Natarajan, Usha --- "Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and the environment" [2017] ELECD 1450; in Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas; Brooks, Victoria (eds), "Research Methods in Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 207

Book Title: Research Methods in Environmental Law

Editor(s): Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas; Brooks, Victoria

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784712563

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and the environment

Author(s): Natarajan, Usha

Number of pages: 30

Abstract/Description:

This chapter examines how the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement has approached environmental issues through division into three phases: first, the period following independence, particularly the 1960s and 1970s, where Third World international lawyers prioritized natural resource governance; second, the inauguration of the acronym TWAIL in the 1990s and a movement that remained largely sceptical of and disengaged from international environmental law; and third, the contemporary moment with a resurgence of interest in the environment within TWAIL. I structure my description in three phases on the basis of the predominance over time of different methods, approaches and attitudes on the part of Third World international lawyers to the environment. TWAIL scholars self-identify as a movement more frequently than as a method. While Third World approaches have some shared methodological characteristics that this chapter identifies, ultimately it is our political commitments that unite us, including a keen awareness of the politics of method and its implications for knowledge production.