University of Sherbrooke Faculty of Law, Room A7-235

Workshop with Hélène Mayrand, professor at the University of Sherbrooke Faculty of Law. 

This presentation provides an overview of the current state of critical approaches to environmental law, whether international or national, and seeks to question the theoretical and structural challenges contributing to the fact that critical approaches to environmental law are still emerging, even within critical legal approaches. While critical approaches focussing on class, gender, ethnic origin or Third World populations are developed, critical approaches to environmental law remain marginalized. Some approaches identify themselves, implicitly or explicitly, as being critical of environmental law, such as ecofeminist approaches and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). However, very few approaches adopt an eco-centric perspective. In order to contribute to critical approaches to environmental law, the development of clear theoretical and methodological tools is necessary to undertake a deconstructive analysis of law aimed at understanding current problems within environmental law and adopt alternative legal norms. The legal discipline presents important barriers for the development of such approaches, considering that the latter seek to deconstruct ideologies enshrined in law, including law centred on the human and its needs, the right to property of nature understood as an object of appropriation, the concept of risk in favour of exploitation, the choice of an optimal development from a cost-benefit perspective, an optimist posture towards science and technology to counter the negative effective of human activity on the environment, etc. Some research and reflection avenues will be offered, in particular through using an interdisciplinary lens by interacting with critical geography.