Environmental Law and the Ecosystem Approach: Maintaining Ecological Integrity through Consistency in Law, by Froukje Maria Platjouw Earthscan from Routledge, 2016, 220 pp, £85 hb, ISBN 9781138183131 (Book review)

Abstract

Environmental law has, perhaps by necessity, lagged behind scientific understandings of the natural world. Nevertheless, there has been a slow but sure shift from legal instruments that adopt species-based approaches to conservation1 to more holistic approaches at the level of ecosystems. 2 During the 1980s, ecosystem managers began to adopt an ecosystem approach in the management of 'eco-social' systems. 3 By 2000, in Decision V/6 of the 5 th Conference of the Parties (COP-5), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)4 extended understanding of the ecosystem approach beyond a mere strategy to conserve biodiversity at the level of ecosystems; the ecosystem approach was instead envisaged as a mode of governance. Nevertheless, the ecosystem approach remains a contested concept and its precise legal status and content remain unclear.