This special issue explores the interrelationship between global economic interests and local ecological interests, and its implications in law. Along this axis, it seeks to examine not only the capacity of global forces to subjugate local interests in responding to territorially confined threats, but also the extent to which solutions to global environmental problems may depend on local action. It analyses the impact of globalization on legal structures and their ability to accommodate local concerns, and considers whether globalization, and the elimination of national borders, actually offers an opportunity to reassert the power of local and regional governance. Its essays include:

• Environmental Governance: Reconnecting the Global and Local
• Free Trade: What is it Good For? Globalization, Deregulation, and ‘Public Opinion’
• Modern Interpretations of Sustainable Development      
• Environmental Justice Imperatives for an Era of Climate Change          
• (Re)Connecting the Global and Local: Europe’s Regional Seas
• Framing the Local and the Global in the Anti-Nuclear Movement: Law and the Politics of Place
• Globalizing Regulation: Reaching Beyond the Borders of Chemical Safety      
• The Globalization and Re-localization of Material Flows: Four Phases of Food Regulation
• The New Collaborative Environmental Governance: The Localization of Regulation

Contributors: Stuart Bell, Laurence Etherington, Neil Gunningham, Veerle Heyvaert, Chris Hilson, Robert Lee, Terry Marsden, Emily Reid, Andrea Ross, Mark Stallworthy, Jenny Steele, Elen Stokes   

Robert Lee is Co-Director ESRC Research Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University.

Elen Stokes is a Lecturer in Law at Cardiff Law School.