reflection and adjustment. required, including what we teach and how we teach it. With an estimated 235 million students attending higher education institutions (HEI) every year (unesco.org), HEIs offer significant potential for influencing the realisation of the sustainable development agenda in a meaningful way. Signatures to the 1990 Talloires Declaration and reports by the United Nations, such as Shaping the Future We Want: UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2014, testify to the fact that HEIs are increasingly embracing the need for sustainable development and recognising the role that they can, and should, play in securing it (Buckler & Creech, 2014). They have responded through multi-pronged strategies. While some of these - including operational changes aimed at managing the institution’s environmental footprint - have value, teaching and learning are core to the purpose of HEIs. In the case of environmental law, current reflections in scholarly works about how to teach environmental law and international environmental law effectively show that the issue is beset with quandaries. Mehling et al. (2020, p. 418) note that climate change has been described as a “super-wicked problem”, and Fowler et al. (2021, p. 1) note that “the inherent characteristics of environmental problems create more acute challenges for environmental law teaching than for many other subjects”. Related to this is that some scholars point to difficulties such as the scope of the subject, the need for an interdisciplinary understanding of the problems legislation attempts to address, and the fact that legislation changes rapidly as it responds to scientific developments (Coplan, 2016). In addition to these conundrums, others raise more poignant questions for teaching in the triple planetary crisis. For example, Stephens (2019) argues that in the era of the Anthropocene, many assumptions about the nature and relevance of international environmental law itself require revisiting. These questions are important. While sustainable development has been accepted as the overarching framework for constructing environmental laws, the concept’s utility is also contested (Kotzé & Adelman, 2023; Head, 2023). Its wide definition makes it capable of being interpreted in different, often expedient, ways, which has not resulted in it being instrumental in halting the escalation of the current triple planetary crisis or addressing the global economic asymmetry since it was introduced into the global discourse 50 plus years ago (Head, 2023). Since there is no ‘off the shelf’ model in scholarly works that can be employed in teaching international environmental law that is fit for purpose in the context of the triple planetary crisis, the redesign of the curricula of the LLM international environmental law module necessitated engaging with questions Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching Innovation Projects 2024 33
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