ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is a contribution to law to support transitions for stabilising the climate, safeguarding water and making equity a principle of sustainability. It sets out premises for developing law for responsability. The book provides specific contexts and studies in different jurisdictions. It analyses the failure to ensure accountability for resource depletion and environmental damage and attributes the failure to weak regulation with laws in which the freedom to exploit are embedded without responsibility to protect. The book shows how global corporate values and the pressures for development intersect with forms of governance in Samoa. It explains Maori interests in water and focuses on a wider context by referring to Malaysian law. The book provides an expose of the ways in which common and differentiated responsibilities have been contentious and then brought to a universally accepted framework in the Paris Agreement.
