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12 TEL 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/tevl12 and id is 1 raw text is: Transnational Environmental Law, 12:1 (2023), pp. 1-13 © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/S204710252300002X EDITORIAL 'This Battle is Hard and Huge': Intractable Problems in Transnational Environmental Law 1. INTRODUCTION Environmental challenges - notably climate change - are often characterized as 'wicked' problems:1 societal in scope, such problems encompass countless stake- holders, defying consensus as to solution and even definition.2 Wicked problems pre- sent as intractable and irreducible. Remedial action along one dimension may ramify in multiple sets of consequences downstream - some helpful, some unhelpful, some disastrous - with no clear way in science or in politics to predict ex ante which will dominate, or if a given characterization can even secure accord among the relevant stakeholders.3 In such cases the 'battle' is, in poet Amanda Gorman's memorable words to the United Nations, 'hard and huge'.4 It might seem like certain environmental challenges are no longer quite so 'wicked'. In our previous editorial we noted several encouraging diplomatic and legislative devel- opments in the field of environmental law:5 for example, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly's recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment,6 and the US$1.2 trillion Infrastructure Act enacted into law by the Congress of the United States (US).7 To this list we can now add two more such devel- opments. At the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP-27) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)g in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt), a historic F.P. Incropera, Climate Change: A Wicked Problem. Complexity and Uncertainty at the Intersection of Science, Economics, Politics, and Human Behavior (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Others go one step further, labelling climate change a 'super-wicked' problem; see, e.g., R. Lazarus, 'Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future' (2009) 94 Cornell Law Review, pp. 1153-234. 2 H.W. Rittel & M.M. Webber, 'Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning' (1973) 4(2) Policy Sciences, pp. 155-69. 3 B.W. Head, 'Wicked Problems in Public Policy' (2008) 3(2) Public Policy, pp. 101-18, at 103-5. 4 A. Gorman, 'An Ode We Owe', poem delivered at the opening session of the 77th UN General Assembly, 19 Sept. 2022, available at: https://media.un.org/en/asset/ki3/k13ke28y6c. s T.F.M. Etty & J. van Zeben, et al., 'The Possibility of Radical Change in Transnational Environmental Law' (2022) 11(3) Transnational Environmental Law, pp. 447-61. 6 UN General Assembly, 'The Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment', 28 July 2022, UN Doc. A/RES/76/300, available at: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3983329?n=en. 7 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Pub. L. No. 117-58, 135 Stat. 429 (2021). 8 New York, NY (US), 9 May 1992, in force 21 Mar. 1994, available at: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/ convkp/conveng.pdf.