Vice or Virtue? Flexibility in Transnational Environmental Law

This chapter addresses the purposes and effects of flexibility in the field of transnational environmental law. We begin by outlining the origins, concept, and manifestations of flexibility in environmental law, and then discuss its potential as well as its drawbacks for addressing transnational environmental problems. On the one hand, flexibility can be seen as a practice that enhances the legitimacy and compliance pull of transnational environmental governance and provides opportunities for necessary forms of experimentation, learning, reflexivity and adjustment. On the other hand, flexibility can be seen as undermining the predictability, certainty, and binding character of transnational environmental law, engendering fragmentation and generating inefficiencies. Next, we provide a nuanced assessment of the vices and virtues of flexibility in the context of the transnational legal process for REDD+. In doing so, we consider the complex interactions between the development and implementation of legal norms and practices across the transnational, national, and local levels as well as between public and private forms of governance and the extent to which they have enhanced or undermined the effectiveness of REDD+.