The following article was published in the November 2025 issue of the International Review of Contemporary Law, the journal of the IADL, focusing on climate and social justice.
Introduction
Miguel Régio de Almeida
On the 16th of September, 2025, the Human Rights Council of the United Nations officially considered that the State of Israel is conducting genocide in Palestine1 – the last stage of its ongoing practice of plain colonialism since the 1947 Nakba. In the same day, faithful to the Green Capitalism agenda and speaking 1 year after the Draghi Report,2 the President of the Commission of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, stated that its Member States have to further increase their competitiveness, exploring their own natural resources, ‘[f]rom copper and cobalt mining in Finland, to lithium processing in Portugal, to battery recycling in Italy’ – notwithstanding the deep impact to the ecosystem and local earthlings. In these days of the Capitalocene, the accumulation of wealth strives not only from expropriation, but also from plain dispossession, following the path that David Harvey has depicted. Day after day, governed by a few, the whole of Humanity is pushed to the rupture of the metabolic rift with Nature, as Marx predicted and John Bellamy Foster famously later recalled.
The present issue of the International Review of Contemporary Law, dedicated to the theme Climate and Social Justice, reflects precisely such ZeitGeist. Taking benefits from an intersectional approach, the reader can see how colonialism and ecocide go hand in hand: how environmental problems initiated decades ago have evolved ever more dangerously and how new challenges are emerging due to Climate Change. The reader will also learn new lessons that can help us all shape the World of tomorrow, with the conscience that a Common Planet demands a Common Good – and a common struggle.
In El caso de Vieques y Puerto Rico bajo la Carta de la ONU (Parte I & Parte II), Dinorah La Luz relates how the military intervention in Puerto Rico is not only a case of current neocolonialism, but also one with deep ecological impact.
Differently, and especially aggravated by Climate Change, in Access to Water in a Changing World: How to Protect the Environment and to Tackle Water Poverty – The Case of Iberia, Rui Cortes sheds light into one of the key-problems that already plagues Portuguese and Spanish relations and will definitely haunt both populations in the near Future – a common problem, with a common solution.
Taking a step back in time but with a clear eye in the current times – and namely with the ‘lithium processing’ mentioned above at the political stage –, João Carlos Gralheiro teach us about a traditional (but not entirely exclusive) Portuguese legal regime regarding Common Land and the Environment, describing how Common Property has been regulated in that country, been attacked by the Central Government and defended by local populations.
Also with the Common Good in eyesight, Christine Altenbuchner and Robert Diendorfer enlighten us about Climate Resilience and Social Justice in Agri-Food Value Chains: The Role of Female Actors and Regulation for Transformation, providing a clear example of how intersectionality is needed not only in theory, but also in action, in order to face the ever growing ecological challenges.
Finally, Hans Geisslhofer provides us with an alternative vision for the carbon market, focusing in its counter-hegemonic potential, in his Compensation climatique pour les paysans/paysannes du Sud : une vision réaliste?
As we all know, Law can definitely be a tool of social change, not only of repression. To quote the physicist expert in Climate Change, Luís Fazendeiro,3 the ‘human experience is richer, more diverse and more unpredictable than any mere ideology or technocratic management scheme can determine. Ultimately, each of us is born on this Earth, lives for a few brief moments and departs, giving way to others. It is this chain of living beings, human and otherwise, in which all links are intrinsically connected, that must be protected at all costs! Everything else is madness.’ We are still in need of a new common sense to face the actual cultural hegemony – but we also believe that this present issue of the Review is another step in such direction.
PS: A special word of appreciation is due to Bordalo II and Patrick Chappatte, for allowing us to share their work, highlighting the connections between Art and Law – in the present case, between Art, Climate and Social Justice.
1 See A /HRC/60/CRP.3, available at <https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session60/advance-version/a-hrc-60-crp-3.pdf> [Accessed 20 September 2025].
2 See ‘Opening keynote speech by President von der Leyen at the ‘One Year After the Draghi Report’ Conference’, available at <https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_25_2102> [Accessed 20 September 2025].
3 Luís Fazendeiro, Sobre a mudança. Justiça Climática e Transição Ecológica no Século XXI, Outro Modo, Portugal, 2023, p. 274 (the translation is ours).
All articles published in the International Review of Contemporary Law reflect only the position of their author and not the position of the journal, nor of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.