Belém or Bedlam? Transnational Environmental Law in an Era of Contested Multilateralism

of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 1 convened at the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Belm (Brazil), the same country that hosted the famous Rio Earth Summit of 1992. 2 Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva dubbed the 2025 event the 'COP of truth', 3 and delegates had no choice but to confront a number of stark realities: 2024 was the warmest year on record, at approximately 1.55C above pre-industrial levels; more than one-third of the parties to the Paris Agreement had failed to submit their nationally determined contributions, and the contributions that were submitted fall well short of what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement. 4 The Mutiro Decision, which takes its name from an Indigenous word for collective mobilization, acknowledges the uncomfortable truth that 'the carbon budget consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement's temperature goal is now small and being rapidly depleted'. 5COP30 also revealed profound divides about the proper role of multilateral institutions in facilitating climate action, and proposals on phasing out fossil fuel and halting deforestation failed to secure consensus. 6 The articles in this issue illuminate the institutional, doctrinal, and normative challenges that transnational environmental law must navigate.We have contributions on biotechnology governance under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 7 on democratic deficits in trade-environmental policymaking, on groundwater ownership regimes, on the colonial legacies that are embedded in European Union (EU) deforestation regulation, on corporate defence strategies in climate litigation, on new remedies and environmental harms, on innovative legal concepts, such as