Abstract
ASEAN faces urgent environmental challenges, including transboundary haze, recurrent flooding, and accelerating biodiversity loss, that demand more than aspirational strategies. Although the ASEAN Cooperation on Environment has outlined seven priority areas, these remain fragmented without a unifying principle to secure enforceability and accountability. At the international level, the concept of Environmental Rule of Law (EROL) has emerged as a governance framework that embeds environmental protection within the broader architecture of justice and accountability. This paper examines the extent to which EROL has been recognised, integrated, and operationalised within ASEAN’s environmental governance, with Malaysia serving as a catalyst case study. Adopting a socio-legal methodology, the study combines a systematic literature review with doctrinal analysis of ASEAN treaties, soft law instruments, and regional policies to map frameworks against EROL benchmarks. Malaysia’s domestic initiatives, reflecting both its vulnerabilities to environmental harm and its potential leadership within ASEAN, will be analysed to illustrate how national innovations can inform regional integration. The paper argues that while EROL discourse in ASEAN is still emerging, it has the potential to unify existing strategies and strengthen implementation. By situating Malaysia as a regional driver, the research highlights how EROL can provide coherence to ASEAN’s fragmented approaches and create enforceable mechanisms of accountability. The paper concludes with recommendations for embedding EROL into ASEAN’s institutional architecture, offering policymakers, industry, and communities credible pathways towards sustainable and participatory environmental governance. In doing so, it positions EROL not merely as a legal framework but as a transformative principle for advancing ASEAN’s mandate.
Presenters
Kanchana ChandranSenior Lecturer, Centre for Commercial Law and Justice, Sunway Business School, Sunway University, Selangor, Malaysia Tamara Joan Duraisingam
Senior Lecturer, Centre for Commercial Law and Justice, Sunway University, Selangor, Malaysia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Education, Assessment and Policy
KEYWORDS
ENVIRONMENT, RULE OF LAW, ASEAN, MALAYSIA, SUSTAINABILITY, ACCOUNTABILITY
