The 2024 Summit of the Future (22–23 September) became yet another momentous global conference. Following in the wake of the 2023 New York Summit on Sustainable Development Goals (18–19 September) and the 2022 Stockholm+50 Conference (2–3 June), it once again addressed the global environmental problematique. SDG 5 of the 2030 Agenda aims to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” In the third decade of the 21st century, humankind is still grappling with vital issues concerning gender-based inequality, discrimination and the violence faced by women and girls, who constitute almost half of the world population of eight billion. Coming so soon after the 75th anniversary (10 December 2023) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that proclaimed: “All human beings are born free and equal” (Article 1), the SDG Summit was a grim reminder of these gender-based issues. A forward-thinking Indian delegate, Hansa Mehta, is credited with insertion of word “human” in place of “men” in the 1948 UDHR. At the time (May 13, 1946), the draft prepared by the UN Sub-commission on the Status of Women vividly underscored the fact that “Freedom and equality are essential to human development and whereas woman is as much a human being as man and, therefore, share with them.”

Notwithstanding the cherished goals prescribed in international human rights and other global regulatory instruments to bring about changes in gender related approaches, women and girls worldwide still face grim challenges, which predominantly emanate from centuries-old cultural attitudes, and the harsh reality of a largely male-centric global, economic, political and legal order. These attitudes are all too often reflected in the scholarly realm too. Hence, it was thought timely to elicit the perspectives of women scholars from all continents. The basic idea mooted by this editor was: if women were to take a look at the world’s environmental problematique, they might yield a different perspective – and hence ideational view – of our environmental future.

The result of this idea was a plan to devote an entire EPL Special Issue to highlighting the perspectives of women scholars on international environmental law and governance processes. This became even more relevant when set against the backdrop of the chastisement by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of the Stockholm+50 Conference on 2 June 2022 to the effect that “global well-being is in jeopardy, in large part because we have not kept our promises on the environment…Earth’s natural systems cannot keep up with our demands. We are consuming at the rate of 1.7 planets a year”. In this light of this address, prominent women scholars from all parts of the world were invited to contribute their thoughts on various facets of the global environmental challenge. The editorial process of inviting contributions was a humbling experience. Extensive communication with this group of eminent scholars revealed insights into the serious and persistent obstacles many of them still face as regards issues of gender parity, work environment, and the balancing of careers, families and health issues. While we did not achieve the number of contributions that had originally been envisioned from women scholars across numerous aspects of the IEL landscape, the effort nevertheless represented an important contribution to knowledge and scholarly literature in the field and provided an important platform for the voices of these women to be heard.

This volume presents those ideational papers published in the EPL Special Issue organized in five parts: (1) Function of International Law (Elisa Morgera; Sara L. Seck); (2) Sustainability (Patricia Kameri-Mbote and Nkatha Kabira; Claudia Ituarte-Lima et al.); (3) Climate Change (Rowena Maguire et al; Susana Borras-Pentinat; Moumita Mandal; Mathilde Hautereau-Boutonnet and Sandrine Maljean-Dubois); (4) Biological Diversity (Pascale Ricard; Marta Abegon-Novella); and (5) Circular Economy (M.N. Boeve and I.M. de Waal). They address a wide range of issues such as (i) Transformative Change through the Lens of Children’s Human Rights; (ii) Women and the Marine Environment; (iii) Engendering the Legal Framework for Environmentally Sustainable Development; (iv) Environmental Human Rights Defenders to Biosphere Defenders; (v) A Feminist Perspective on UNFCCC; (vi) A Gendered Perspective on Climate Migration; (vii) Role of the Feminist Foreign Policy in Climate Change Exacerbated SGBV; (viii) Tools and Actors for a Better Enforcement: A Case of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change; (ix) A Preliminary Legal Analysis on 2023 BBNJ Agreement; (x) Making Sense of the Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction; and (xi) Global Plastic Pollution and Transition Towards a Circular Economy: A Case of the EU’s Legal Framework on Plastics.

The prognosis, legal analysis and projections contained in the abovementioned ideational papers address some of the contemporary global environmental challenges of our times and provide a flavor of the scholarly engagements required for a better common future. Cumulatively, within the limits of time, space and resources, the perspectives of women scholars give us a glimpse of a potential future trajectory for the required legal approaches, as well as vindicating the audacity of hope that this author has painstakingly sought to underscore throughout the pages of EPL as a global scholarly journal.

We hope that the issues raised, legal analysis provided and balanced approaches presented in the contributions of these scholars will inspire other promising women scholars to come forward with more cutting- edge contributions in the field. We would welcome such contributions from all scholars from every part of the world within the remit of the journal, whether for the thematic special issues or otherwise. It is exemplified by the contributions of outstanding scholars from around the world to the EPL special issue 54 on the Planetary Future (2024) that envision a pathway to our planetary future.

Bharat H. Desai

Editor